By the following stretch of the night, I had stopped pretending I wasn't tired.<\/p>\n
My eyes burned.<\/p>\n
My back ached.<\/p>\n
The chair had become uncomfortable enough that I kept shifting my weight.<\/p>\n
Clara noticed.<\/p>\n
"You should get some sleep."<\/p>\n
"I'm fine."<\/p>\n
She gave me a look.<\/p>\n
I knew that look.<\/p>\n
It was the same one she used when I insisted I could handle something that was clearly wearing me down.<\/p>\n
"You don't look fine."<\/p>\n
I almost smiled.<\/p>\n
Neither did she.<\/p>\n
But I didn't say that.<\/p>\n
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees.<\/p>\n
"I just want to stay until I know you're doing better."<\/p>\n
Clara looked at her hands.<\/p>\n
"I'm here."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
She was quiet for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then she said, "You don't have to watch me every second."<\/p>\n
The words were gentle.<\/p>\n
Still, they landed harder than I expected.<\/p>\n
"I wasn't watching you."<\/p>\n
She raised her eyes.<\/p>\n
I heard how defensive I sounded.<\/p>\n
I wished I could take the sentence back and begin again.<\/p>\n
"I mean, I'm just worried."<\/p>\n
"I know you're worried."<\/p>\n
She said it without anger.<\/p>\n
That somehow made it worse.<\/p>\n
I wanted her to be angry.<\/p>\n
Anger would have given me something to respond to.<\/p>\n
Instead, she sounded tired and careful, as if she were trying to keep the conversation from becoming something neither of us could manage.<\/p>\n
I sat back.<\/p>\n
"I'm sorry."<\/p>\n
She shook her head.<\/p>\n
"You don't need to apologize."<\/p>\n
But I did.<\/p>\n
Not because I had done something terrible.<\/p>\n
Because I could feel myself turning into someone I didn't recognize.<\/p>\n
Someone who noticed every movement and tried to assign it a meaning.<\/p>\n
Someone who was afraid to ask a direct question but couldn't stop searching for an indirect answer.<\/p>\n
I had always considered myself reasonable.<\/p>\n
That night, reason seemed to be the first thing I lost whenever Clara looked away.<\/p>\n
She closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
I stayed quiet.<\/p>\n
After a few minutes, I thought she had fallen asleep, but she spoke again.<\/p>\n
"Did you call anyone?"<\/p>\n
The question surprised me.<\/p>\n
"No. Should I have?"<\/p>\n
She shook her head.<\/p>\n
"I was just asking."<\/p>\n
I told her I hadn't wanted to make unnecessary calls while she was resting.<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
Then she looked toward the table.<\/p>\n
Her phone was still beside the plastic cup.<\/p>\n
I followed her gaze before I could stop myself.<\/p>\n
She noticed.<\/p>\n
I knew she noticed because her eyes returned to mine almost immediately.<\/p>\n
I looked away.<\/p>\n
I felt foolish.<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
A nurse came in shortly afterward and asked Clara a few questions about her pain and whether she needed anything.<\/p>\n
Clara answered quietly.<\/p>\n
The nurse adjusted the blanket and checked the equipment.<\/p>\n
Before leaving, she reminded Clara to call if she felt uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
Clara thanked her.<\/p>\n
The door closed.<\/p>\n
For a moment, the room felt smaller.<\/p>\n
I stood to move my chair.<\/p>\n
The legs scraped against the floor.<\/p>\n
Clara flinched slightly at the sound.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
"Sorry."<\/p>\n
"It's okay."<\/p>\n
I moved the chair more carefully and sat down again.<\/p>\n
The phone vibrated once on the table.<\/p>\n
Clara looked at it.<\/p>\n
I kept my eyes on her face.<\/p>\n
She didn't pick it up.<\/p>\n
Neither did I.<\/p>\n
The sound faded, leaving the room quiet again.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask who had contacted her.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask whether there was someone she needed to speak with.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why a single vibration could change the way we looked at each other.<\/p>\n
Instead, I asked whether she needed another pillow.<\/p>\n
She said no.<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
There it was again.<\/p>\n
A simple question.<\/p>\n
A simple answer.<\/p>\n
And everything we weren't saying gathered around it.<\/p>\n
I thought about the hours before the delivery.<\/p>\n
I thought about how little I had understood about what Clara was experiencing.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether there were things I should have noticed earlier.<\/p>\n
Had she seemed worried before we came to the hospital?<\/p>\n
Had she been distracted in ways I had dismissed?<\/p>\n
Had I been too occupied with my own expectations to recognize that she was struggling with something I couldn't see?<\/p>\n
I tried to remember.<\/p>\n
The memories came back in pieces.<\/p>\n
A conversation interrupted by an ordinary task.<\/p>\n
A moment when she seemed far away.<\/p>\n
A silence I had accepted because I assumed she was tired.<\/p>\n
None of those memories proved anything.<\/p>\n
That was the problem.<\/p>\n
I could turn every ordinary moment into a clue if I wanted to badly enough.<\/p>\n
And once I started doing that, I couldn't tell where observation ended and fear began.<\/p>\n
Clara opened her eyes.<\/p>\n
"What are you thinking about?"<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
For once, I almost told her the truth.<\/p>\n
I almost said that I was frightened by the distance between us.<\/p>\n
That I had noticed her reaction to the phone.<\/p>\n
That I didn't know whether I was imagining things or ignoring something important.<\/p>\n
The words were there.<\/p>\n
I could have spoken them.<\/p>\n
Instead, I said, "Nothing important."<\/p>\n
Clara watched me.<\/p>\n
I knew she didn't believe me.<\/p>\n
She didn't challenge the answer.<\/p>\n
That silence felt different from the others.<\/p>\n
It felt like something we had both chosen.<\/p>\n
She turned toward the pillow.<\/p>\n
I stared at the floor.<\/p>\n
I had wanted her to trust me enough to speak.<\/p>\n
Yet when she gave me the chance to speak honestly myself, I had hidden behind two words.<\/p>\n
Nothing important.<\/p>\n
I felt ashamed.<\/p>\n
Not because I had solved anything.<\/p>\n
Because I had made the very thing I feared more likely.<\/p>\n
We were both sitting in that room, exhausted and frightened, each waiting for the other person to begin a conversation.<\/p>\n
Neither of us knew how to start.<\/p>\n
The clock continued moving.<\/p>\n
The monitor continued its steady rhythm.<\/p>\n
Clara eventually closed her eyes again.<\/p>\n
I remained beside her.<\/p>\n
I promised myself that if she asked me another question, I would answer honestly.<\/p>\n
I promised myself that I would stop pretending I had nothing on my mind.<\/p>\n
It was a small promise.<\/p>\n
I should have been able to keep it.<\/p>\n
But when Clara woke later and looked at me, I still couldn't bring myself to ask about the message.<\/p>\n
I could only ask whether she felt any better.<\/p>\n
She said she did.<\/p>\n
I nodded and took her hand.<\/p>\n
For a little while, we sat quietly.<\/p>\n
I told myself that this was enough for now.<\/p>\n
But I had begun to understand that silence did not always preserve peace.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it only gave fear more room to grow.<\/p>\n
By the following stretch of the night, I had stopped pretending I wasn't tired. My eyes burned. My back ached. The chair had become uncomfortable enough that I kept shifting … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37505,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37485\/revisions\/37505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}