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“No!” she snapped. “Your bladder needs to be full.”
“But I really need to go.”
“You can wait a few minutes.”
In the exam room, she continued barking orders, getting me positioned on the table while Kyle and Dr.Kaplan, huddled in the corner, laughed about something.
Finally, Dr.Kaplan approached the table. She smiled as she squirted gel on my abdomen, the chilly wetness of it providing temporary relief from the stifling heat. I felt the pressure of the wand sinking into my skin as she maneuvered it around my belly. Kyle held my hand, grinning like an idiot as he watched the monitor. I, too, looked at the screen, but all I could see were black and gray swirls, reminding me of the radar image of a hurricane I had seen on the news before we left the house.
The wand froze in Dr.Kaplan’s hand. The smile on her face faded as she peered at the screen. She and the nurse exchanged a look.
“What’s going on?” Kyle asked.
I knew something was wrong. I could tell by the kind expression on the mean nurse’s face when she met my eye.
“Please get dressed and meet me in my office,” Dr.Kaplan said.
As she stepped toward the door, Kyle grabbed her arm. “What’s happening?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not detecting a heartbeat,” the doctor said.
My own heart sped up, threatening to explode as I remembered my reaction to the positive pregnancy test, certain this was the reason the baby would not be born. Her soul—yes, it was a girl—was moving on to a mother who was welcoming from the get-go.
Kyle hung his head so his chin rested on his chest. When I looked at him, I couldn’t see his face, just the bill of his baseball cap and the Boston Bruins’ logo, a menacing bear. I threw that hat away when we got home.
Dr.Kaplan called it a “missed miscarriage,” a miscarriage where there were no symptoms.
“You didn’t know anything was wrong?” Kyle asked the day of the D&C. The tone of his voice, the way he wouldn’t look at me, made it clear he blamed me.
“I didn’t.”
Five years ago, after my parents’ accident and Hank’s closing of DeMarco’s Diner, I became desperate to have a baby, feeling it was a way to bring a piece of my parents back to life. I was only thirty-four and didn’t think I’d have trouble conceiving. Once I turned thirty-six, though, I started to worry that nothing was happening. I had read that women’s fertility began to decline quicker after age thirty-five. I started tracking my cycle, using a kit to predict ovulation and scheduling sex. The romance vanished from our marriage, but I never conceived. I went for an exam and convinced Kyle to as well. The doctors said there was no medical reason we couldn’t have a baby. Because of my age, almost thirty-eight by then, they recommended IVF. With the help of modern medicine, I’d thought getting pregnant would be a breeze, but I was wrong. Until now, it had been more like a category-five hurricane.
It was true what they said about the third time being a charm, though. I could tell by the energy I felt in my stomach and the metallic taste in my mouth. A baby was growing inside of me, a little boy we would name Will.
When Kyle got out of bed, he found me in the room we used as an office, emptying a desk drawer into a cardboard box. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“This is going to be the nursery. After breakfast we can get paint. Light brown. I think Will’s going to want a mocha-colored room.”
Kyle rubbed his chin and studied me for several seconds without saying anything. “Slow down,” he finally said. “You don’t even know you’re pregnant.” The large bags on each side of the bridge of his nose looked like pillows for his tired eyes.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“You woke me up at six.”
“I thought you’d be excited.”
“I’ll save my excitement until after the blood test.” His bare feet slapped against the hardwood floor as he made his way down the hall to the kitchen. It was as if he were stomping out my enthusiasm with each step he took, because he was right. After all, we’d been through this two times before with disastrous results. I should wait for Dr.Evans to confirm the pregnancy, but she’d told us to be positive. She’d said it would help, and hadn’t I already lost a baby because I didn’t make her feel welcome? I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.
Chapter 5
When I was back at work on Monday, the scent of hazelnut floated into my office seconds before my coworker Page burst through the door. She carried a ceramic mug with the wordsWorld’s Best Momcircling around it. That thing hadn’t left her hands since her fifteen-year-old daughter, Mia, gave it to her for Christmas. Page flung herself into the seat across from me. “Andrew interviewed a tall woman yesterday,” she said.
In heels, Page barely reached five feet, so almost everyone seemed tall to her, even me.
“He walked her out to her car, a red Range Rover, and hugged her goodbye. Hugged her. Carol told me the woman’s an old friend of his.” Page paused for a sip of her coffee. “You need to make it clear to him that you want the job.”
Andrew Pollard was the publisher ofMountain Views Magazine, where Page and I had worked together for the past fifteen years. The magazine needed a managing editor. The previous one, Leo Timmerman, had retired at the end of September.
