The Child Who Never Was
That evening, Annette opened her eyes.
Her body felt as heavy as waterlogged cotton. A dull ache rose from her abdomen. She let out a faint moan and curled slightly into herself.
At the edge of her half-blurred vision, a dark silhouette took shape. She blinked her furrowed eyes several times. Slowly, focus returned. It was Heiner.
Heiner was looking down at her with the face of a man who had seen a ghost. The expression was so unlike him that Annette momentarily mistook the moment for a dream.
The instant he confirmed she had regained consciousness, Heiner called for a doctor. Before long the physician who had rushed over diagnosed her condition.
The gunshot wound was not very deep, he said. Compared to the agony that had felt so horrific, the verdict was almost trivial. Annette was briefly puzzled, then understood.
Arnold had always claimed she was hypersensitive—that she made a fuss over the slightest discomfort. Judging by those words, she must have overreacted this time as well.
After listing a few precautions regarding the gunshot wound, the doctor hesitated a moment, then told Annette she would experience bleeding for the next three or four days. She assumed he meant her period.
Her menstruation had always been highly irregular. Sometimes she skipped months entirely. She thought this was simply another such occasion.
But the doctor said it was because she had miscarried.
At that, Annette doubted her own ears.
Residual products of conception remaining in the uterus, including the gestational sac, would pass; there was no need for alarm. If the bleeding persisted, surgery would be required. As the uterus contracted there might be abdominal pain…
The doctor’s voice reached her half-detached, as if through glass. Blue veins stood out on the back of Annette’s hand where she clenched the blanket.
With an extremely apologetic expression the doctor informed her that future pregnancies would be difficult. Even then Annette remained half out of her mind.
“Please rest well, then.”
Bowing politely, the doctor left the room. Annette sat blankly, without even the presence of mind to return the greeting.
Absently she brought a hand to her abdomen. Through the hospital gown she felt the firm texture of tightly wound bandages.
Pregnant…? When? Why?
She had been feeling particularly unwell lately, but she had attributed it to stress and never once dreamed it could be pregnancy.
A strange chill rose. Annette gave a light shiver of her shoulders. It was a child whose existence she had not even known, yet a vast sense of loss surged from within her belly.
The child she had longed for so desperately had never come then.
“…I’ve kept the miscarriage a secret from the outside.”
Heiner spoke quietly.
“I’ll handle everything regarding the articles, so don’t concern yourself with that part.”
Annette slowly turned her head to look at him. His words sounded extremely strange.
He’ll handle it?
There was no way Heiner would arrange matters to her advantage. He was the man who had simply left her to be torn apart by reporters, right up to her throat. She was sick of newspaper articles.
“The perpetrator was arrested at the scene, they say. Motive, whether there was a mastermind, and so on are currently under investigation.”
“…”
“Civilian use of firearms is restricted at present, and since you were pregnant, the charge of attempted murder will be applied strictly and—”
“The child.”
Her voice came out heavily cracked. Annette continued regardless.
“How many weeks was the child?”
Heiner gazed briefly toward her abdomen, then immediately raised his eyes.
“Eleven weeks, they said.”
It nearly matched the period when her menstruation had stopped. Annette closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them. Her mind was a blank void.
“Annette, the child…”
Slightly hesitating, Heiner added heavily,
“…if you want one, there is also the option of adoption.”
“Adoption?”
Annette murmured softly and looked up at him. Heiner’s face was, as usual, difficult to read.
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“I mean if you absolutely want to raise a child.”
“No. I don’t need it. It’s better this way, actually.”
At that, Heiner’s brow furrowed slightly. Annette lowered the hand she had been resting on her belly and said,
“It was a child better never born.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Even if it had been born, it would have been unhappy. Living in a loveless home, carrying the label of my mother’s child. I took a great deal of medication during the pregnancy, so who knows what might have happened…”
“You wanted a child, didn’t you?”
“Not anymore. And you didn’t want one either. Aren’t you thinking deep down that it’s fortunate it turned out this way?”
Annette sincerely believed it. There was not a single reason for Heiner to want a child, and countless reasons not to.
But Heiner shook his head defensively. He looked like someone who had been attacked out of the blue.
“What on earth… Why do you think that?”
“Then did you ever once think you wanted a child with me? No, you didn’t.”
“Annette, I merely…”
Heiner’s lips moved as if he did not know what to say.
“Merely… I had never thought about a child. The doctors said you had a constitution that made pregnancy difficult… and in fact there had been no news for four years.”
“Whatever your true feelings, it’s a good thing for you, Heiner.”
Annette slightly lifted the corners of her mouth.
“Politically it isn’t great either, is it? A child with me.”
Setting aside the surface issues, it was clearly fortunate for Heiner. A child born between him and a woman he hated. There was no way he could love it.
The miscarriage was, in many ways, a blessing in disguise.
For Heiner, for the unborn child, and for the people outside.
“But you…”
Heiner’s words broke off. His low, resonant voice was tightly locked. After exhaling a slightly trembling breath, he forced out the rest.
“You wanted a child, didn’t you?”
“…And so?”
“Why is it that you don’t anymore? Because you learned of my betrayal? Between then and now our relationship hasn’t changed much at all.”
Heiner’s eyes had sunk darkly. Sitting in the chair with his head half bowed, he seemed like a massive shadow.
“Whether I want it or not, what does that have to do with you?”
“Annette, I’m not trying to discuss relevance—”
“Then what exactly do you want to discuss?”
“Just that since you wanted one in the past—you could consider adoption.”
“I don’t want one anymore!”
Annette’s voice rose. Half out of her senses, she poured out the words.
“I said I don’t want one anymore. I don’t need something like a child. So it’s better this way! I say so, so why do you keep…!”
The last words came out almost like a scream. Annette’s lips trembled with the intensity of her emotion. The atmosphere grew as precarious as cracked glass.
Heiner sat stiffly frozen, like an animal startled into silence. A heavy silence settled. In the quiet, only Annette’s breath rose and fell unsteadily.
For a while neither of them said anything. At the end of the silence Annette turned her head away from him.
“Please leave. I want to be alone.”
Heiner stared at her without answering. The cold ticking of the clock’s second hand filled the hospital room. The tips of Annette’s fingers, dangling over the sheets, twitched briefly.
Eventually he rose quietly from his seat. The sound of his footsteps faded. The door opened and closed again.
Annette turned onto her side. The chill air pressed down on her entire body. Even with her eyes open in full consciousness, nothing felt real.
Thinking back belatedly, pregnancy might have been a selfish desire. If she had truly thought of the child, she should never have brought it into the world.
The world the born child would face would be endlessly cold and harsh. Because it was her child. Because it was Rosenberg blood.
Perhaps as it grew it would come to resent its mother. She was used to being hated, but if the one doing the hating were her own child… well, what would that feel like?
Annette curled her body tightly. Even under the thick blanket she began to tremble. The chill that seemed to surge up from within her belly was painful.
“You wanted a child, didn’t you?”
Had she wanted a child?
Yes, she had.
Whether from loneliness, from desperation, or from some other impure heart, she herself did not know. Whatever the reason, she had wanted it.
She had lost the child she had wanted so much, yet strangely no tears came. She felt no guilt for failing to protect the child, nor did her chest ache as if it would tear.
It was just so cold.
As if a great hole had opened inside her body, it was cold.
While in the hospital Annette underwent various additional tests. She also began psychological counseling at the semi-forced recommendation of the doctor and Heiner.
It seemed they were concerned about the shock of the miscarriage, but Annette did not think she particularly needed the sessions. She had not been very shocked. She was just a little dazed.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Not bad.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, I slept soundly.”
“That’s good. Who did you talk with yesterday?”
“The doctor, the nurse, and my husband…”
“May I ask what sort of conversation you had with your husband?”
“I don’t remember well.”
“I heard you had a slight argument last time over the adoption issue.”
“It wasn’t an argument. I was just… sensitive.”
“It’s merely a difference of opinion. Why don’t you want to adopt, madam?”
Annette looked down for a moment at her two hands clasped and resting on her thighs. Her lips moved slowly.
“I…”
There were many reasons. Because she was not confident she could love a child completely. Because a child growing up in such a household would be pitiful. Because people would surely whisper that she was struggling simply to avoid divorce.
And because the act of adopting itself would be meaningless anyway.
“…It hasn’t been long since the miscarriage. To think of another new child right away is… a bit…”
“Ah, of course. I fully understand your feelings, madam.”
Annette lied repeatedly in the counseling. The only truths she spoke were essentially superficial greetings; the moment the conversation entered even slightly intimate territory she fabricated her answers.
Fundamentally Annette did not trust the confidentiality of the sessions. She expected that if she answered even a little wrong it would appear in the gossip the next morning.
Even if not, the content would all be relayed to Heiner.
Whether the counselor was convinced by that answer or not, she did not press further. Feeling fatigued even from the light conversation, Annette closed her eyes. Familiar darkness washed in behind her eyelids.
She just wanted to be alone.