Revolutionary Road: Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

At two o’clock that afternoon, Milly is resting, thinking that six kids are too many for one person to handle, when she hears a siren and sees an ambulance pulling onto Revolutionary Road. She has a feeling of foreboding, but thinks she will only seem silly if she calls April. Then she gets a call from Helen Givings, who tells her she saw an ambulance pulling out of the Wheelers’ driveway. Milly calls Shep.

At work, Shep is thinking about April and their incredible night together. He had called her afterwards and told her he was in love with her, and she had threatened to hang up on him. Shep gets called to the phone and hopes, against all logic, that it will be April. Instead it is Milly, with the news that April has been taken away in an ambulance. Shep feels suddenly filled with competence, like he did during the war. He calls the hospital, finds out that April is being treated for a miscarriage, and then calls Frank. Frank is pulled from his meeting and sounds shocked. Shep runs to the train station to wait for Frank, who is coming back from the city, so he can drive him to the hospital. Waiting for Frank, Shep calls Milly and the hospital back again.

Frank arrives and Shep drives him to the hospital. Frank looks terrible and it scares Shep. When they arrive, the nurse won’t let Frank in to see April. A doctor speaks to Frank. Shep sits down and thinks that it’s impossible that April is dying: hospitals are places where babies are born and miscarriages are dealt with. Frank tells Shep that he hardly understood what the doctor said to him, but that the fetus was out of her before she arrived at the hospital and that she has lost a lot of blood and is unconscious. Shep says he will go get them some coffees. Frank says he doesn’t need one, but Shep goes off because he has to go to the bathroom. It takes him a long time to go to the restroom and then to find coffee, and when he returns, he can tell that April has died.

Later, Shep can hardly remember what happens over the course of the next few hours. He drives around with Frank in his car and buys him a pint of whiskey. He calls Milly and tells her what happened, then tells her to calm down and not to let on to the children that anything has happened. During the ride, Frank tells Shep that April killed herself. He says she wanted to give herself an abortion the month before when it would have been safe, but he talked her out of it. Franks adds that she was so nice to him that morning. Shep feels he can never know for certain if this is true, or if he himself played any part in April’s death.

Milly thinks she did a good job keeping calm in front of the children, but when Frank and Shep get to the Campbells’ house, Milly feels she is of no help. Shep tells her that Frank said that April killed herself attempting to abort her pregnancy. Milly tells Shep that they can take turns sitting with Frank in the kitchen, but she sits in the living room not daring to bother them. When she finally looks into the kitchen, Shep is asleep at the kitchen table and Frank is gone.

Frank looks out of place as he runs through the cheerful, orderly streets of the Revolutionary Hill Estates in desperate grief. As he approaches his house, he pretends for a moment that it was all a nightmare, but then he sees its darkened windows and knows that it really happened. Inside the house, Frank observes that April was very tidy about cleaning up the blood. As he scrubs the remaining blood on the floor, he can hear her voice offering him practical advice for how to take care of it. Frank goes into April’s closet and embraces her clothes, then finds the note she left him. At that moment, Shep arrives, looking for Frank. Frank hides in the closet, only coming out after Shep has left. After that interruption, however, Frank can no longer hear April’s voice.