Christina Pristopher

The nursery still smelled like fresh paint.

Paul stood in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame, the other pressed flat against his chest as though he could manually slow the thing hammering behind his ribs. The room was yellow — they hadn’t known the sex yet, so they’d chosen yellow. Safe. Neutral. Hopeful.

That felt like a cruel joke now.

The crib was assembled. He’d done it himself three Sundays ago, cursing at the instructions, laughing when Sarah filmed him struggling with a wrench that was clearly the wrong size. She’d made tea. He’d eventually figured it out. They’d stood back and looked at it together like they’d built something magnificent.

He supposed they had, in a way.

He supposed that was the problem.

The pressure had started in his throat the moment the doctor’s voice changed. That subtle shift — warm to careful — that no person ever wants to hear. Sarah had gripped his hand so tightly he’d lost feeling in two fingers, and he hadn’t minded at all. He’d wanted her to hold tighter.

On the drive home, neither of them spoke. The radio played something cheerful and he’d turned it off. The silence was awful but it was theirs, and it felt necessary, like a room that needed to air out before anyone could breathe in it again.

That had been four days ago.

Sarah was asleep now, finally. Her mother had come and taken a gentle, capable charge of things — tea, blankets, soft words — and Paul had found himself nodding along to conversations he couldn’t quite follow, accepting plates of food he didn’t eat, saying thank you and we’re okay with a face he barely recognised as his own.

But now the house was quiet, and he was here. In the doorway. Unable to go in. Unable to walk away.

He thought about the name.

They’d had two — one for a girl, one for a boy. Hadn’t told anyone yet, wanting to keep something private in a pregnancy that had quickly become communal property, everyone’s joy, everyone’s excitement. He had liked that secret. It felt like the first thing that was just theirs, just the three of them.

Three.

He almost laughed at that. Almost.

I never met the person I lost, he thought, and still I feel like I’ve been hollowed out.

That was the part no one warned you about. The grief books — and he’d read two in the first trimester, because that’s who he was, a man who read books to prepare — none of them had put it quite like that. They talked about loss and process and stages, but they didn’t talk about this. The specific, bewildering devastation of mourning someone whose face you never saw. Someone whose voice you never heard. Someone who existed in the space between possibility and reality, and somehow became, without permission, the most important person in your life.

He had talked to the bump. He’d felt ridiculous doing it at first, standing in the kitchen while Sarah pretended not to listen and smile. But then it became natural. He’d give little updates to the little one. The team lost again today. You’ll learn not to expect much. Or: Your grandmother called. Brace yourself, she has opinions about everything.

Small, stupid, ordinary things.

He hadn’t realized he was building something.

He hadn’t realized how much of his future he’d already handed over.

Paul finally stepped into the room.

The carpet was soft under his feet. He crossed to the crib and stood over it, looking down at the mattress, the folded blanket — pale yellow, stars on it — that Sarah’s friend had dropped off as a gift two weeks ago.

He picked up the blanket.

It was impossibly light.

The pressure in his chest cracked open then, without drama, without warning. No movie-style breakdown. Just a quiet, catastrophic giving way, like ice in early spring. He sat down on the floor, back against the crib, blanket in his hands, and wept in the particular way that men who rarely cry do — confused by it, almost, and entirely unable to stop.

He wept for the name he’d never say out loud in the way he’d imagined. For the wrench and the instructions and Sarah’s laughter. For the updates he’d been saving up to deliver. For every version of Tuesday and Christmas and first days of school that had been quietly, irreversibly cancelled.

For the person he never met, but loved completely, then lost.

After a while — he didn’t know how long — he heard soft footsteps in the hallway. Sarah appeared in the doorway, her face pale and tired and open in a way that made her look both younger and older than he’d ever seen her.

She didn’t say anything.

She crossed the room, slid down the side of the crib, and sat beside him on the floor. He put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. He still had the blanket in his hands.

Outside, the world was doing what it always, terribly did — continuing. A car passed. Someone’s dog barked twice. The ordinary machinery of life, indifferent and relentless.

But there, in the yellow room, they were still.

They were still, and they were together, and they were allowed to not be okay.

************** The End ****************