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How much longer till I'm taller?
How much longer till it's midnight?
How much longer till the morning, are my legs gonna last?
Is it too much to ask?
-Samia, Pool (Stripped), 2025
Carter thought he knew grief.
For many years, it walked beside him in the silhouette of a slightly taller brother. He felt its presence on birthdays and holidays, when there was always one less card to send, one less gift to wrap, and he thought he'd grappled with it for long enough that it wouldn't suffocate him anymore.
Yet here he is, sitting in the darkness of an empty suture room, and suddenly grief has a new shape.
It's a baby boy.
He holds the tiny silhouetted creature in his arms, like he held his real son only an hour or so ago, and he tries to imagine what it would feel like squirming in his grip. The way a little hand might poke out from the muslin cloth, stretching out into the air until he let it curl around his index finger. How he might press his nose to the warmth of a head only just downy with hair, and breathe in the scent of new life. His new life. His boy.
When he blinks, though, he holds not a baby but a baby’s toy. A rabbit, cloth ears worn with rubbing, the fur of its cottontail slightly prickly from thirty-year-old saliva. He'd brought it, you see, tucked it into his bag as he packed Kem’s overnight things, because he'd still been naive enough to think things would turn out okay. A toy, he'd thought, for his newborn. Something to pass on. A guardian, perhaps, too- he looked after me when I was little, and now he'll look after you.
He closes his eyes, and as he feels the tears escape he does nothing to stop them. They've been tightly contained for hours, but he's alone now, and Kem has asked to be alone too, so he's sitting on the floor of an empty suture room holding the rabbit his son will never get to hold, and he's starting to sob. Thick, heaving, choking sobs that come out too loud, only just muffled now by his shaking hands.
Oh God. Oh God.
The babies had been crying up in OB, raucous, boisterous, and another new father joked with him in the hallway that he wasn't looking forward to that for months on end. And Carter had to nod, and smile politely, even as every fibre of his being wanted to grab the man by the shoulders and shake him till he understood what a privilege it was to hear such a noise. How difficult it is to hold your composure when there's an entire symphony of crying babies around you, and your own little boy is silent.
So silent. Oh God, so silent.
He bows his head, lets it rest between tented knees when the blood seems to drain from his face. The tears splash, undeterred, onto the tiled floor below. Plink plink plink plink. A faucet drip drip dripping until he twists it shut and tests the temperature of the water, swirling a finger about to verify that it won't burn his baby’s skin, lifting his boy into the tub, laughing when a kick decorates his t-shirt with dark spots. Scattering the water gently over his son’s head, shielding sensitive eyes.
The tears keep on falling, and he clutches the little rabbit to his chest, gasping for air whenever he can. There is a depth to this loneliness that he's never felt before. Usually, if there is nobody else around, he at least has himself. Tonight, however, half of his soul is absent- the would-be father with the gentle voice and ideas about how to paint the nursery. He died, too, the moment the ultrasound showed his baby didn't have a heartbeat.
How can a man keep living with half a soul? How can he go on when he's lost everything, when the mother of his stillborn won't even look him in the eye?
There is nothing, he thinks.
And then there is something.
The door to the suture room glides open, and a shaft of light shoots out onto the black and white tile. He lifts his head. Squints in the brightness.
“John?” Kerry Weaver calls, voice soft. “What happened?”
It's funny, isn't it, how a single question can cause an undoing? He inhales tremulously, and suddenly he's sobbing again, shaking his dipping head, arms falling limply to the floor. The rabbit catches the shaft of light. Its little stitched mouth smiles up unknowingly at the closest thing Carter has had to a real mother in twenty five years.
She closes the door gently behind her, crutch clicking on the tile. She crouches beside him. Places her hand on his shoulder.
“I don't- I don't kn-know what to- what to d-do,” He blurts, breath hitching, between sobs. “With- w-with my r-rabbit.”
Kerry sets her crutch down against the wall and lowers herself into a seated position. Even in the darkness, he can see her brow furrowing at his words.
“Your rabbit?” She murmurs.
He nods. Gestures weakly with the thing, barely able to lift it up before it comes crashing down to his side again.
“It was- it was s-supposed to be for h-him, but he- he- he's- he didn't- he- they t-took him out and he- he was- his heart wasn't- he didn't cry, a-and-”
Kerry pauses. He feels the understanding ripple through her, and it only triggers more breathless sobs that make his vision spot, his hearing muffled.
“Your baby died?” She murmurs gently.
Another sob, so violent he doubles over, nodding again. Choking. Wailing without the ability to restrain himself anymore.
He feels all of about five, every emotional floodgate flattened by the tidal wave of exhaustion and grief and despair, and when Kerry wraps an arm about his shoulders and pulls him closer, he sinks into her like a little boy. Clutches at the fabric of her blouse with one hand, clings uselessly onto his rabbit with the other.
“Oh, sweetheart. Oh, John. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”
But it isn't her fault. It isn't anybody's fault, and that's somehow the worst news of all. He wants somebody to blame, a cause to rally against and protest, but his son simply twisted too much and wrapped the cord around his own neck. It was an accident. Unpreventable.
As he buries his nose in Kerry’s lab coat, though, a mess of snot and tears that she tries to soothe with kisses on his crown and circles rubbed into his back, all he can think is why? And like an inquisitive child asking why the sky is blue and a bee is called a bee and fire is hot, he is met with the most frustrating answer of all.
It just is.
Sometimes, it just is.