What do you do when you see somebody else with something you had desperately wanted for yourself?

Awake in the Early Hours

Kelli’s co-workers were all thrilled when she announced that she would be having another baby. There were congratulations and hugs. One or two of the younger ones practically squealed with delight. Martha was too dignified and reserved to squeal, but you’d still have thought that Kelli was her own daughter who’d promised her a new grandchild. She said that she would get to work crocheting a special blanket just for the new baby.

The reaction that surprised Kelli the most was that of Karen, her supervisor. She had been worried about breaking the news to Karen. In the months that she’d worked for her she’d found that Karen, though a reasonably nice boss, really did not like having to juggle the work schedule. An upcoming maternity leave was bound to require a good deal of such juggling.

Karen’s reaction? A warm congratulation and a hug. That startled Kelli—she’d gotten the impression that Karen didn’t do hugs. Karen had told her not to worry about the maternity leave. They’d get it all worked out. That made Kelli feel relieved.


Her bedroom was never completely dark. The glow of the face on the nightstand clock, and the town’s ambient light finding its way around the window blinds, always gave Karen just enough light to find her way around. It also gave her enough to see the man standing over her bed.

She could not see well enough to tell who he was. But he was definitely a man, and it was clear why he had come. He leaned over her and began to kiss and touch her. She kissed and touched him back. He crawled beneath the covers with her, and she could feel her heart racing, and her blood rushing, and…

And she woke up. Of course there was no man in her bed—only her, all excited. She lay there for a bit and achieved a release. It was followed immediately by a desolate sense of aloneness. And a vague sense of embarrassment and shame.

She’d had the dream before. At one time it had been a fairly frequent dream for her. She hadn’t had it in a good while. Why was she suddenly having it again now? After a brief trip to the bathroom she sighed and tried to get back to sleep.



Naturally Kelli’s co-workers started taking a more active interest in her health. They had questions for her when she came in looking under the weather a week or so after her big announcement. She assured them that she was okay. Her little girl, Taylor, had just been up late with an upset tummy.

Morning sickness? No, it wasn’t much of a problem for her. Just an occasional touch of it, and only in the early stages of pregnancy. Her sisters—she’d told them that the oldest was expecting her third just a month before her own due date, right?—had been the same way. There was a joke going around that all any of their husbands had to do was leer at them and they’d get pregnant.


When they had first married, Todd had sometimes joked to Karen about his plans to keep her pregnant more or less continually, until they had to buy a big house and add onto it to make room for everybody. In reality, of course, they had used birth control for the first couple of years. They wanted time to settle in before starting a family.

Then they had started trying. They had continued making love enough to impregnate a sultan’s harem worth of wives—and nothing happened. After two years with no hint of success, they had consulted a fertility specialist. Karen seemed to be okay. Todd’s count was just a little low. Not too bad, though. He’d just have to pace himself. Ironic that they actually had to slow down their efforts!

There followed more years of testing, and trying different things. No results. Lately Karen had been thinking about those years when she lay awake in the middle of the night. She’d been waking up and having trouble getting to sleep a lot. Her mind would get going on things she didn’t really want to think about. She couldn’t seem to turn it off.

Kelli had started showing. Her belly seemed to swell on a daily basis. Of course that revived the excitement around the office. Martha could be seen getting in a few minutes’ worth of crocheting every day at lunch. She hoped that she’d have that blanket ready by the time it was needed.

Meanwhile Kelli had that healthy glow, and seemed happy. Everybody was glad to see her doing so well. She carried herself easily, and was still able to handle her work with no problem.


It had finally happened. A positive test! Karen and Todd had been so very happy. They had made a point of sharing the good news with everybody. For a couple of weeks she had walked on cloud nine, and everybody had been happy for them. And then…

And then she wasn’t pregnant anymore.

It had taken her time to overcome her heartbreak enough to try again. They had tried to be optimistic. They just couldn’t pull it off for long. Friends, well-meaning but having no idea what they were really saying, had cheerfully assured them that they could “always adopt.”

Todd had begun treating her differently. He’d always had his moods now and then. She had learned to work around them and try to pretend that they didn’t really mean anything. The moods had gotten worse. She had started praying less for a baby and more for Todd.

Then he had left her. She had pleaded with him to at least try to work things out. Her prayers to that end had not been answered either. Todd’s behavior had turned downright scary. She hadn’t felt safe at home until the divorce was finalized and Todd had left town, never to return.

After they had finished disentangling their lives, she told herself that he had probably done her a favor by leaving. With hindsight she could see that Todd had not been the man she had thought she was marrying. At times he’d even been borderline abusive. Maybe not having a baby had been a blessing. It still didn’t feel like one.



Only when she got truly heavy did Kelli start getting awkward. She had begun to show signs that she was ready for the gestation to end. The others had to cover for her—she could no longer be expected to shelve, or do other heavy lifting. They didn’t mind. As long as she was healthy.

Kelli complained one day about strangers walking up to her in public and wanting to touch her belly. Co-workers were another matter. They were welcome, and the baby obliged by moving a lot. Not surprising, given that it was going to be a boy. He’d no doubt be a handful after he was born and got old enough to run! Taylor was excited about soon having a baby brother.

Karen had surprised Kelli once again one day by shyly asking if she could touch. Kelli had welcomed her. The baby had once again obliged by performing on demand. Karen had smiled.


As usual, she woke up during the wee hours of the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. Karen lay awake for quite some time. What was it like to feel something wonderful moving around inside you? Her miscarriage had come before she could experience the “quickening.” Maybe it had been just as well.

It occurred to her that she really knew no more about that missing experience than any guy did. Did that make her less of a woman? Had not becoming a father made Todd feel like less of a man?

Little John Thomas’ debut at work was a predictable hit. Kelli had him wearing a crocheted cap that Martha had made along with the blanket. His little solemn face had been as adorable as could be. Although he was quiet he squirmed a lot, as healthy and active as a baby could be.

Everybody had to take a turn holding him. Everybody except Karen. She just stood on the edge of the group of admirers, looking at John Thomas and smiling quietly.


That dream again! When all was finished, and she had that familiar desolate feeling, Karen breathed a weary sigh. It had been a number of years now since she had experienced the reality. Long enough that she had for some time convinced herself that she was finally over it, finally content with her unsought lot in life. For some reason she wasn’t any longer.

Her family, and her friends at church, and her pastor had all assured her that as the innocent party in the breakup of her marriage it would be no sin for her to find a good man and remarry. But to find a good man she’d have to look. After what she had experienced she had found looking more than she could do.

The objections were endless. There weren’t many eligible men around. A good man was hard to find, and all that—besides, she had thought that Todd had been that kind of man; obviously she wasn’t a great judge of character. And her biological clock had just about run out by now, so it was too late to start a family. Really too late to marry some fellow with a family of motherless children, like happened in one of the perennial romance novel stock plots. Anyway, she’d gotten used to her life like it was now. Dating could only disrupt that, and could lead her to disaster again.

And yet…. In this town, in this church, you were pretty much nobody if you had no spouse, or children, or at least local relatives (Her family all lived a couple of hours away). She had never been able to escape, either, the sense that divorce, even when it was known not to be her fault, carried a taint of disgrace that widowhood did not. People didn’t try to make her feel bad about all this. But she did.

And then there was that loneliness. She didn’t spend her days feeling lonely. It wasn’t like she was alone all that much, what with work, and church, and community activities. But at night, when she woke up in the middle of the night like this, she felt very lonely. Never more so than after those dreams.

Maybe she just needed to find some decent guy who was having the same problem and marry him. “Better to marry than to burn,” the New Testament had said. She’d keep her heart carefully locked up—she’d never be able to give that away again—and let him have her body as much as he wanted. Maybe if he used her body enough it would somehow make her heart numb enough to stop hurting.



Shortly after getting back on the job, Kelli had her biggest surprise of all from Karen. Karen had called her into her office and chatted with her about how things had been going since John Thomas’ birth. Yes, the children were great. Glenn was doing well also. And so was she.

A few clever questions on Karen’s part led Kelli to reveal that money had gotten tight. Glenn had worked lots of overtime before John Thomas’ arrival, but they still felt the loss of those six weeks’ worth of unpaid maternity leave.

Karen had commiserated. Sadly, she just wasn’t authorized to give paid maternity leave, and the state didn’t require it. But how about this—suppose Karen, just as a personal favor, gave her the equivalent of her missing pay.

No, it wouldn’t be loan. She could think of it as a kind of birthday gift for John Thomas, from Karen to the whole family. She didn’t have Martha’s crocheting skills, so she had to do something! The only condition was that Kelli never tell anybody about it. Except Glenn, of course—as her husband, he’d need to know where Kelli’s windfall had come from.

Kelli had started to cry. Karen had given her a hug, and told her how she had been praying for her family and wanting only the best for them, and how she thought God had wanted her to do this for her. She’d listened to Kelli’s repeated thank-yous.

Then she’d gently instructed her to get back to work. People wondered why Kelli’s eyes were moist. It was too bad she couldn’t tell them.


No amount of frugality on Karen’s part—she’d even made the difficult decision to stop giving to the church—had been able to make up for Todd’s disastrous money management. They’d spent nearly all their marriage in debt. Some of it had had her name on it as well as his. She’d been forced to take on her share when they divorced.

When her finances were again her own, she had resumed her church offerings. Otherwise she had lived just as frugally as she could, and put everything she reasonably could in the bank. She’d need that in her old age. There would be no family to take care of her.

More recently she’d relaxed the frugality somewhat. Making prudent provisions for your future was no excuse for turning into a miser! The money she had given Kelli and Glenn had been a pretty good sum for her, but she could afford it without damaging herself. She had more than she genuinely needed to live on. It would be evil to hoard it all when she was aware of needs that some of it could meet.

It was a blessing to have the means to give to somebody else. And to be able to be happy for somebody else. Blessings…lots of blessings in life. Even if you couldn’t have all of them.

These middle-of-the-night awakenings weren’t lasting as long as they had been. Thoughts getting confused. That was a good sign. A sign of dozing off. Sleep…it was a blessing too.

And then she was asleep.

This is a heartbreakingly well written story.