To those with the worst luck.

People are shouting. You notice that Alice’s face, twisted into a furious snarl, shifts as her head snaps back in something like shock. Oh, that is probably because of the movement you see to your left, a blonde woman in a green top is being held by Jayne, physically prevented from doing… whatever she had intended to do. Karissa isn’t yelling, but her raised fist is a solid hint.

“Everyone shut up!” One of the older nurses, a veteran of a busy city ER, simply overpowers the confused, excited, disapproving, upset, snickering voices of the crowd.

It is weird how you can note this. Anything to not think about-

“What the hell is your problem, Karissa?” Alice has regained some of her righteous indignation. “I know Jayne has the hots for this piece of shit, don’t tell me you-”

“You don’t know a thing about him!” Karissa does not yell, but her anger is clear. But she is no longer trying to take a swing at the other woman, so that’s good. No one should be fighting. All of the angry voices and mean looks have you shutting down inside.

Jayne is looking at you again, her expression pained. “Zach, are you OK?”

Probably not, no. You haven’t moved or spoken, and the noise seems very loud yet also very far away and you know the room might start to sway any moment now.

“Just ask him!” Alice has a nervous look now, and you start to form an idea why. “Ask him about his family, the one he left behind in London or Windsor or whatever city he’s from.”

“What is this?” A new voice comes from the doorway, you don’t look but can tell it is Juniper. Someone probably went and told her what was happening, as the HR officer for the building. Makes sense she would come.

Alice flinches again. Yeah, that’s definitely it. She knows, now, that her default desire to be critical of others, her anger and self-importance, had her say things that she really shouldn’t know. You can see it, the very calm part of your brain that has not simply frozen solid.

One of the other women who sits with Alice crosses her arms and juts out her chin. “It’s true.”

Before anyone can say anything you sway, dizzy suddenly. Oh shit, not this, not now! Not in front of, well, everyone!

“Zach!” Karissa and Jayne say, simultaneously. Jayne tugs your arm and you half sit, half fall into a chair. “You are white as a ghost, are you OK? Zach?”

“Probably faking for sympathy, the deadbeat,” someone says, just loud enough for people to hear.

You keep staring at Jayne. She is very curious about what has been said about you. She is wondering - hey, how well do I know this guy anyway? She is having doubts, second thoughts, she is scared she has fallen for an asshole.

“Zach, take a deep breath, hold it, then let it out,” she says. “Just breathe.” Her eyes are nothing but kind, and whatever else she is thinking, she is more concerned for your well-being.

God damn, you don’t deserve her. You don’t deserve either of them.

But if you have them, somehow, they deserve to know.

“Her name was Charlotte.”

The entire room falls silent as you speak, the first thing you’ve said out loud since the shouting started. You feel your body tremble, but you focus on Jayne's eyes, on Karissa’s hand squeezing your shoulder in support. They deserve to know.

“She was going to be Charlotte, Erin loved that name.” Long buried memories swim up and surround you, but you take a long breath, then another, and they don’t pull you down to the void like they did before.

“She… Charlotte, our baby, they let me hold her. She couldn’t survive, so they took her out of… the machine and they gave her to me so I could hold her. At the end. Erin was dead, and now our baby was dead too. She was so small.”

You feel a tear sliding down your cheek, and Jayne’s look of pity and shared pain almost stops your heart.

“Everyone, get out of here, now.” Juniper is also beside you, and her voice is ice cold. “You, Voronkov, you go to my office. Don’t you dare say a word, just go. Don’t make this worse.”

“I-I didn’t know!” A nervous voice from the periphery, one of the nurses Alice was talking with. You ignore her as the rest of the room quickly files out, avoiding you. You don’t look at them, you just look at Jayne and Karissa as they share a quick glance then sit down on chairs to either side of you. Each reaches out and takes one of your hands.

The room is empty but for the three of you, Juniper, and one of the older nurses. They whisper for a moment, then the old nurse leaves and Juniper says, “Jayne, if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave you, uh, the three of you for a while. Take all the time you need. Zach, I’m very sorry about what has happened, please come talk to me when you are able and willing.”

Then it is just the three of you in the big break room. Your tears are hot on your face, but you don’t care.

“I was married, obviously. Her name was Erin, we met in high school. Got married while in university. We were good together, not like perfect, we had our arguments, like anyone else.”

It takes a couple of swallows before you can continue. “We got pregnant at the end of 2015. Super nervous, and very excited. Somewhat young, but I was working a good job, no worries. She had a high BP detected early and some potential placenta problems but not a huge concern, of course, everything made us nervous but she went into labour on June 7th, 2016.

“It was, I don’t know. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I could tell the doctors were agitated. Then I had to leave the room and everything, well, it all went fast. Amniotic fluid embolism, Erin was dead an hour later.”

“Oh I am very sorry Zach,” Karissa is crying too, but her voice is soothing.

“Heh. Yeah. They told me she was gone, and that our baby girl had brain damage. She couldn’t survive… I don’t like thinking about that I’m sorry. They were both gone, the same day. Just poof.”

You take your hand back from Jayne so you can wipe some tears away. Dammit, your nose is bugging you now, so you wipe it with your hand in annoyance.

“I took a month off. But you know, you can only sit by yourself so long. I went back to work, muddled on. People would tell me how sorry they were, and how brave I was being. I just went to work, then went home, then talked to a therapist now and then, and hung out with my family and friends. But Erin’s family, they were going through their own thing and they didn’t care to see me much. And no one knows what to say to you. But I just went on like that for a couple of years, going through the motions honestly.

“One day at work I was walking by and heard a couple of people talking, and you know how sometimes you can tell they are talking about you? One of my coworkers was telling the new guy something like ‘Yeah, and the baby didn't make it either,’ and the new guy was like ‘Holy shit, I can’t even imagine’, that kind of thing. They didn’t realize I was there.”

They hadn’t been mean or rude, just honest. “And the first guy says, ‘yeah me neither, some people just have the worst luck’ and I kept on walking. I went back to my office.”

Karissa lets out an angry scoff, but you smile, “They weren’t being dicks or anything, just honest. Like how you would describe the awful situation of a person you know from work, someone you don’t know personally that well but that went through something bad.”

“But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was I just unlucky? Getting your new car in a fender bender is unlucky, but is having your wife die in labour unlucky? It felt like there should be another word for that.”

Jayne reaches out and takes your hand again. She, somehow, pulled out a Kleenex from her pocket without you noticing and she hands it to you. “You don’t need to tell us anything you don’t want to, Zach.”

“Oh, I want to!” you say, and you realize it’s true. “I’ve wanted to tell you, sort of, but it’s, I dunno, hard to work into a conversation.” You give her a weak smile.

“But that day, at work I just, well, fell apart. I kept thinking about being unlucky, about people who are lucky, who win the lottery, versus people like me who expect to have a newborn baby and then six hours later they have a dead wife and no family at all. I just could not get the thought out of my head, the sheer random chaos of everything that happens to us all, and I missed a meeting and then when a coworker knocked on my door they said I was almost catatonic. I, well, I spiraled pretty hard. I had been pretending to be OK for almost two years, but I was definitely not OK. So I got to spend a week in a nice hospital and get some pretty intensive help, and then I started being honest with my psychologist - and myself - about how I was doing.

“I went back to work for a couple of months, but it was not the same. I didn’t care about working overtime and making the company more money, and London was different for me. I just needed a new start, so a year after my hospitalization I found a job here and moved up the highway to Toronto.”

“I saw some of that,” Karissa says, quietly, her gaze on her lap, “I am so sorry Zach, but when I looked you up in the system I saw you had been hospitalized and that you had a bunch of entries in the mental health tabs. I didn’t know about… your wife. Or your baby. I never saw anything about that!”

“It’s OK, Karissa,” you say, and it’s true. It is okay, you don’t need to hide that anymore.

“Then when that fucking witch Alice said that shit I lost it, I’m so sorry and thank god Jayne grabbed me!” Karissa looks miserable but she gives her girlfriend a shaky smile of thanks.

“Oh, had I known then what I know now I would have been holding that cunt down so you could really put the boots to her,” Jayne says it so lightly and matter-of-factly that you both are startled, then everyone starts to laugh.

You feel light as a feather, and your hands aren’t trembling any longer. Your anxiety attack is over before it began, Doctor Kaur back in London would be so proud.

“We should get out of here, I feel like a goof holding up the break room like this,” you say like a joke but you are starting to feel very awkward about the scene you created. Or Alice created. Hmm, you need to talk to the ladies about that, but not with your cell phones on. Something about Alice is bugging you, even more than the obvious.

Jayne has not cried, unlike you and Karissa, but you can hear the emotion in her voice as she says, “We can continue this later, perhaps. I’m sure Juniper will want to talk to us all about this bullshit. But you don’t need to say anything unless you want to, Zach. You are very much the victim of this office bullshit.”

“Yeah, I’m sure everyone in the building has heard about this by now,” Karissa frowns, “And, uh, I’m not sure what they’ll be saying about what I did, or tried to do, but whatever. You can’t get in trouble for not slapping the fake lashes off some jerk, right?”

You chuckle, “I wouldn’t think so. Now, let’s go see what’s happening, and then we definitely need to talk in private later.”

Neither woman misses your obvious meaning. You need to find out how Alice heard whatever she heard that made her think you had abandoned a wife and child, but even more, you need to ask TAM some questions, and fast.