Spelling It Like It Is

by Tori Spelling

  DEAN CAME ALMOST every day and stayed with me for hours. He slept over every Tuesday night—that was our “date night,” and boy, was I a hot date. After all, I spent all my time horizontal.

  Stella, Liam, and Hattie only came to visit once or twice a week. They were still in school in the deep Valley, with karate and ballet after school. I didn’t want to disrupt their lives. I never got a sense that they missed me too much. All I had was time to miss them all day long, but they were so young. Moments happen, then are forgotten. They were always happy to see me—or at least the cupcakes I’d been given—but as soon as they left, they were on to the next fun thing.

  For the most part I didn’t want any visitors beyond my immediate family. Usually I want to entertain my friends, but now I was lying there, too scared to move. A monitor showed that whenever I had visitors, like Mehran and my mother, my contractions increased, putting the baby at further risk. When the doctors saw me having contractions, they would tell my guests that I had to rest. I didn’t mind when they left—the truth was I barely had the energy to talk.

  Eventually I settled into a routine. Every day for breakfast I’d order bacon, a bagel, and cream cheese. If I was feeling frisky, I’d get scrambled eggs to go on the bagel. Some weeks I switched to yogurt parfait. Once I shocked the hell out of Joyce in Food and Nutrition when I spontaneously opted for a croissant with butter and jelly. Breakfast came at eight, but as the nurses got to know me, they realized I liked to sleep in and they’d bring my breakfast last, at eight thirty.

  Dr. J checked on me every day. It was often the bright spot of my day. We’d talk about his love life, and he’d eat all of my crispy bacon and bring me fun treats like Sour Patch Kids.

  When I didn’t have visitors, I watched a lot of TV.

  Every night for dinner I’d order a fully loaded baked potato and corn with butter and salt on the side. Sometimes, to mix it up, I’d get the apple pie for my dessert instead of my standard berry pie. Dinner arrived at seven, and afterward I’d do a little web surfing, either picking out vintage teacups on Etsy for Stella’s fourth birthday party, blogging for my website, shopping on Gilt, or posting images on Instagram. I even changed the default shipping address for my online purchases to Cedars-Sinai, care of the Maternal-Fetal Care Unit. Nobody knew I was in the hospital, but if you look at my Instagram postings from that time, all the photos are super-close-up images of my hospital dinners, the nail art I did on myself during the long hours in my hospital bed, cupcakes or flowers that people brought me, and lots of pictures of doughnuts. You can see my hospital tray and bits of the room in the background. There’s a shot of me wearing a rhinestone headpiece that I made, below which I wrote “2 much to wear to the grocery store?” The truth was that at that point a trip to the grocery store would have been super exciting. It’s hard for a body to know when and how much to sleep when it spends all day in bed, so I often fell asleep sitting straight up with my glasses on and my hands suspended above the laptop keyboard in the middle of buying yet another glamorous maxi dress on Gilt. They may take my mobility, but they’ll never take my caftans. (Braveheart, anyone?)

  There were breaks from the routine. One night a nurse came in, took one look at me, and said, “I’m going to wash your hair for you.” She was right. I needed it. I had limited shower privileges, so I had tried using dry shampoo. My hair came out terribly. So now the nurse used a bowl to wash my hair in the hospital bed. Then she brought in another nurse and one of them used a blow dryer while the other flat-ironed the part that was already dry. While they worked, we watched Kardashian reruns, gossiped about Kim Kardashian’s rumored ass implants, and giggled. Then one of the nurses pointed to an unopened box that had arrived from Gilt days earlier.

  She said, “What is that? It’s been there forever.”

  I said, “I did a little shopping, but I can’t get up to open it.”

  She said, “Well, let’s open it right now.”

  The nurses took out about ten maxi dresses and caftans. The two of them held them up and sashayed across my room. This was midnight on a Sunday night. It was a total slumber party. I wanted to suggest playing “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” but I didn’t want the fetus to get a complex.

  EVERY TUESDAY AT noon Patti, my Reiki therapist/practitioner, came to see me. I looked forward to our sessions, not just because they were a break in the monotony of the hospital, but because Patti changed the way I saw myself and my situation. Reiki is a kind of alternative healing practice. Patti would put on calming music and I would close my eyes. She would hover her hands above me. It was like a massage, but with no actual contact. An energy massage. Afterward, Patti would tell me things like, “The baby wants avocados.”

  Whenever Patti thought the baby wanted a certain food, I would call right down to the hospital chef, Darrell. For my birthday, my mother had generously upgraded me to the “special menu” at the hospital. This meant that instead of the regular hospital fare, I got a slightly better menu. Every day I was supposed to call down to put in my order.

  Darrell was the voice at the other end of the line. He and I would never meet, but we had a very special phone-kitchen relationship. If I ran late placing my order, Darrell would call and say, “It’s Darrell. It’s seven thirty and I haven’t heard from you. What can I make you?”

  I’d say, “I can’t decide on anything right now.”

  He’d say, “Let’s go off-menu. What do you like, Chinese food? Chicken? Steak? Do you want fried rice with steak in it?”

  “That sounds amazing!” I’d say.

  He’d ask what vegetables I wanted mixed in the stir-fry. Whenever the kitchen staff brought up my food they’d say, “Darrell says hi.” It made everything a little more personal.

  Maybe it was the sensory deprivation of the hospital bed, but Darrell sounded cool. I always wondered what he looked like. And I wondered if he knew who I was or just bonded with me because of our phone rapport.

  Another time Darrell had made something special for me. The kitchen staff seemed to be all female, but this time a guy brought it up. He was cute, Asian, maybe in his thirties. I was on the phone when he came in. He put the tray down and said, “Have a great day.” I thought I recognized the voice. Was it Darrell? I couldn’t interrupt the call to find out, and so I never got to meet my phone friend face-to-face.

  Anyway, one Tuesday Patti came in and started working. She told me that the placenta previa had happened as a wake-up call for me. I go, go, go and don’t know my own limits. The baby wanted me to focus on the pregnancy. He wanted my complete attention. This was why I was on bed rest. So I could focus on him. Also, he wanted a steak.

  Again, we hadn’t let Dr. J tell us the baby’s gender, but Dean and I and everyone else was again convinced that we were having a boy. Patti reminded me that she’d felt baby male energy radiating from me before Hattie was even conceived. She said that the baby in my womb was supposed to have been Hattie’s twin but he missed the portal. That was why he slipped in at the first opportunity, right behind Hattie.

  As Patti spoke I was visualizing the baby and Hattie, and his little soul’s determination to live and be close to his sister. Images of Hattie flashed through my mind, and I envisioned sharing them with the baby. I know it sounds weird, but I felt as though he liked seeing her. The three of us were connected.

  Patti and I worked through some of my biggest fears. That I would lose the baby. That the kids would lose their mother. That Hattie was so young, she would forget she’d ever had a mother. Patti told me that worry does nothing but manifest things.

  “You have to tell yourself that the baby is safe because it’s in you. All of this”—she swept her arm out, indicating the hospital, the room, and me in the bed—“through all of this, the baby has succeeded in getting your attention. Have faith. That’s all you can do at this point. It’s not about God or religion. When I say ‘have faith,’ I mean that you have to believe in yourself.”

  It was hard. I thought a
bout a visit I’d had with Stella and Hattie. It was a sweet, all-girls afternoon during which Stella sat on a tuft and, using a box as a makeshift table, painted a little birdhouse. But when it was time for them to head home with their nanny, Paola, Stella didn’t want to go. Crying hysterically, she said she wanted to stay and sleep with Mama. I felt completely helpless. It had taken Dean getting on the phone with her and promising that he’d bring her back the next day to calm her down. My hospitalization was definitely the hardest challenge Stella had faced so far in her short life. Taking Patti’s advice meant rising above my own feelings of helplessness to help Stella see that this was a journey for all of us, and that we would come through it together.

  After Patti left, the Shirelles song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” came into my head. “Tonight you’re mine completely / You give your love so sweetly.” Alone in my hospital room, I sang that song to my unborn child and felt a little bit of peace.

  ONE WEEKEND THE whole family stayed across the street at the Sofitel Hotel. When they came to see me on Saturday, Liam and Stella gave me big warm hugs. Liam immediately focused on ravaging the Skittles and Sour Patch Kids that Bill and Scout had brought me. But Stella climbed up on the bed, looked me over closely, and then asked, “Mama, are you ever coming home from the hospital?”

  It broke my heart. Wasn’t I asking myself the same question? But I buried my feelings, put on a bright smile, and said, “Of course, mama. The doctors just want me to stay at the hospital for a little while to keep me and the baby safe.” Stella seemed satisfied with that—I wished I were so easily comforted.

  We snuck Liam and Stella into my room so they could spend the night and wake up with me the next day. Only one cot fit in the room, so Dean stayed with Hattie and Patsy in the hotel right across the street. The kids slept on the cot next to me. As usual, I woke up several times in the middle of the night to the soft light of the medical monitors and beeps from rooms nearby. It didn’t feel as lonely with my babies lying close to me, the sound of their soft breath filling the room with life. A mother’s job is to create, love, and nurture. I felt helpless, but I was doing all I could for my growing baby. Nurturing it by staying in the hospital. Keeping it safe. In that moment my hospital room felt as close to home as it could get.

  The next morning Stella gave me a sunflower she had painted. It went straight up on the wall. Liam had made me a recipe-card holder in school. Clipped to it was a recipe. His teachers had written it out for him. It was his favorite thing to cook: mashed potatoes. In the card he wrote, “I love when you make me breakfast and going shopping with you.”

  It was a momentous day because for the first time Dr. J allowed me to be wheeled out to the plaza level to get some fresh air. The air and sun on my face felt good. I sat in my wheelchair smiling and watched Liam and Stella chase each other all around, screaming and laughing. Dean held Hattie, who smiled a big gummy smile and squealed every time they zoomed past her. This was my family, but at the same time as I felt like the center of it, I also felt disconnected. It was strange to be watching from the sidelines. I’m usually in there, playing chase, then panting for twenty minutes and cursing myself for not working out in four years.

  I thought about my dad. When I was growing up, he was always the life of the party, holding court, telling stories. But in the last few years of his life, after he had throat cancer, he was different. He was in remission, but he seemed much older. His zest for life was gone. As my brother Randy, our friends, and I laughed and told stories, he just sat quietly in the corner chair or his bed, kind of smiling, kind of zoned out. At the time I was hurt that he seemed distracted or disinterested, but now I got it. When you really can’t participate it’s hard to be present. Your body gets in the way of what your mind and heart want.

  After a sunny half hour out in the real world, we came back inside. As we approached the elevator, I saw sign with an arrow pointing left. It said “Gift Shop.” Shopping? I’d take any form of a retail-therapy fix.

  When we entered the gift shop I gasped in glee, shouting, “It’s huge!”

  Dean said, “It’s not that big.” Buzzkill.

  I had Dean wheel me all over that shop, and I was especially taken with a pair of coral Isotoner slippers. Funny how when almost everything is stripped away, the smallest things become more colorful and exciting.

  When they announced the gift shop was closing, I settled on a copy of Redbook magazine, which featured easy summer entertaining tips that I would most certainly not have a chance to execute, and a pack of hair bands so I could practice my fish-tail braids in my new life of leisure.

  We’d all been so happy for me to get outside, and yet I had an unexpected sense of relief when I came back to my room. The truth was that my brightly colored dorm room had become my world. I felt like the fetus inside me was safe there, and being out on the sunny plaza only reminded me that an outside world still existed, and I was missing out on it.

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, Dr. Silverman came by with the 3-D ultrasound machine. It had been two weeks since his last visit, and I was anxious to see if the baby was okay. I was always anxious to know if the baby was okay. Dr. Silverman ran the cold ultrasound wand over my belly and I heard the baby’s quick little heartbeat. He was still there, strong and steady. Looking at the screen, Dr. Silverman gave a big smile. He said the placenta had moved into a slightly better position. I didn’t understand everything he said, but this was very good news.

  “You’re no longer a ticking time bomb,” he said.

  “Well, what am I now?” I joked.

  “I’ve upgraded you to a firecracker,” he said. I loved that Dr. Silverman.

  I was twenty-four weeks along. The baby was considered viable. He told me that he had considered giving me steroid injections at this point in the pregnancy to develop the baby’s lungs in case there was an emergency and they had to deliver the baby. But I’d gone several weeks without a bleed. Now he was no longer as worried and wanted to hold off on the steroids. If things kept improving, at some point the danger would pass and I could go home. He wanted me to know about the possibility, but he didn’t want to get my hopes up too far.

  In that moment I grasped how serious my situation had been, and at the same time I felt optimism on the horizon. Before he’d come in to look at the ultrasound, I had told myself that no matter what he saw, I would remain positive. I would get myself and my baby through this. When Dr. Silverman left, I looked up and thanked God and my angels. I sat holding my belly and bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried, blissfully happy, but also scared to be too happy yet.

  I was still crying when I called Dean to report on the doctor’s visit. I knew he would be worried when he heard my shaky voice, so through my tears I blurted out, “I got good news!” As Patti had recommended, I had done all I could do. I had had faith. Faith in me, faith in my baby, faith in my family, and faith in the life I would continue to build with them. Now I was hearing words of encouragement. It felt like my positivity had paid off. Today was a milestone.

  Reality Check

  The next time Patti came for our weekly session, Dr. J and Amy were keeping me company when she arrived. As they left the room, Dr. J said to Patti, “Move that placenta!” He’s a medical doctor, so he was a bit cynical about Patti’s spiritual mumbo jumbo, but Patti was truly helping me take charge of my emotional state.

  I told her the good news from Dr. Silverman but quickly added that I was scared to get too excited. Patti always sees things from an angle I can’t anticipate. She said, “Don’t think about wanting an outcome or not getting the outcome you want. Just be hopeful in the moment. Stay present and have hope.” It was so simple, so clear and direct. By the time our session was over, I was brimming with hope.

  Then I checked my e-mail. Sitting in my inbox was a message from my agent Ruthanne. It said, “I tried to call you but couldn’t reach you. I hate to tell you by e-mail, but I want you to hear it from me: Oxygen called. They said the network is moving in a diffe
rent direction and the show is canceled. I’m so sorry. Let’s talk as soon as you’re ready.” I couldn’t believe it. Tori & Dean was over? The show had been our life—literally—for six years.

  I flashed back to another time when bad news had come to me electronically. I was in Toronto with Dean when I got the news that my sitcom, So noTORIous, had been unceremoniously canceled. This was the same sinking feeling. A feeling of loss and powerlessness. All that work with so many people I loved uniting to create a show I was proud of. Then some executives made a decision and it was over, just like that.

  Adding insult to injury, after all these years working together, sharing my life and family with them on-screen, nobody from the network had even bothered to contact me personally.

  For six years Tori & Dean had followed our lives. It was a reality show. Having it rejected felt like our lives—or the story of us—was being rejected. Before I called Ruthanne, or Dean, or anyone else to process this news, I put my phone down and rested my head back against the pillow, crying silently, thinking about the journey Dean and I had taken in the course of making the show.

  AS MOST PEOPLE know, the lines of reality in reality TV get blurred. Our lives might be interesting enough for TV, but there is still no such thing as straight documentary, ever, in film or TV. They can’t just turn on a camera, run it nonstop for hours on end, and then air the tape from start to finish. Everything has to be edited to have a structure. Everything needs to be given a narrative shape.

  The very first season of the show had a really straightforward hook. Dean and I were going to open a bed-and-breakfast together, and I was pregnant with our first child. All of that was real, but it also meant we all knew in advance where the show was going. I was a fish out of water, a Beverly Hills girl trying to start a small business in the middle of nowhere.

  After we’d proven ourselves in the first season and shown that we could draw an audience, they still wanted us to give them a sense of what might happen at the beginning of each season. This exercise always frustrated me. It was our lives! How could I predict what was going to happen by episode ten? The most I could do was give them general guidelines, like where I was with new businesses, how I was juggling family and career, the ups and downs in my relationship with Dean, and what milestones the kids were hitting. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter what we plotted out on paper. Those plans were never what made the show work. It was the unexpected that happened along the way. Crazy things just seemed to happen to us.