by Kennedy Ryan
Dr. Wagner frowns, shaking her head.
“Until you decide how you want to move forward,” she says, “I think knowing the gender will only make it more difficult.”
“Let me get this straight.” Grip tilts his head and runs his tongue over his teeth in that way that means he’s nearing the end of his tether. “You give us a death sentence for our child—”
“Mr. James—”
“No, I get it,” he cuts in. “It’s not your fault. You’re just doing your job, but if you think us knowing whether it’s a girl or a boy is going to make this decision any harder, you’re wrong.”
“It . . . humanizes the decision in a way that only complicates it for the parents.”
“You think the semantics of this situation complicate our decision?” I ask hoarsely. “They don’t. What complicates our decision is that we love this baby as if he or she is already here, already ours. What complicates it is the roomful of nursery furniture we’ve bought, every piece chosen with . . .”
My voice breaks, tears dampening my words.
“With love,” I resume. “What complicates it is that I feel flutters in my stomach, and I’ve been waiting any day now for them to be kicks. This is our baby, and it’s been the center of our world for months, and now you say I may have to end its life or carry it to term and then watch it die in my arms. Please. Just tell us.”
I raise my eyes to her, and a tiny portion of my torture is reflected in her stare. She nods, resignation on her face when she says, “It’s a girl.”
Grip’s sharply drawn breath matches mine, and my eyes, my hands, my heart—every part of me seeks any part of him I can get to. With our fingers tangled together in my lap, we just nod, both of us too cut up to speak, the moment so raw we hemorrhage in the silence.
In a daze, I submit to the needle slowly drawing fluid from my belly. I don’t even hear the things Dr. Wagner and her staff say from then on. Agony unimaginable rises over my head, disbelief muffling all the words around me, muting my responses. My lungs constrict painfully as I go under over and over, drowning but unable to die.
And I want to die. I think I could die without complaint if it meant avoiding these “decisions,” accepting one of these impossible options, if it meant not breathing and living for the next four months growing this child only to watch it die before it’s ever even lived, a manifestation of our malformed hopes.
When we get to the car, Grip and I just sit there for a moment, steeping in hot water, boiling alive in our suffering.
“Fuck,” Grip finally mutters. I glance at him from the passenger seat, unable to even curse. I am a curse. I feel cursed—how can I not with the things the doctor said?
“Fuck,” Grip repeats, slamming his hand on the steering wheel again and again and again. I flinch at the percussion of his fist into the unyielding leather and plastic, flinch every time he strikes it.
“It can’t be . . . we can’t . . .” He stops abruptly, and one tear streaks down his handsome face, the face I dreamt would stare back at me in a little boy or a little girl.
“It’s a girl,” I whisper.
Agony ripples between us where our fingers intertwine, and Grip brings our hands to his lips.
“We can’t give up yet, Bris. There’s still the test. Maybe she’s mistaken. Anything’s possible,” he says, his mouth settling into that firm line I’ve seen every time he’s faced and conquered a challenge.
But this isn’t a tough industry, a ladder to climb. It’s not bias based on the color of his skin. If the tests confirm what Dr. Wagner suspects, this is insurmountable. There’s no climbing out of it or working our way around the impossible choices we’ll have to make.
I can’t help but think of how this day began, with the heat of our lovemaking, with our dreams and speculations about this baby whispered as dawn broke. We were sure it would be just as we wanted, that anything was possible.
Dwell in possibility.
I can’t think of what’s possible as I replay the conversation with Dr. Wagner like a horror movie I can’t un-watch, the word “terminal” clanging like a bell over and over in my head.
Possible? Not when all that is weighing on me, waiting for me, is death.
Bitterness pools in my heart, a fast-filling well of poison choking me. I don’t speak for the rest of the ride home. I think about how certain Dr. Wagner seemed, how she called the test Grip is pinning so much on a formality. I stew in my fear and anger and frustration until it runs over, leaving little room for hope.
35
Grip
The nursery is doused in shadows. The only light comes from Bristol’s phone, illuminating a small sphere in the dark, showing her high cheekbones, stark in the diminished light, and the full curve of her mouth pulled thin with tension. She’s sitting on the floor, her dark brows contorting into a frown as she scrolls down the screen with her index finger.
The last ten days of waiting for the test results have been harder than anything I’ve ever experienced, but not harder than what lies ahead.
Our baby will die.
Whether because we terminate the pregnancy or decide to let it run its course, her death is an inevitability for which I have no idea how to prepare. I can’t, and I have no idea how to help Bristol because I can’t help myself. I thought I could protect her from anything, from anyone. I called myself her first line of defense but I’m blindsided, never suspecting that the enemy—death—had already breached our gates.
We always talk about everything, Bristol and I, but a heavy silence hung over us on the way home, like a rain cloud poised to pour. We were silent as if our words would trigger the storm, and the deliberate, unnatural quiet followed us across our threshold. Maybe by unspoken mutual agreement, we decided it isn’t real until we talk about it, until we weigh our shitty options and are forced to make impossible choices.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask from the door, my voice scratchy from lack of use. I’ve barely spoken since we left the doctor’s office.
At my question, Bristol’s head jerks up, her attention wrested from the phone. With a click of her finger, she turns it off, losing the light and plunging the room into darkness. The overhead light would show too much, would be too bright. I step carefully in the general direction of the lamp on a table in the corner. I fumble under the shade until I find the little button that will show me Bristol’s face, but not much else. Her thoughts will remain a mystery until she’s ready to talk, and as much as I don’t want to, as much as I’ve avoided it for the last few hours, we have to talk.
The soft, lambent light shows me the broken heart in her eyes, killing me at a glance. They aren’t teary or red-rimmed or puffy. There are no telltale signs of distress, but that secret joy that lit her eyes to precious-metal silver for the last few months has been snuffed out. They’re dulled to pewter, an alloy of pain and grief, a mixture of mourning.
I take a tentative step, only to freeze when I spot the things flanking her on the floor. To her right sits a tub of her favorite Cookie Dough ice cream. The lid is off, and a large serving spoon spears the creamy, untouched surface. To her left is a half-full bottle of her favorite liquor, vodka. No glass, so I assume she’ll be taking it to the head, if she hasn’t already. My heart thuds behind my ribs because that must be a sign. Bristol hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since she found out she was pregnant. She would never endanger our baby, unless the point is moot, unless she has already decided something I thought we would decide together. My heart painfully draws its own conclusions, even though I can’t make myself ask her the question.
What do you want to do?
Each word of the unspoken inquiry is like a drop of acid burning through my tongue. I can’t ask. I haven’t even gotten up the nerve to ask myself. I poured my pain and anger and frustration out on the only place that ever seems to offer me any relief, besides Bristol—on paper. I wrote an embittered manifesto that no one will ever read, but I haven’t asked myself what I want. I’m afraid
I already know, and if Bristol wants something different, that’s what we’ll do.
And it will kill me.
It’s Bristol’s body. She would have to carry and nurture this unspeakable tragedy to its inevitable end, not me. I know I have a voice in this, but I can’t ask that of her. I’ve been afraid all afternoon to ask myself if I even want to. There are no right answers. Everything is wrong. We have door number one and door number two, and they both lead to hell, one just faster than the other.
I settle beside her on the floor, mirroring her posture—knees pulled to the chest, back to the wall. The half-empty bottle of vodka draws a line of libation between us. She blinks, still not meeting my eyes, tracing patterns on the darkened screen of her phone before placing it carefully on the floor.
“Your ice cream is melting.”
“Yeah.” Her voice scrapes into the quiet, giving me nothing. “I don’t need it anyway.”
She always says that before she eats half the pint.
“And the vodka?” I keep my voice even, free of condemnation.
“That I need.” She flicks a side glance to me, searching my face for judgment, I assume. “I need a drink, and I’ve been sitting here wondering if it matters anymore if I have one.”
“Did you have it? The drink, I mean?”
I’m asking more than this. She knows it, and her slim shoulders stiffen.
“Not yet.” She shakes her head, bites her lip. “Does it matter if I do?”
I’m still not ready.
“What were you looking at on your phone?” I dodge her question, avoid my answer.
Her eyes are windows with bars. Showing me just slices of what she’s feeling before she tucks it away behind her lowered lashes. One shoulder lifts and falls. I grab her phone from the floor beneath the arch of her knees and press the home button, bringing up the last thing she saw.
“Grip, don’t look—”
“Shit.” The strangled curse garrotes my throat. I blink over and over, but the images don’t disappear. Stubbornly, they barely blur as the first tears sting my eyes. It’s a page of horrors: bulging eyeballs straining from babies’ faces, rounded backs and the exposed gray matter coils of brains, heads half gone, tiny bodies twisted into a mangle of flesh and bone.
“This is how she’ll be?”
They aren’t my words. It’s not my question, but it takes over and barges past my lips. It uses my voice. It possesses me, this demon question I hope she won’t answer.
“Maybe.” Bristol swallows audibly, her mouth unsteady before she disciplines it into a straight line. “Probably.”
There is nothing I’ve ever experienced that prepares me for these images, for the possibility that this will be my daughter and then she will die. Looking at these pictures, I can’t help but ask if death would be a mercy. Am I merciful? Am I selfish? Shallow? Weak? These are just words, assigning no value to the emotions rioting inside of me. I am under siege. Terror, rage, and hurt are a fevered mob, torches lit and setting my heart on fire. It’s not fair. All my life I’ve been tuned in to injustices, to inequities, but at this moment, they all fade to nothing. They are dust compared to this. This . . . this is not fair, that a baby, not even fully formed, has a death sentence waiting for her, that this world is already tuning its instruments for a dirge, a requiem for her life before it begins.
This is injustice.
“What do you want?” Bristol finally asks.
And there it is. She’s braver than I am. She asked me the question I came to ask her but haven’t been able to. It’s the same question she asked me before I moved to New York, when I wanted her with me but didn’t want to pressure her. I find myself once again possessing power I don’t want to use.
“Bris, you have to decide that.”
“This is just as much your baby as it is mine.” Her voice is a thin line that wavers then draws taut. “Don’t abdicate this to me. Don’t do that.”
“I’m not abdicating.”
“We have to decide together.”
“We will. I just . . . you heard what Dr. Wagner said.”
She said Bristol’s body will keep preparing for what’s supposed to happen. It doesn’t know to stop. Her pelvic bones will still stretch. Her ankles will still swell. Her milk will come in. Her body will ready itself for a child whose death is a foregone conclusion. No matter what course of action we choose, she won’t live. If she does come into the world, these pictures on Bristol’s phone, heavy in my hand, are her short-lived destiny.
“It’s your body, Bris.” I grit my teeth, but the words escape and I prepare myself for whatever she decides. “I want you to . . .”
The words hang in my throat, choked and unsaid.
“What do you want to do, Grip?” She moves quickly, settling on my lap, facing me with her knees on either side of my legs. I stare down at the little mound of baby taking up the small space between us.
Dwell in possibility.
It’s a practical joke now.
“What do you want?” Bristol dips her head to catch my eyes in the weak light.
“Dr. Wagner—”
“Is not my husband.” Bristol’s words cut over mine. “Tell me what you want.”
“This decision—”
“Is ours, not just mine.” She leans forward until our foreheads press together, the contact reminding me of who we were before this thing took over our lives, reminding me of our honesty, our intimacy that transcended flesh.
“Please tell me, Grip,” she whispers, her cool breath fanning over my lips like a kiss, begging for entry.
“I want her.”
The words fly from my mouth like arrows, aiming for Bristol’s heart. If she wants to know what I’m feeling, I’ll tell her and hope that she feels it, too.
“I want to meet her and hold her.” Tears flood my throat and then spill hot down my cheeks. “I don’t give a damn if she’s here three minutes, three hours, three days. I want her to know that as long as she is in this world, her parents love her unconditionally, that we loved her so much, we had to have her . . . even if we knew it couldn’t last, even though we knew it would kill us to lose her, we had to have her.”
I immediately regret saying it. I understand the power Bristol has over me, that what she wants, I want to give her, and I hold that same power over her. If she goes through with this because of what I just said, and it’s too much . . .
“Yes.” For the first time, Bristol meets my eyes squarely. A new fire has burned away the haze. They’re lit again, lit with determination and the fierce love few are capable of. “I want that, too.”
“Are you sure, Bris?” My question is a raggedy-roped bridge between us. One wrong step and it could fall—we could fall.
“I’m sure.” She shifts until she’s no longer straddling me, and presses her shoulder into my chest. Her head tucks under my chin. “I can’t terminate, Grip. I wouldn’t judge another woman who did—I’ve always been pro-choice, you know that.”
She looks up, her lashes damp, her lips stung and swollen from her teeth. God, she’s breaking my heart. I thought Dr. Wagner’s diagnosis drove a stake through me, but seeing Bristol suffer through this is a level of agony I can’t even put into words.
“But this is my choice,” she says, eyes locked with mine, searching mine. “This is our baby, and I want to have her.”
I can’t resist rubbing the subtle roundness of her belly, twin shafts of pain and joy coursing through me at the contact. Our little girl. If we do this, every moment of joy will be shadowed by pending pain. Can we do that? Endure that?
“Bris, this isn’t something you can un-decide later.” I push unruly tendrils of her hair back, needing to see her face clearly. The eyes that stare back at me are clearer than I’ve seen them since Dr. Wagner first told us what she suspected. Bristol’s backbone is reinforced with steel, and I see evidence of it in her eyes: a steely determination, a certainty I can’t argue with.
“I understand what this mean
s,” she says, closing her eyes briefly. “That once she’s born, there’ll be more pain than we can fully comprehend right now. I’m going into this with my eyes wide open.”
Stretching to grab her phone from the floor, she opens a new browser window, quickly bypassing the photos that disturbed me when I first came in.
“Tell me again what you used to whisper to her,” Bristol says.
The words “used to” grab me by the throat. Ever since we found out Bristol was pregnant, I talked to our baby every day, several times a day, every time I got the chance. For the last ten days, I haven’t said a word to the baby. It’s like I was preparing myself for the fact that she was already gone, or that she would never come. Shame spears me.
“Um, I used to say . . .” I lick my lips. “I tell her to dwell in possibility.”
“What’s possible, Grip?” Bristol asks. “I mean, we know what won’t happen.”
The fierce light that has entered Bristol’s eyes dims for a moment.
“She won’t live a long life,” she says softly. “She may not even live at all outside of my body. We know what isn’t possible, but what is?”
“I don’t know, Bris,” I confess. Our options seem narrow. Our choices are crap. I’m the guy who defied every odd to achieve the things I have, to build the life I have, but I’ve finally met a mountain I can’t conquer. “What’s possible?”
“Life,” she whispers. “Maybe not for our little girl, but for someone else’s. For someone else, she could save a life. She could do a lot of good whether she’s here for a moment or for . . .”
Bristol looks down at the phone in her hand and shows me the screen.
It’s a website dedicated to neonatal organ donation. I read through the information, shocked to see the organization was founded by parents who lost their baby to anencephaly.
“This is possibility.” Bristol cups my jaw and lays her head against my face. Her damp lashes blink on my cheek. “I can’t terminate this pregnancy. I can’t make myself do it, and I need to feel that it’s not in vain.”
