Their new life, their penance, was built on a routine of gray, mutual silence. They had been in the small, damp, coastal bungalow for nearly two years. The wind and the sea were their only clock.
Karlman, 40, was now a man of obsessive, useless tasks. He'd "fix" the loose shingle, "reseal" the window caulk, "analyze" the tide charts. He was a high-performance engine, given the task of polishing a single rock. His guilt hadn't faded; it had simply become his full-time, unpaid job. He was the warden of their shared prison.
Eunice, 44, was the prisoner. Her "work" was walking the beach, head-down, for hours, in the fog and the salt-spray. She was a strategist with no war to plan, a leader with no one to lead. She was just a woman, hollowed out by grief, chained to the man who was both the love of her life and the murderer of her child.
The new sickness began, as all things in their new life did, with the gray.
It started as a dull, pulling ache deep in her abdomen. It felt, at first, like a phantom. A memory. It was a ghost-echo of the 15 years of IVF; the bloating, the cramping, the sharp sting of the needles.
Eunice, as always, accepted it.
This was just a new clause in their penance. The curse, it seemed, wasn't finished with her body. It had taken her child; now it was coming back for the empty vessel.
She told no one. She told him nothing. Their contract was silence.
She managed it. She was, at her core, an 'A-type'. She managed the pain the way she managed her grief: she compartmentalized it. She bought a hot water bottle, which she'd press to her stomach in the pre-dawn dark. She took ibuprofen, hiding the bottle in the back of her drawer. She learned to time her walks on the beach to the rhythm of the medication, to be back before the next wave of pain hit.
But this pain was different. This wasn't the "hopeful" pain of IVF. This was a rotting pain. It felt... infected. It was a cold, heavy, rankling misery that was growing.
Karlman, the analyst, noticed.
He was a man who lived on data, and the data of his wife was changing.
He noticed her wince as she stood up from the porch chair.
He noticed her hand, sliding under her coat, pressing against her side.
He noticed her food, left uneaten.
He found the ibuprofen bottle, tucked beneath her sweaters.
And he was terrified.
His terror was a selfish, complicated thing. He was the warden. The prisoners were not allowed to get sick. The prisoners were not allowed to change the terms. Their penance was to live, side-by-side, in this gray, childless hell. Her dying was not part of the sentence.
He was the murderer. He had no right to play the nurse. He had no right to ask. He had no right to care. To show concern would be a violation, a grotesque mockery of what he'd done.
But he was also a man watching the only person left in his universe, his judge, begin to fade.
The breaking point came on a Tuesday. A stormy, black-skied Tuesday.
Eunice had gone for her walk, a defiant act against the pain, which had been a white-hot, coiling-snake in her gut for 36 hours. She was pale, her skin slick with a cold, feverish sweat.
Karlman was watching from the window, "analyzing" the loose gutter. He watched her walk down the rickety wooden steps to the beach. He watched her smaller-than-human-figure battle the wind.
He saw her stop.
He saw her hand fly to her abdomen.
And he saw her, with a slow, deliberate, managed lack of grace, collapse. She didn't fall. She just... folded. She knelt, then slumped, onto the wet, black sand, her body curling into a tight, fetal ball.
Karlman was out of the door before his brain could register the command.
He ran. He ran, his heart—a dead, leaden thing for two years—now a screaming-siren in his chest.
The rules of their prison were broken. The "murderer" was running toward his "judge."
He reached her. She was conscious, her teeth gritted.
"Eunice! My God, Eunice!"
She opened her eyes. They were glazed with fever, but the ice was still there.
"Don't," she hissed, her voice a dry rasp. "Don't... touch... me."
"You're... you're sick," he panted, his hands hovering over her, useless. "You're burning up. I... I'm taking you to a doctor."
"No," she said. It was a command. "This... this is mine. This is the... the payment. Leave it." She was, in her 'A-type' way, accepting the sepsis. She was accepting her fate.
Karlman looked at his wife, the woman who had once commanded boardrooms, now a dying animal on a wet beach, welcoming the end.
And the 'A-type' he had buried for two years roared back to life.
"No," he said. His voice was not the whisper of a penitent. It was the command of a CEO.
He ignored her hiss. He ignored his "place." He slid his arms under her—one under her knees, one under her back—and he lifted her.
She weighed nothing.
"I said... no!" she cried, but the fight was gone, lost to the fever.
"I heard you," Karlman said, his voice a low, rough growl as he carried her up the steps. "And I don't care."
He had violated their contract. He had interfered. He was no longer the passive warden. He was an active variable. He was, once again, Karlman Dowman, and he was not going to let her die.