Ash Wednesday

by Ethan Hawke

  FAT TUESDAY

  “All right, listen to me very carefully. I don’t want to alarm you, we need to do some more tests, but I am very concerned about your health. At this point I’m unable to find your child’s heartbeat, which at or near twenty weeks should be quite clear.”

  Dr. McCarthy paused and looked up at Christy, over to me, and then back to Christy.

  “You are bleeding,” the doctor continued. “If the placenta is pulling off the wall of your womb, you could bleed very heavily. The more active you are, the more you’ll bleed. We don’t know for sure, but the baby may already be dead. We have to worry about you first. If you start to bleed a lot, we need to empty the uterus as quickly as possible and you may need a transfusion.”

  Christy and I were both motionless as we listened to this overweight alcoholic-looking doctor. He was a real southern gentleman,the kind who look slightly ill at ease without a martini. Christy was fully clothed now and seated in a red plastic chair. I was standing behind her with a magazine closed in my hands. The doctor spoke in a voice so gentle and quiet I felt I was reading his lips. His name, McCarthy, was printed in neat white letters on his ID badge. We were in a small not very impressive hospital about an hour north of New Orleans. Originally we’d gone to the inner-city ER, but the place was too overrun with stabbings, drug overdoses, and other incidents resulting from the chaos of the festival. This hospital was exactly the same, only less well equipped. We’d arrived here at 11:50 A.M. It was now almost 9:45 at night. In the seven hours we’d spent in the waiting area, I’d felt I was slowly observing the deterioration of mankind.

  “I’m very worried about you, Christy,” the man said, in a sincere daddy-will-take-care-of-everything voice.

  “Why aren’t you worried about the baby?” she asked quietly, her body in a controlled spasm of anger.

  “Even if the baby is alive, it can’t survive on its own for another six weeks. That’s a long time from now.” He paused, scribbling a few more notes on the paper in front of him. “We need to admit you formally.” He looked up at her. “We won’t be able to complete the tests until morning.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, we only have one ultrasound machine, and our radiologist was sent over to Andrew Jackson Memorial this afternoon. The festival has taxed the resources of the entire area.”

  “Well, then, I’m afraid we’ll have to go somewhere else,” she said, the muscles in her forearms flexed in a tight grip around the plastic arms of her chair. She turned to me. “I want to go home.”

  “I understand how scared you’re feeling,” the doctor droned, “and I understand your wanting to go somewhere more familiar, but I can’t emphasize enough how much I believe that would threaten your situation.”

  “I’ve never seen that device before,” Christy said, pointing over at the apparatus the doctor had pressed against her abdomen to listen to the baby. It was a bizarre tool that attached to the doctor’s head.

  “I’ve been using this fetoscope”—he held up the contraption—“for a long long time. It’s very reliable.”

  “It’s not what my doctor in Albany used to check the baby’s heartbeat,” Christy stated.

  “No, they were probably using a Doppler device. That’s a more sophisticated piece of equipment. We don’t have one here.”

  “What, are we in Istanbul?” She was getting aggressive.

  “There’s no harm in resting until tomorrow.” The doctor paused and shuffled through some more papers. “Let me ask you just a few more questions. Could you tell me a little bit about your diet?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking nervous and uncomfortable.

  “How many meals a day have you been having? How much protein, how much iron? How much water have you been drinking? How much caffeine? Have you been paying attention to those things? They’re not minor details.”

  Christy just glared. The guy was probably in his mid-sixties and smelled like bathroom disinfectant.

  “I don’t know,” was all she could say.

  “Have you been eating three meals a day?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been taking prenatal vitamins?”

  “No.”

  “Do you smoke?”

  “I’ve had a few cigarettes.” She looked over at me.

  “Do you drink?” he asked.

  “No.” She paused. “I mean, I’ve had a couple glasses of wine.”

  “Have you been drinking coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked up at me in disbelief.

  I don’t exactly know why I did it, mostly because at the moment I was a basket case, but for some reason I laughed.

  He didn’t smile back.

  This whole day was going unbelievably badly. I’d woken up that morning alone for the first time since our wedding, and neither the shower, the television, nor the radio could stop this one thought: I don’t want to be married. I want to be alone. Believe me, I knew it was too late for this kind of thinking, but it just kept blitzing me from out of nowhere. Arriving in New Orleans, Christy and I’d passed by little taverns and sports bars, and I wanted so badly to be inside one with a shot of whiskey and a beer, talking about pro basketball, I would’ve chewed off my own leg to get there. There was this unmistakable clamoring inside me. I felt trapped. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t feel trapped, I was trapped.

  “I want you to know that as a doctor and obstetrician I feel it is imperative that you spend the night here. Leaving is not an option. I need you to let me take the time to do the necessary tests. You might be at serious risk, Christy. I’m going to give you an intravenous feed, to bring up your blood sugar and make sure we have access, in case we need to give you fluid, blood, or medicine. You realize at this moment we are unable to ascertain the status of the fetus.” He was trying to get to her by scaring her.

  I couldn’t process this information. Doctors shouldn’t be as overweight as this guy. New Orleans, I’d read, has the highest rate of obesity in the United States, too many beignets and po-boys or something, but his weight didn’t instill a great deal of confidence. The little room we were in smelled salty like saline solution. I don’t like hospitals and I wasn’t particularly enjoying my first few days of marriage. I felt like a Siamese twin. This room, the pompous doctor, and his horrid fuckin’ news were all like icy fingers clamping down around my throat.

  “And why is that?” Christy asked calmly, standing up and beginning to gather her purse.

  “Why is what?” the doctor responded.

  “Why are you unable to ascertain the status of my child?” Christy looked up at the doctor, speaking clearly and precisely, but her face was expressionless.

  “I told you. Unfortunately our radiologist is assisting in New Orleans tonight. With all the hysteria resulting from the festival, it’s been difficult to make local care a priority.”

  Christy laughed incredulously.

  “He’ll be here first thing in the morning,” the doctor continued. “But if the fetus has miscarried, you are in danger and should not be walking around.”

  “I think we should wait and do the tests, baby,” I interjected. “I mean, it’s still possible that the baby is all right? I mean, is that correct?” I turned to the doctor nervously, looking for a place to set down the magazine.

  “Yes, there is a chance, but it is not a reason not to take the appropriate precautions.”

  “Well, I’m leaving,” Christy said quietly, taking off and folding her tortoiseshell glasses and placing them inside her purse. Then in two quick steps she walked out the door.

  I don’t know why, but I seemed to have no reaction to anything going on around me. By the time I got my ass out into the hallway she was already halfway toward the elevator.

  “Hey, come on! Hold on a second!” I shout
ed after her.

  Catching up to her, I grabbed hold of her arm. She turned around and punched me awkwardly in the chest.

  “Let go of me,” she hissed, in a loud controlled whisper, and stormed down the sparkling-clean hallway.

  “Christy!” I yelled, trailing right behind her.

  “Take my side, you shit,” she said, turning and slapping me in the chest again. “Why would you laugh about that?”

  I grabbed hold of her and put my arms around her, but she yanked herself away. The doctor was approaching, his heavy old limbs jostling with each stride.

  “I don’t feel safe here. My baby is fine,” she said, pulling away and leading me toward the elevators. She pressed the little circular button.

  “Please, Mr.”—Dr. McCarthy looked down at his form—“Heartsock. It is extremely foolish of you to leave. We should keep you here. Your wife is in serious danger.”

  The elevator door opened and Christy stepped in. For a second I delayed, knowing we should stay, but then I stepped in after her. The doctor and two nurses stood dumbly watching the door close after us.

  Alone in the elevator, Christy slapped my face hard. The skin rippled with an electric ring of pain. I held my cheek, looking down and away from her. My whole body, every nerve, every cell, was vibrating with the desire not to leave this hospital.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I mumbled toward the elevator floor, still holding my cheek. I knew what Christy needed me to do; she needed me to keep her here. But then another part of me thought maybe I should just back her up, foolish or not. There was reasonable skepticism as to this doctor’s grasp of the current standard of care. We stood in silence for a long minute as the elevator descended.

  “How could you laugh when he talked about my diet?”

  I looked up at her. “You’re freakin’ out, all right? You need to calm down right now!” I was trying to be firm.

  “Don’t speak to me like that,” she spat.

  The elevator door opened and Christy was off down the hallway, passing through long corridors, sets of swinging doors, people on crutches, soda machines, a black guy in a tuxedo, a woman holding her bandaged eye, a kid with a cut finger, all kinds of battered individuals waiting in a large square room staring at a fuzzy television. She passed underneath several clocks, with all their second hands ticking in unison. Speakers above trickled out a Top Forty radio station. She passed the registration desk and the gift shop and then blew out through the automatic glass doors. She stopped dead as she hit the silence of the parking lot and the sea of automobiles. I followed about ten paces behind her. The warm night air was stifling; the black asphalt of the hospital parking lot was slick with humidity. All colors of the rainbow were lit up and glowing off the hundreds of cars parked in the bright halogen light of the streetlamps. For a moment Christy paused, lost and confused. She struggled to orient herself, looking for the Nova, then charged off in the right direction. As soon as she found the car, she swung open the heavy silver door, slid inside, and shut herself in. I opened the driver’s-side door, sat down, and reached for the keys although I had no intention of actually leaving. Surely, I thought, the doctor, nurses, a security guard—somebody—would follow us out here. The leather seats were still warm with heat from the day’s sun and smelled stuffy in a way that I normally find comforting. Sliding the key into the ignition, I gave it two or three tries and it started up. I kept my eyes on the dash as I pretended to wait for the engine to warm up.

  “You gotta calm down,” I said. I knew I should not allow us to leave this damn hospital.

  “You want an annulment or what?” she said.

  “Give me a break,” I said.

  “The baby’s dead, Jimmy. Are you awake?”

  “The baby’s not dead. The guy just wanted to do some tests. Everybody goes to the doctor and gets tests. You were bleeding; we should figure out why.” I was trying to retain an air of coolness.

  “Look, I’ll get treated faster by driving to Houston than I will sitting around waiting for these idiots to get their act together.” Christy bit her lip like she might chew it off.

  In the silence I looked over and saw Christy close her eyes and slowly begin to breathe. After a moment her inhalations became more and more rapid until I was worried she was going to hyperventilate.

  “Let’s go, Jimmy, let’s go.” She opened her eyes and looked over at me. “What are you waiting for?”

  I put the car in reverse and turned around to look where I was going. Fuck it, I’d take her to Texas, but I knew I was doing the wrong thing.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she kept saying, breathing quickly in and out. Her eyes were closed and her arms wrapped tightly around herself as she rocked back and forth. The Nova rolled gently backward. I took the car out of gear, stepped on the brake, and reached over to touch her shoulder, but she flinched and I withdrew my hand. We sat there in silence with the car half in and half out of its spot.

  One of the bright lights of the parking lot was hanging directly above us, lighting up Christy’s face and her closed eyes. She tried to regain control of her breath by pressing hard on both temples.

  “Let’s go to the hotel, get the cat, pack our shit, and drive to Houston,” she pleaded.

  “You sure you don’t just want to go back inside?” I took a deep breath myself. Then, speaking as if I were going formally on the record, I said, “That’s what I think we should do.”

  Christy looked over at me. “Give me the keys. I’m not going back in there.” The anger in her voice grew as she continued. “I want to go home, Jimmy. I’ve been trying to go home since I left Albany. I don’t have confidence in those doctors or in the attention I was getting. I don’t feel safe here. Please take me home.”

  I threw the car back into reverse and headed to the hotel.

  It was the last night of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, and driving silently through New Orleans I could feel the swell of excitement in the air as crowds massed together like flocks of birds. What seemed like two thousand Harley-Davidsons began passing us on both sides. All day I’d been struggling with the desire to drink. Watching drunk people stumbling in and out of restaurants, clubs, and bars wasn’t helping.

  I dropped Christy off in front of the hotel so she could start getting our gear ready while I went off and parked the car. Alone in the Nova, the engine kicking and vibrating uncomfortably as I idled through the Mardi Gras traffic, I felt as lost and disoriented as a child at a state fair whose parents have ditched him. The neon haze of the French Quarter painted the crowds with ghoulish red and green faces. All the festivities were culminating in a parade that would shut down abruptly at 12 A.M.

  “Don’t get caught on the street when the party stops,” the clerk at the hotel had warned us. Apparently, at the stroke of midnight, with the onset of Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras ends, and the New Orleans police force takes back the streets.

  I parked the car illegally only three blocks from the hotel and found myself literally sprinting to get back to Christy. People were bumping and banging into me. With each minute that passed there seemed to be a thousand more bodies on the street. A young man in ripped blue jeans and a SAINTS T-shirt was thrust spread-eagled over the hood of his red Honda Civic while two uniformed policemen dragged another guy out the passenger-side door. For a moment in the swirling undertow of the crowd I felt I’d lost my way, but quickly scanning the sea of bobbing heads I saw the steps of the Fairmont Hotel. I fought back the fear that I knew would release absolute pandemonium inside my brain. The thought that Christy had miscarried jerked my stomach up into my trachea. Almost certainly we had done the wrong thing by leaving that doctor.

  The door to our hotel room was open when I arrived. I stepped in and found Christy sitting fully dressed on the toilet with our packed bags at her feet and the cat in her carry case purring calmly on her lap. She turned, looked up at me, and spoke
in her softest, clearest, most childlike voice.

  “Why couldn’t I have eaten right? Is that so hard? Do you think it was the smoking? What kind of neurotic person am I?” She paused and looked back down at her knees.

  “You do the best you can. You can’t do anything else,” I said, slightly out of breath, standing impatiently by the bathroom doorjamb.

  “It’s too late,” she said, as if she had already seen our future.

  “It’s not too late,” I said quickly. “Walking up here I got this feeling, all right? A very clear feeling that everything is OK. If we just get you to a doctor, get you home like you want, everything will be fine.” I hadn’t had that feeling at all, in fact pretty much the opposite, but I was struggling to say something that might be helpful.

  “What did the doctor tell us? I can’t remember what he said,” she whispered.

  I didn’t answer her. There was no way I was going to repeat any of the nasty shit he said.

  “Let’s go, baby, I want to get you taken care of.”

  She stood up slowly, holding the cat carrier with one hand and straightening out her dress with the other. For some reason, she’d taken time to apply makeup and was dressed in one of her most expensive outfits, a burgundy dress made of a thick cotton and embroidered with wildflower patterns that fell to her calves.

  “There hasn’t been any more bleeding. Don’t you think that’s a good sign?” she asked, tugging on her little opal stud earrings.

  “It can’t be bad,” I said.

  “Oh, boy.” She sighed.

  I thought about all the action of my life that has taken place in bathrooms.

  “Nice honeymoon, huh?” she said, trying to smile.

  “It’s OK, baby, it’s OK,” I offered. “It’s all gonna be fine. We just gotta put one foot in front of the other and play this thing out.” I’m always placing everything in the context of sports metaphors. You’d think I’d grow out of it.