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“Lena, I’ll meet you at the hospital.” Worry laces Stevie’s voice.
Once at the hospital, the EMTs roll me to a room and transfer me to a bed. The air smells sterile, and it’s freezing in here. I shiver until someone drapes one of those flimsy white hospital blankets over me. A nurse begins placing those small sticky dots on my chest and arms, takes my blood pressure and temperature, and sticks an IV into my arm. Two doctors enter when the nurse is finishing the IV placement, and they begin asking questions.
I tell them my medical history, what Dr. Ahmed told me, and that I have not seen a doctor since, nor did I do any treatment. I do my best to explain the pain I feel down my legs, across my back, in my abdominal area. The doctors tell me they will keep me for observation and attempt to stop the bleeding. But when I’m still bleeding several hours later, the doctors tell me they’re taking me into surgery to perform an emergency hysterectomy but that until we’re in surgery they won’t know what type of hysterectomy they’ll do.”
Lena lets out a sob. She bows her head and rests her forehead on my shoulder.
“Jesus, Lena, you could have died.”
“Honestly, I didn’t care whether I did or not. That’s how fucked up I was at that point. I had never felt so sad and lonely. It was like I was being punished for what I had done.”
“You weren’t being punished, you were sick, being stubborn, and ignored your body. Not quite the same thing.”
She scowls at me.
I attempt to soothe her with the one thing that has always worked, touch. I tighten my arms around her torso, gliding my thumbs back and forth over the area where they rest. When her breaths are even again, I caress her arms, up and down in slow, steady motions before asking, “What happened after your surgery?”
“I was in the hospital for six days. The doctor explained that she removed my uterus but left my ovaries in. She said she didn’t think they posed a problem, and since it was not something we had discussed, she didn’t want to remove them without first consulting with me. She also had to do bladder reconstruction because the endometriosis was growing on a substantial part of my bladder.”
“She left your ovaries in? Does that mean you still have eggs?”
“Yes.”
“You could—”
“No, I can’t. Don’t say it.”
“Hey, stop,” I say. She glares at me. “Let me finish. What I was gonna say is that you could have called me after you had the surgery.”
“No, I couldn’t have. Because you would have come to find me, and things would still be the same. I would never give you the children you wanted.”
“So stubborn!”
“If I would have stayed, or called, or whatever, you wouldn’t have your two beautiful boys. Forgetting everything else in our past, those two guys make it all worth it for you, for both of us. Unquestionably you’re an amazing father to them, which means I made the right choice for you.”
“I want you to know you’re not broken. Just because some asshole said that to you doesn’t make it so. You not being able to have kids doesn’t make you any less of a woman. You have a beautiful heart. I know it because I’ve been on the receiving end of your love.”
Tears stream down her face, and she sniffles.
“Why did you take so long to come back?” I wipe tears from her cheeks with the pads of my thumbs.
“When I learned you had a son, it hurt—a lot! I had a final exam a few days after finding out and just barely passed. I was so distraught. I felt a lot of sadness and resentment again, thinking it should’ve been me to give you a son. It should be me who’s the mother of your children. Of course, that was crazy of me to think.” She hides her eyes from me, attempting to conceal the guilt that accompanies her statements. I’d be a hypocrite for telling her she’s wrong for thinking that way because that very thought has crossed my mind numerous times and has caused the same feelings of guilt.
“As soon as classes started again, I focused on school and pushed away thoughts of you again because I had to finish. I wasn’t ready to come back and face reality, so I stayed to work for a bit and gain experience before returning. I hoped time would heal me.”
“Did it heal you?”
“Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I regret the decision I made. That regret has eaten away at me from the inside out. Every single day! It’s the only decision I’ve ever made that I haven’t come to terms with. Regret that I’ll live with for the rest of my life even if I know it was the right decision for you.”
She drops her eyes to the floor, her hands clenching into fists. Although painful for her, her words give me a glimmer of hope—the unknown future of us.
“If you could do things over again, would you make the same choice?”
“I don’t know; it’s hard to say. I’d like to think I would do things differently because I wouldn’t feel so sad and wouldn’t feel so much regret. But I don’t think I would. Because then you wouldn’t have your boys.”
