by CD Reiss
“I don’t know.” He sat on the edge of the couch. “Arms up.”
I raised my arms, and he put the long, modest dress over me. He snapped out a pair of simple cotton underwear and slipped them over my ankles then drew them up my legs and over me.
“I was supposed to get rid of all that underwear,” I said.
“Sometimes you need it.” He stood beside the couch.
I heard the crunch of tires on pebbles outside. “Is it Lil?”
“Yes. I texted her.” He put his arms under me and picked me up, carrying me toward the door. “I don’t think I can drive.”
“Thank God for her.” I looped my arms around his neck, and he carried me out.
“Sir,” Lil said as she opened the back door. “Mrs. Drazen, I hope you’re all right.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” I didn’t know why I said that. As the minutes passed, I started to think that was some whitewash of hope on a steaming pile of tragedy.
Jonathan held me tight and somehow got me in the car without putting me down. I shifted down and put my head on his lap.
Lil looked into the back. “Sequoia?”
“Yes.”
“No!” I said, rigid. I looked up at Jonathan. “No. Anywhere but there. Please. I can’t.”
“It’s the best obstetrics unit in the world, Monica.”
“I don’t care. I can’t go back there. I can’t. Let’s go to Hollywood Methodist.”
“It’s a different ward entirely.”
“Do you know how far out of my way I go to not drive past it? And it’s on Beverly, so yeah, I’d rather be late than see it. I’d rather go to the urgent care clinic on Sunset. I’d rather see the witch doctor in Silver Lake than go anywhere near that hospital. It smells like death. It’s hell. Nine stories of fucking hell, and I won’t go.”
Jonathan looked at me for a second then back at Lil. “Drive.”
“Jonathan!” I said as Lil closed the door. I tried to get up, but he pulled me down.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I know how you feel. Believe me, I get it. But that was enough blood to scare the hell out of me, and it wasn’t enough to convince me this is completely over. If we lose this baby because we went to a second-rate hospital or nowhere at all, because we were scared… well, I’d like to know how you’re going to forgive yourself. Because you’re going to have to teach me.”
I looked away from him. His gaze was going to break me. It was a wall of resolve. He was doing what he wanted to do, and I had to go along. From my angle on his lap, all I could see was the grey-blue glass of the sky, streetlights, and telephone poles zipping by. A speck of bird or plane.
He was right.
Fear was fungible, and death was forever. Overcome one to face the other. Blah blah. I didn’t want him to be right. I wanted to fall down a hole of despair or climb a pillar of hope, and reason and rationality were distractions from the choice.
Reaching for the hope, I touched his face. “I’m sure it’s fine. We’re just overreacting.”
“I hope so.”
“Didn’t Jessica miscarry? What happened?”
He turned toward the window. “We were throwing an event at the house. Some fundraiser for the artist co-op she was in. She just takes my hand and brings me into the house. Doesn’t break a beat. I’m following her, and I can see the blood inside her stockings. I picked her up and carried her to the car, but it was too late. It was a mess before we even got there. So much blood. I never saw her cry except in the front seat of my car. The pain was so bad, and you know, I asked her how long it had hurt before she told me.”
“Could they have saved it?”
“The doctor wouldn’t guarantee anything, but just said that next time we should come right away.”
I relaxed into that, watching the fancy streetlights of Santa Monica turn into the more urban, less fussy designs of the west side of LA. “I had pain yesterday, but I thought I had the flu.”
“Let’s see what happens.”
“If we lose it, do we try again?”
“I don’t know.”
That didn’t help. If he pulled back from getting what he wanted most, what he’d always wanted most, then I didn’t know who he was anymore.
“Did you try again with Jessica?” I flinched from my own question. It sounded petty and mean. Our situations couldn’t have been more different. But I wanted to know what to expect from him. Did he give up or truck on?
If he heard the question as cutting, he didn’t show it. “We both got checked out. I was fine, but her uterus had a shape that made it hard for her to go to term. We were fine, but it never took again. In a way, it improved things between us for a while.”
I cupped his face in my hands, and he looked down at me then leaned over and kissed me.
“This won’t end us,” he said. “I swear, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m keeping you.”
The car stopped.
“I’m ready,” I said. “If you stay by me. I’m ready.”
Lil opened the door, and Jonathan carried me through the sliding glass doors into Sequoia Hospital. Hell on earth. I closed my eyes, but the smell was still there, and the ambient noise. When something somewhere beeped, I clung to him.
chapter 33.
JONATHAN
I’d called ahead while gathering our clothes, and I was able to carry her right up to the second floor. We were offered a gurney outside the elevator, and I put her on it, insisting even when she clutched me. She weighed nothing to me. I could have carried her ten more miles, but I knew hospitals better than I wanted to, and she needed to be on the gurney.
We exited onto the maternity ward. The first thing I heard was people laughing, and I looked down at Monica to see if she heard it. I thought it would relax her. Maternity wards were gentle places with better results than the parts of the hospital she’d been stuck in for weeks.
Her eyes were clamped shut, as if she were a child who didn’t want to see anything scary. I was about to make some wisecrack about ocean views and a full buffet. Describe the dancing girls and rare art she was missing. Anything to calm her down. A chuckle. Even if she slapped me and told me to shut up, it would have been preferable to seeing her coiled in dread.
“Mister Drazen,” a young woman in blue scrubs said.
“Are you Dr. Blakely?” I asked. It had taken Dr. Solis seconds to recommend this young woman with the flat brown ponytail above all others.
“Yes. Dr. Solis told me you’d be coming.” She looked at Monica. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” my wife lied.
“This way, then.”
The nurse, a muscular woman in her forties with a military cut, asked a battery of stupid questions. Monica answered them with her eyes closed.
“Mister Drazen,” Blakely said as she stepped into the exam room in front of the gurney, “Dr. Solis says you’re immunosuppressed?”
“Yes?”
“You shouldn’t be in a hospital.”
Monica opened her eyes. “Go.”
“I’ll text you our findings,” Blakely said as they moved Monica from the gurney to the table.
Monica seemed so helpless, so separate from her mind and will, so corporeal as she stretched across the table. Her dress hitched above her knees, and I saw the Sharpie script of Jo and erty.
I wasn’t abdicating responsibility. Not the medical part. I knew my limitations, but I wasn’t turning my back on her. I wouldn’t let her sit, alone and hurt, while I protected my immune system. “I’ll stay, thank you.”
“Jonathan, please,” Monica said. “She’s right. I’ll be okay if you keep your phone on. Really, I’m not freaked out. You need to go.”
But she was freaked out. From the ends of her hair, through the writing on her thighs, to the tips of her toenails, she was terrified. I hadn’t known her that long and I had plenty to learn about her, but I knew goddamn well when she was lying about her comfort to protect me. We’d both done that enough to get Ph
Ds in it.
“I’m not going,” I said then turned to Dr. Blakely. “This is my wife, and she needs me. I don’t want to hear, from either of you, that I should go home and live in a bubble and wait for a fucking text telling me what’s happening with my family.” I sat in the seat next to the table and held Monica’s hand.
“He can wear a mask outside maternity,” the nurse suggested as she tapped on a computer keyboard.
“Will you?” asked Monica.
“Fine.”
Dr. Blakely sat on a stool at the end of the table. “You’re not my patient. Dr. Solis will chew you out if you get sick. Let’s get these underpants off.”
Monica picked up her butt, and the doctor helped her slide out of them. The nurse started to pick up Monica’s dress but glanced at me once she saw the words Jonathan’s Property. I wanted to mention it or make a tension-splitting joke, but I didn’t want to embarrass Monica. The nurse put crinkled paper over Monica’s abdomen. The doctor spread Monica’s legs, and I thanked God Solis had recommended a woman.
“Well, no question of paternity,” she said, looking over the paper. “The baby has to work on his handwriting though.”
The joke wasn’t that good, but I was glad she’d made it. The tension fell off my wife as she laughed.
“All right.” The doctor smiled behind her mask. “Let’s see what we have here.”
Monica cringed, and I heard a squishing noise. I squeezed her hand.
“Plug is in place.”
More tension dropped off Monica. Maybe she was right. Maybe the book had been the wrong tool. Maybe I would have to start getting proper toys. I had to stop using whatever was on hand if it made her bleed.
The doctor put the sheet back and put her Monica’s legs down. The nurse wheeled a cart over.
“I’m supposed to tell you jokes,” I said to Monica. “Something clever and funny to take the edge off.”
Blakely and the nurse said things I didn’t understand, and they exposed Monica’s abdomen. So much like my own experience as a patient. Experts talking about me as if I wasn’t there, huddling together before approaching me with an approved line of bullshit.
Blakely squeezed clear gel on Monica’s abdomen as if every patient had the baby’s ownership scrawled backward on the mother.
“I’m waiting,” Monica said. “I know you have a few thousand jokes in there.”
“Knock, knock.”
She laughed as if that were the entire joke, which it was. I didn’t know any knock, knock jokes.
The ultrasound screen went live as if it had been fingerpainted in shades of grey. We watched as if it were the seventh game of the world series, but we had no idea of what we were seeing.
Silence. Too long. Shouldn’t we be hearing a heartbeat? I’d had sonograms when I was in the hospital, and I always heard whooshing. I squeezed her hand. The doctor slid the wand over Monica’s abdomen while tapping keys.
“Okay,” Blakely said. “Well, that explains it.” She pointed at a black oval. “This is the ovum, and typically we have a little peanut-shaped blur in there, and there isn’t. It’s empty.”
“What does that mean?” Monica asked.
“Well, it’s a blighted ovum. Meaning the egg was fertilized and made it to the uterus, but the cells stopped dividing. Either the cells were reproducing incorrectly or there was some other technical malfunction. Your body kept doing its job though, so you have an ovum and the beginnings of a placenta.” Blakely shut off the machine.
Monica went white, and something in me did too. I wanted to throttle this young doctor. I wanted to choke her until she admitted she was wrong, that she’d misread the images. It was all a big mistake. There was a baby in there, right as rain and thriving.
“I was traveling,” Monica said. “Did that do it?”
“Probably not.”
“We’re rough in bed, the two of us.” Monica was past sense. Her hand had gone cold, and she was babbling. “I shouldn’t say this, but you’re a doctor, right? I mean, sometimes, it’s just, well, like I said we get rough and—”
“I saw the bruising, and no, that wouldn’t cause this. I’m sorry. The good news is, you’re in perfect shape. You should be able to conceive again without a problem.”
I stood. “Thank you, Doctor.” I held out my hand. Those people had to leave immediately. I got it. I’d heard it. I needed to be alone with my wife.
“Not so fast,” she said. “Let me give you a quick rundown, then I’ll leave you alone. You have tissue in your uterus that your body needs to get rid of. It’s messy and painful, and it could start today or next week. Most patients opt for us to remove it by dilating the cervix and scraping the uterus. That shortens the—”
“No.” Monica pointed her chin up. “I’m not evicting the baby.”
“Mrs. Drazen, I’m sorry, but there is no baby.”
“Don’t you tell me there’s no baby!” She was pure kinetic energy. A blur. Her limbs were still but poised to shake the earth free of its orbit.
I put myself between the two women.
“There is a motherfucking baby!” Monica called from behind me.
I felt the same as she did. I felt all her anger and denial, but I couldn’t allow myself to get lost in it. “Is there anything else, Doctor?” She had to get out before we were escorted out.
Unfazed by Monica’s denials, Blakely took a card out of her pocket. “Call me if the pain is really bad. I’ll prescribe something.”
“Pain?” Monica’s voice shot from behind me. “I can take pain. Just try me.”
I took the card. This was it. So much had changed in the past four hours, I felt numb. I hadn’t even had a chance to process flying to New York, then not flying to New York, then the baby, now the lack of the baby. It had been a day of miserable false starts, ending with the promise of pain for my wife. “Thank you.”
“Have her take it easy, if possible. It’s going to hurt.”
chapter 34.
MONICA
Take it easy. What kind of bullshit was that? How was I supposed to take it easy? Was I supposed to sip piña coladas by the pool and wait for a miscarriage? Like la-di-da, let’s take a jog and have a good laugh and watch TV and forget that my whole life, everything I thought I wanted, changed in the past two days. I’m supposed to pretend that didn’t happen?
Well, fuck you, Doctor. Fuck you with a big bag of fucking fucks.
Once that fucking fuck of a doctor and her little nurse were gone, I flipped them a double bird, because fuck them and fuck that machine and fuck that room and fuck that hospital and fuck the lie I fucking wrote on myself.
“And fuck you,” I said to Jonathan when he twirled my underwear.
“You should get the D&C,” he said, looping the cotton panties around my ankles. “Let the doctor end this. She suggested it for a reason.”
“No.”
“What if you’re in the studio when you start cramping?”
“Fuck the studio. I hate this hospital. I hate everything about it. It’s a rat shithole. Everything is beige and pale pink. The decorator should be shot. And they could run fucking potpourri through the vents, and it would still smell like bleach and death.”
He slid my underpants back on, and I let him, because I was too mad, too confused by my tangle of emotions to get dressed and get off the table. Jonathan pulled me into a sitting position.
“Don’t fight me,” he said, opening the door.
His voice was as definitive as ever, telling me my behavior before I had a chance to question it. I didn’t know what he meant until he put his arms under me and picked me up, carrying me out the door and down the hall. I put my arms around his neck and rested my head on his shoulder.
“You don’t have to look,” he said, and I knew what he meant.
I closed my eyes and focused on his leather scent, pretending that bleach and medicine didn’t hover around the edges, ignoring the ding of the elevator and the whispering of nurses and doctors in the
ir parallel language. It was so familiar and so foreign, because though the sounds and smells were the same, this time I wasn’t worried about Jonathan, or even myself. I was just angry, and disappointed, and touching the edges of grieving the loss of something I hadn’t even wanted twenty-four hours ago.
“I’m okay,” I said into Jonathan’s ear as he carried me out of the elevator and across the lobby.
“I know.”
“I’m not upset anymore.”
“I know.
“You can put me down.” I opened my eyes. He filled the frame of my vision.
“Nope. You’re my wife, and I’ll carry you where I like.”
Lil waited in the roundabout, parked in the red zone as if it were a marker for Bentleys. She opened the back door, and Jonathan poured me in.
I didn’t say anything the whole way home. I sat on Jonathan’s lap, wrapped in him, my head on his shoulder. Somewhere on the 10 freeway, I felt a twinge, and it started. The doctor had been very explicit about what to expect, and I didn’t know if I’d thought I’d be immune, or I didn’t care, or if I simply underestimated what she’d meant by pain and bleeding.
But by the time Jonathan carried me to the door, I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the stomach.
“Monica?” He swung the door open.
“I think I should go to the bathroom.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
He looked concerned, but he let me down, and I ran to the bathroom off our bedroom. It had a shower, and a bathtub, and a door that locked. It was a super fancy little corner of the world, and it had a view of the ocean, because what else did a girl need when her body was ridding itself of a blight. Right? I peeled off my pants and sat on the toilet, hunched in pain so bad, I felt as if my guts were being pulled and tied into a knot at the end of a balloon.
There was a soft rap on the door.
I couldn’t do this in front of anyone. Not even him. Not even the man whose chest had been open before me. Not even the one whose bleeding heart I carried every night in my dreams. I was doing this alone, whatever this was.
I grunted when the air went out of the balloon and the stretching and knotting started again.
