A door beside the front desk opens. “Elinor Mackey?” a nurse calls. Ted squeezes Elinor’s hand as they stand.
Dr. Kolcheck is younger than Ted and Elinor. She’s kind and smart, and talks quickly—maintaining an energy level Elinor can’t imagine having, even without pregnancy and with caffeine. She describes the pros and cons of an amnio versus another, earlier test called CVS, which many women Elinor’s age are doing. The upside of CVS is that you find out sooner if the baby has any chromosomal abnormalities. Elinor could have the test as soon as next week, and they would know the results in a matter of days. Whereas she wouldn’t have the amnio until week sixteen and would have to wait two weeks for those results. For some women this results in a later termination, which of course is very traumatic. There is only a slightly higher risk of miscarriage with the CVS. The benefits of an earlier diagnosis have to be weighed with the slightly increased risk.
Acronyms, percentages, pros and cons spin in a blender-whirl in Elinor’s brain. At work, she’s perfectly able to absorb complex technical information and evaluate risks. But the word termination halts her ability to think now. She wants to keep her baby no matter what’s wrong with him. Ted strokes her leg. It’s a relief to have him here. He’s calm in situations like this, retaining information and coming up with intelligent questions. Dr. Kolcheck pauses. She and Ted look to Elinor, who hasn’t said a word. Her mouth is dry.
“If the results are bad, maybe our baby could just go to vocational school?” Elinor tries to muster a laugh. You can’t take him, no matter what’s wrong with him!
Dr. Kolcheck smiles sympathetically and reaches across her desk to squeeze Elinor’s arm. “I’m sorry. I’m overwhelming you. You can go home and think about this. Read up and discuss it privately. Call me with any questions.”
Next comes Elinor’s physical examination, for which Ted returns to the waiting room.
“I’m so happy for you.” Dr. K slips her stethoscope into her ears to listen to Elinor’s heartbeat and breathing. “I’m sorry you had such trouble.”
“We’ve been on a very expensive trip to hell and back,” Elinor agrees, lying on the table. “But the worst is over. I go back to work in a week.” Elinor actually looks forward to returning to the office now, with its structured days, bustle of people, and welcome distractions. There will be less time to worry there.
Dr. K frowns a little as she examines Elinor’s cervix and uterus. “Let’s hope you don’t have a big baby.” She smiles. “Your hips are tiny.” This is meant as a compliment—Elinor’s petite. But it brings on that familiar feeling of being unqualified. Elinor had just been gaining confidence. In the waiting room, she even imagined returning to the office for her second pregnancy, baby in tow, baby on the way.
“Let’s have a look at this baby in the ultrasound room,” Dr. Kolcheck says. “Go grab your husband.”
Elinor peers into the waiting room at Ted, who is smiling and staring into space. She winks and curls her finger for him to follow.
They trail behind the doctor to a dark examining room at the end of the hall. Elinor is used to the vaginal ultrasound by now, which is painless and somehow comforting. During all those months when they couldn’t conceive, Elinor felt betrayed by her body, wondering, What’s going on in there? At least the ultrasound reveals part of the mystery.
Ted leans against the wall, giving Elinor and Dr. Kolcheck plenty of space. Elinor sighs and closes her eyes. The room is warm and quiet—womb-like. She inhales deeply to relax. Yes, there are thousands of genetic markers in the CVS test, but she is pregnant. Positive thoughts. The ultrasound machine clicks as Dr. Kolcheck scans the screen. Elinor rolls her head to see the cone of fuzzy light. Some of the dots on the screen are larger than others, and one of them is her baby. Hello there.
“Oh,” Dr. Kolcheck says. Her voice is different somehow, tinged with disbelief. Her fingertips touch Elinor’s thigh. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Sorry?
“There’s no heartbeat. I’m so sorry.” The fingertips stroke Elinor’s leg.
Elinor laughs. “It’s there.” That linty fuzz ball is so small. It always took Dr. Weston several minutes to find the heartbeat.
“You’ve lost the baby.” Dr. Kolcheck points to the screen. Elinor strains to look. The image seems the same as always—gray and murky and primordial.
She rolls her head toward Ted. He flattens his back and arms against the wall, as though someone has shot him.
“It’s there,” Elinor repeats. Dr. Kolcheck’s hand gently rubs Elinor’s leg. This is not an exploratory touch. It is a gesture of sympathy.
Tell her, Ted! It’s there! The baby. It’s there! Ted slides all the way down the wall until he disappears below Elinor’s line of vision. She peers over to see him sitting cross-legged on the floor. She feels as though the examining table is a ship and he’s overboard. What is going on here? She turns back to face Dr. Kolcheck.
“I’m so sorry,” the doctor repeats.
It’s okay, Elinor wants to tell her. It’s there. It was just there at our last appointment. It’s hard to see, that’s all. Merely a polka dot of a little buddy. These machines are crazy. Ted! Tell her. She looks to Ted again. He is shaking his head.
Dr. Kolcheck stands and looks over the examining table at him. She lowers her voice. “I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat. There aren’t any limb buds.” She says this apologetically, seeming to hope that because Ted’s a fellow doctor, he’ll be able to register this information.
Elinor didn’t know there were supposed to be limb buds. Was that in her book? The book she threw into the damn Dumpster! If she had known this—she could have been thinking about them, visualizing limb buds, instead of lusting after Earl Grey.
“But . . .” Elinor cannot sit up.
Dr. Kolcheck removes the ultrasound wand and switches off the machine. “I’m going to give you guys a minute, okay?” she says.
Ted stands. His face is drained of color. Is he going to pass out?
“But . . .” Elinor snaps her knees shut, suddenly feeling exposed and ridiculous.
Ted looks at her, shakes his head.
She curls up, rolls onto her side, and manages to sit on the edge of the table. Ted stands in front of her, wrapping her in his arms. His shirt buttons are cold against her cheek. She lowers her head and buries her face against his stomach.
“Do not turn on the light,” she begs him. She feels Ted nod. “Please. Don’t turn it on.”
He runs his fingers over and over her hair. “I won’t, sweetie, I won’t.”
Ted starts the car and begins driving them away from Dr. Kolcheck’s office, but he can’t imagine where they should go. Home? To do what?
Dr. Kolcheck recommended that Elinor have a D&C in the morning. El should fast after midnight, and they should return first thing. While Dr. K is 100 percent positive that they’ve lost the baby, she doesn’t think Elinor and Ted will really believe it unless they see the ultrasound again. So they’ll go to the office and take one more look, then Ted will take El over to the hospital, where she’ll be admitted as a day patient. At least Dr. Kolcheck has a nice bedside manner. It’s about all they can hope for at this point.
“Where should we go?” he asks Elinor. He just wants to hold his wife and think for a while. No. He just wants to just hold her and not think. He wants it to be yesterday, last week, four and a half years ago, when they first married. Why didn’t he throw her birth control pills off the balcony at their honeymoon hotel on Kauai into the fountain and fishtail palms and get her pregnant right there, like a real man? He should have convinced her to quit that bloodsucking job. Instead Elinor got a big promotion, and the company claimed more and more of his wife’s time and energy. A slice of her soul. He should have talked her out of that promotion. But that wouldn’t have been supportive.
“You can go,” Elinor says, pointing to the green light above them.
“Right.” Ted accelerates too quickly and they lurch forward. “Sor
ry. Where?”
“Yeah, I don’t know.” Elinor squints and shields the side of her face from the sun coming through her window.
The town is too busy and bright and crowded, mothers flocking out to retrieve their children as school lets out. At the next light, a traffic guard blows a whistle and glares at the stopped cars accusingly as he marches into a crosswalk to let the kids pass.
“There.” Elinor points at the Chevron station. “Into the car wash. Look, no line.”
The car is already clean. Ted pulls into the station. He fills the tank and presses the YES button for the wash. He’s convinced that the deluxe wash and the luxury wash are the same bubbly concoction, but this time he chooses the luxury, which he hopes takes longer.
“That’s why I feel better,” Elinor says as Ted climbs back into the car. “I thought it was because I’m almost in my second trimester. But it’s because we lost the baby, so my HCG levels are dropping.” She rubs her hand over her stomach tentatively—a gesture that breaks Ted’s heart. “No hormones, so no nausea.” She leans a palm against the dashboard. “Plus, I took a really hot shower. You’re not supposed to.”
“No, Ellie. It’s the increased chromosomal risk at our age. It’s statistics. It’s not you, it’s life.”
“Try death.”
Ted closes his eyes and squeezes the bridge of his nose. He opens them, starts the car, and pulls around to the wash, rolling down the window and punching in the code from his receipt on a keypad.
“I shouldn’t have gone off the progesterone.” Elinor looks at him beseechingly.
“Honey.” He rubs her shoulder, kisses her cheek. “Dr. Weston wouldn’t have taken you off it if there was any danger. She errs on the cautious side.”
Elinor nods and looks at her hands in her lap. “Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing anything to make you feel better.”
A car waiting behind them honks.
“You still want to go through?” Ted asks.
Elinor covers her face with her hands.
“I know.” He puts the car in drive and pulls the car into the wash, braking and turning off the engine when the red lights flash. After a clank and a whir, the spinning blue brushes descend upon them, enveloping them, blocking out the light and heat and chaos outside. Ted unbuckles his seat belt and scoots over to wrap his arms around Elinor. She presses her forehead to his sternum. Water drums the roof and the windows. Ted’s eyes and throat burn. Suddenly the car wash emits a low howl, like a tomcat about to get into a fight. Ted lifts his head, surprised to discover that the sound is coming from deep within his chest.
Everyone at the hospital either smiles and touches Elinor or gives her drugs. They don’t know that she killed her baby. They don’t know about all of the mistakes she made—those two cups of Darjeeling she finally drank, steeped as dark as caramel, the tannic acid tingling in her mouth, the caffeine clearing the cobwebs from her brain. Twice she drank tea! She finally removed the polish from her toes, looping a paper mask over her face to block out the fumes. Acetone! She did the bow pose in yoga class. Wasn’t that the pose you weren’t supposed to do if you were pregnant or menstruating? She rode her bicycle to the drugstore. The air and exercise pushed away the nausea, but surely her pulse raced to over the allowed 147 beats per minute as she pumped home with her ChapStick and shampoo. She killed her baby, and now everyone is being so nice to her and telling her it wasn’t anything she did. If this is the case, why do they keep bringing it up? Clearly they’re humoring her—trying to make her feel better. You killed your baby. It happens. We’re so sorry.
Ceiling tiles sail by overhead as they wheel her down a hallway to the operating room. A face appears over her, smiling and handsome and close as a lover’s. He introduces himself—Dr. Goodlooking, the anesthesiologist.
“I’m starving,” Elinor blurts, embarrassed to be thinking about food.
“What I have is better than food,” he coos. “Mind if I get your IV going?” She feels the prick of the needle, followed by warmth in her arm, and then she is floating into the operating room. This would be scary if it was really happening. If she wasn’t flying and falling in love with everyone around her. “Count backward,” Handsome says. “Ten, ni . . .”
There is a difference between sadness and insanity. Elinor thinks this as she sits on the toilet clutching her soiled, rolled-up sanitary pad. She can’t let go of it. She does not want to throw it away. She should put it somewhere safe.
“God!” she hollers, finally tossing the thing in the trash.
“You okay?” Ted calls from the kitchen. He’s been hovering since they got home, keeping an eye on her after the general anesthesia.
“Just jolly!” she calls out. Here she is again: being a bitch to her husband. Crazy, stupid, shit! The water burns her hands as she turns it on. She shakes her fingers and steps out of the bathroom.
She wraps her arms around Ted’s waist and holds her ear to his chest. Yesterday she carried something that was part of both of them and now it’s gone, but at least she still has him. Half of the whole.
Ted doesn’t say anything. He squeezes her.
She used to love standing like this, listening to his inner workings, listening to the gurgling, beating, breathing life inside him. He rocks her, patting and kissing the top of her head. Ted might be the kindest man she’s ever known. Did she forget this along the way?
All that week Elinor and Ted don’t hug in bed at night; they cling. Their arms and legs intertwine into one sweaty octopus that sinks into the center of the bed, curling and squeezing and shutting out the world.
When Elinor wakes in the morning, the fact that the baby is gone hits her like a slap. “Oh!” she gasps, startling Ted. “Right.”
Funny, for the D&C she went to sleep counting from ten to one, and after the surgery she woke up to the nurse asking her to rate her pain level on a scale of one to ten. Physical or psychological, Elinor wondered. The morphine said five, and that’s what she told the nurse. The woman patted her arm and smiled. Elinor liked how everyone touched her. Now she’s still cramping and bleeding, and she wishes people would touch her. She wants the Safeway clerk to inquire about her pain on a scale of one to ten. “Did you find everything you were looking for today? And how is your pain on a scale of one to ten?” She wants to switch on the radio in the car and hear: In other news today, Elinor and Ted Mackey lost their baby. “They were already separated, anyway,” a neighbor of the Mackeys commented. “We don’t know what the deal is with those two,” another added. The S&P is up five points . . .
The blues hit her hardest in the afternoons. They press down on her shoulders and upper back, making her wonder if she’s walking like Groucho Marx. When she’s home, all she wants to do is get out of the house; as soon as she’s out, she can’t wait to get home. Now that she can have all the caffeine she wants, she dreads going to their neighborhood coffee shop, where she used to enjoy reading in the sun. In the mornings, the place buzzes with Mommy-and-Me groups, women gathering their monstrous strollers in a circle. They sip and munch and coo and commiserate. They’re exhausted. They’re in this miserable mommy martyrdom thing together.
Elinor’s afraid she might holler at them. Fine! Give me the damn kid! She tries to focus on her Aeneid, but she can’t block out the cackling women. Her thoughts race and her pulse thrums, as though she’s a jack-in-the-box about to pop. She dashes to her car for cover. She tries visiting the coffeehouse in the afternoons instead, on her way to the grocery store, but then there are the mothers with schoolchildren stopping for a drink and a treat.
The whole world hurts her feelings. An ice cream truck hurts her feelings. One afternoon it occurs to her that the ice cream truck speeds up when it passes their house. The driver seems to think there aren’t any children in this little pocket of retirees and childless Mackeys. The distorted nursery rhyme chimes maniacally faster as the truck whooshes by. There are grandchildren! Elinor hollers a
t the closed living room window. The Aldersons have grandchildren! Kat has children! Slow down! I might want a toasted almond bar! She should call the police to report the driver for speeding. How loony. She needs some of those drugs from the hospital, which made her believe everything would be all right. What was that stuff? she asks Ted. Fentanyl. Can’t he write her a prescription? No. Can she drive to Mexico and cop some? No. It’s anesthesia. Well, she needs to be anesthetized.
The only people she feels comfortable around are Kat and Ted. The afternoon after her D&C, Kat stood in her living room with brownies, vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce, Chardonnay, and new pajamas. “I washed the PJs,” she told Elinor. “So they’d be soft and clean and ready to wear tonight.”
“I love you!” Elinor wailed.
“I love you, too,” Kat said. “And I hate it that I can’t do anything for you.”
Elinor buried her face in the warm, soft cotton pajamas, breathing in the comforting smell of a dryer sheet, and cried.
“I guess they make a good hanky, too.” Kat laughed.
Finally, Elinor gives up on the coffee shop and the grocery store, with its diaper aisles and lurking babies. She stays home and sticks to minor tasks, such as bringing in and sorting the mail. But she’s easily paralyzed. When an envelope arrives from the OB’s office, she knows it’s only a bill, but she imagines a letter: We regret to inform you that you are ineligible for motherhood. Please return the fringed overalls and dispense with any fantasies of attending your daughter’s college graduation.
Ted shops and cooks. Roger keeps the place clean. For some reason, Ted doesn’t like Roger.