Tessa suffers a miscarriage

Tessa’s miscarriage turns a long-hoped-for pregnancy into a sudden loss, bringing her and Hardin’s fertility fears into the physical urgency of a bathroom emergency and a hospital visit. The event is narrated by Hardin, whose instinct to reassure Tessa cannot protect either of them from the diagnosis; afterward, his attempt to remove the nursery’s baby things becomes an act of grief that Tessa meets not with words but with her presence.

Medical fears and the long-awaited pregnancy

The loss follows a history of concern about Tessa’s ability to conceive and carry a pregnancy. While seeking birth control, she told Kimberly that a doctor had found her cervix shorter than average and mentioned infertility. Later, Dr. West examined images from her appointment and described her cervix as both very narrow and very short. Tessa had researched what those findings might mean and anticipated the conclusion before he finished explaining it. The book establishes these worries as part of the couple’s circumstances, but does not state that they caused the miscarriage.

Two years later, Hardin describes the couple as having tried to become pregnant for more than a year. They knew the odds were against them, yet continued to hope through fertility appointments and ovulation schedules. Their efforts ranged from planned timing to remedies Tessa had heard about from others: she tried wives’ tales, while Hardin drank a thick, bittersweet mixture she believed had helped a friend’s husband. These details make the pregnancy the result of sustained hope under known uncertainty, not a development the couple takes for granted.

Their anticipation unfolds alongside the lives of people close to them. Landon and his wife were expecting a girl, and Tessa and Hardin were to be godparents to Addelyn Rose. Hardin wiped Tessa’s tears as she helped plan the baby shower, then concealed his own sadness while they helped paint Addelyn Rose’s nursery. The contrast places their private longing beside a friend’s approaching parenthood, without making their support for Landon’s family any less genuine.

The emergency and confirmation of the loss

On the morning of a planned double date with Landon and his wife, Hardin was looking through the bridal magazines Tessa kept around their apartment when he heard a nearly inhuman sound from the bathroom. He rushed to the bedroom’s adjoining bathroom and found Tessa sitting on the floor beside the toilet. She was holding her hands over her stomach; her panties were on the floor and covered in blood. The domestic setting and interrupted plan give way at once to fear, before either of them knows what has happened.

Hardin dropped to the floor beside her and held her face between his hands. He told her everything would be fine, though the reassurance was a lie he offered in the first moments of panic. He called their doctor. The tone of the doctor’s voice, together with the look in Tessa’s eyes, made Hardin fear the answer before it was formally confirmed. He carried his fiancée to the car and drove her to the hospital, where each of her sobs deepened his distress.

Thirty minutes later, hospital staff gently told them that Tessa had lost the baby. The confirmation changes the meaning of the blood and the doctor’s earlier manner from signs of danger into an irreversible loss. The account offers no explanation of the medical cause; its focus is on the gap between the couple’s hope and the news they receive, and on Hardin’s helplessness as he watches Tessa absorb it.

Grief at home

After a nurse left them alone, Tessa cried against Hardin’s chest and apologized. He lifted her chin so she would look at him, told her she had nothing to be sorry for, and repeated that reassurance. His insistence answers the blame she directs toward herself, even as he tries not to focus on losing what he regards as the most important thing in their lives. The scene gives both partners distinct expressions of grief: Tessa voices remorse, while Hardin’s effort to comfort her coexists with his own pain.

Later that night, once they were home, Hardin reminded Tessa that he loved her and that he believed she would be an amazing mother. She cried in his arms until she fell asleep. His words look toward a possible future, but they do not undo the loss of this pregnancy; the immediate comfort is in his staying with her through the night.

After he knew Tessa would not wake, Hardin went down the hall and opened the nursery closet. The pregnancy had been too early for them to know the baby’s sex, but he had collected small items over the preceding three months and stored them in bags and boxes. He wanted to see them once more before disposing of them, and planned to dismantle the crib as well. Among the items were tiny yellow shoes that Karen had mailed them. Hardin wanted to clear everything before Tessa could see it, framing the task as a way to shelter her while facing the objects alone.

The next morning, Tessa woke him by wrapping her arms around him. Hardin was on the floor of the now-empty nursery. She said nothing about the removed furniture or the empty closet; instead, she sat beside him, rested her head on his shoulder, and traced the ink on his arms. The gesture does not erase their different responses or resolve their grief. It marks a quiet change from Hardin trying to manage the loss on Tessa’s behalf to the two of them occupying its aftermath together.

Significance within their relationship

The miscarriage binds the couple’s earlier fertility concerns to a concrete loss, but the narrative resists treating medical risk as a complete explanation or grief as a problem that can be solved by reassurance. Hardin’s promise that things will be fine is exposed as an instinctive response, not knowledge; the hospital’s confirmation leaves him with care rather than control. Likewise, his nursery cleanup is loving in intention but cannot keep Tessa outside the experience. Her silent arrival beside him makes shared presence the scene’s clearest form of support.

The event also places parenthood within their relationship as both a deeply desired possibility and a source of uncertainty. Their year of appointments, schedules, and improvised remedies has not guaranteed an outcome, and the pregnancy’s loss does not settle what will happen later. What the scene does establish is the scale of their investment: they had hoped, prepared, and gathered things for a child, and now must face their absence together. The empty nursery closes the immediate episode not with recovery, but with Tessa sitting beside Hardin in the space he has cleared.