Chapter 107 CHAPTER 107:THE FEAR OF TRYING AGAIN
~ELARA~
The first weeks after the miscarriage were about survival, not healing.
Her body aches in ways that feel cruel cramping reminders of something already gone, hormones shifting without warning, exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch. She bleeds and bleeds and bleeds, and each day feels like a quiet erasure.
Calvin asks gently if she’s in pain.
She tells him she’s fine.
They both know it’s a lie.
But it’s easier than explaining the deeper hurt the way her body feels unfamiliar now, like it failed a test it didn’t know it was taking.
The doctor tells her, “Physically, you’ll heal.”
The words land strangely.
Physically.
As if the body and the heart are not tangled together.
As if the body doesn’t remember.
Elara begins to notice how careful she is with herself.
How she hesitates before standing too quickly.
How she wraps her arms around her middle when she laughs too hard.
How she avoids mirrors without realizing she’s doing it.
Her stomach no longer curves with promise.
It’s soft again. Quiet. Empty.
And sometimes, that emptiness screams.
Calvin never pushes.
That might be the hardest part.
He doesn’t rush her back into intimacy. Doesn’t ask questions she isn’t ready to answer. Doesn’t suggest timelines or optimism wrapped in reassurance.
He just stays.
He brings her water when she forgets to drink it. He warms towels without being asked. He holds her hand in bed not demanding closeness, just offering it.
Some nights, she takes it.
Some nights, she doesn’t.
He never makes her feel guilty.
That kindness both soothes her and breaks her heart.
The first time Elara realizes she’s afraid of her own body, it catches her off guard.
She’s in the shower, warm water running over her skin, when her hands drift instinctively to her stomach.
Her breath catches.
Her chest tightens.
For a split second, her mind flashes with the memory of what once was there heartbeat, growth, life.
Her knees weaken.
She sinks to the floor of the shower, water pounding against her back as she sobs quietly, one hand pressed flat to her skin like she’s trying to feel something that isn’t there anymore.
Her body remembers.
Even when she wishes it wouldn’t.
Trying again is a word people use too easily.
As if pregnancy is something you attempt without consequence.
As if hope does not come with teeth.
As if fear doesn’t sharpen when you’ve already lost once.
Elara doesn’t tell anyone how terrified she is of the idea not even Calvin, not at first.
Because she doesn’t know how to say
I want a child, but I don’t know if I can survive losing another.
Her body heals faster than her trust in it does.
The bleeding stops.
The cramps fade.
The doctor nods approvingly at her progress.
“You’re doing well,” she’s told.
But Elara doesn’t feel well.
She feels cautious.
Like she’s living inside something fragile.
One evening, Calvin finds her standing in the bedroom, staring at herself in the mirror.
She’s fully dressed, arms wrapped around her middle, eyes distant.
He doesn’t speak right away.
Just steps up behind her, close but not touching.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he murmurs.
She swallows.
“I don’t recognize myself,” she admits quietly.
He watches her reflection how her shoulders curve inward, how guarded she looks.
“You don’t have to be who you were before,” he says gently. “You’re allowed to be someone new.”
Tears fill her eyes.
“I don’t know if I trust my body anymore,” she whispers.
That’s the truth.
Finally said aloud.
Calvin doesn’t flinch.
He reaches forward slowly, placing his hands over hers on her stomach not pressing, not claiming. Just there.
“Then we’ll go slow,” he says. “With everything.”
Touch becomes something they relearn.
Not because desire is gone but because fear has joined it.
Elara startles the first time Calvin kisses her stomach, soft and reverent, like he’s apologizing to it.
She pulls away before she can stop herself.
“I’m sorry,” she says immediately, panic flooding her voice.
Calvin shakes his head. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“I just—” She exhales shakily. “I don’t want my body to be a place of expectations.”
His answer is immediate. “Then it won’t be.”
Something loosens in her chest.
Healing becomes intentional.
Elara starts walking again not for fitness, but for grounding. Feeling her feet against the earth reminds her that she exists beyond loss.
She starts stretching in the mornings, listening to where her body tightens, where it releases.
She begins therapy, even though it scares her. Saying the words out loud makes the loss real in a way she’s been avoiding but it also makes it manageable.
Calvin goes with her once.
He listens more than he speaks.
That means everything.
Some days, Elara feels almost normal.
She laughs. She cooks. She plans small things again.
Other days, fear hits her out of nowhere at the sight of a pregnant stranger, at the sound of a baby crying in public, at the memory of how easily joy turned into grief.
On those days, Calvin learns not to offer solutions.
He offers presence.
A hand on her back.
A quiet, “I’m here.”
The question of trying again hangs between them like an unspoken storm.
They both feel it.
They both avoid it
Until one night, Elara breaks.
“I’m scared,” she says into the dark, voice barely above a whisper.
Calvin turns toward her instantly. “Of what?”
She hesitates, then says it all at once.
“That if I get pregnant again, I won’t be able to enjoy it. That I’ll spend every day waiting for something to go wrong. That I won’t bond with the baby because I’ll be too busy protecting myself.”
He listens without interrupting.
“That I’ll blame my body forever if it happens again,” she finishes, tears slipping down her temples.
Calvin reaches for her face, thumb brushing her cheek gently.
“Whatever we do,” he says softly, “we do it because you’re ready not because time tells us to.”
She nods, relief breaking through fear.
There is no moment where everything is suddenly okay.
Healing is quieter than that.
It looks like Elara touching her stomach one morning without flinching.
Like laughing without guilt.
Like letting Calvin hold her when fear rises instead of pulling away.
Like understanding that her body is not an enemy but a witness.
It carried love.
That matters.
One afternoon, weeks later, Elara stands in the nursery doorway.
The room is still mostly empty now.
But she doesn’t crumble.
She breathes.
She places a hand over her heart.
And for the first time, the thought of the future doesn’t feel like betrayal.
It feels uncertain.
And that’s okay.
Trying again doesn’t become a decision.
It becomes a conversation.
An ongoing one.
One filled with boundaries and honesty and pauses.
One where Elara learns that fear does not mean weakness it means she understands the cost of hope now.
And still, some small part of her believes in it.
Her body heals.
Not by forgetting.
But by continuing.
By waking up.
By trusting touch again.
By carrying love, even when it’s afraid.
And slowly carefully Elara begins to understand:
Her body did not fail.
It survived something devastating.
And survival, she realizes, is its own kind of strength.