69 XXX: A Short Story
Tags: Writing, Short Story, Fiction, Parenting, Pregnancy

I’d woken to a shock of pink in my underwear at the end of November.

Seventeen weeks and six days, a new record. I crept from the bathroom past a still sleeping Tom to grab the hospital bag we’d packed over a year ago. I took out the diapers and the clothes so small that you could fold them like origami and slid them as far under the bed as I could. The bag looked deflated once mine and Tom’s clothes were the only things left in it.

I’m not sure how long I sat there on the floor next to the bed. Long enough for the sky to give way to gray and the street lights to blink off. I watched Tom sleep, his chest rising and falling in smooth waves, and wondered how long to wait. My hand rested against my belly, and I felt nothing but my own rhythm. Let him sleep, what did it matter?

His alarm sliced through the quiet and after a moment in which he searched for me on the bed, he finally spied me on the floor. “What are you doing? Come back to bed, Mel.”

“We need to go to the ER.”

“Again?” He sighed, falling back against his pillow. “Are you sure?”

“It could be nothing,” I lied. Hope is addicting.

The ultrasound tech was the same as last time; a pretty blonde woman with large breasts and hair pulled tight into a ponytail. I read her badge: Karen.

“Take it easy on the gel this time, Karen,” I joked, smiling flirtatiously. Her smile was as tight as her ponytail, and I knew she didn’t remember me. Of course, she didn’t. How many women like me must she see in a day? I wondered if there was a limit on miracles, because she looked at me as if she’d already reached her quota for the month. If only I’d held on until December.

My stomach twisted into knots. Tom hadn’t let go of my hand the whole time we’d been there. I kept waiting for Karen to turn the screen towards me and loosen her smile. I waited for the pizzicato rhythm of the baby’s heart to fill the room. I waited for the light to come into Tom’s eyes, the one that said I see her swimming in there! Oh, I wish you could see this little flicker on the screen; you wouldn’t believe what she’s doing. She waved at me! My God, aren’t we magnificent? I waited, shifting uncomfortably with each lingering moment, but Karen’s smiled only flat-lined as she eyed the screen, no music filled the room, and Tom remained silent, his face dim and unreadable. They wheeled me away, and I knew without knowing that it was over.

“There’s no heartbeat and the baby is two weeks behind,” the doctor said.

“So, what can we do?” Tom asked.

“Nothing,” I spat. “There’s nothing to do.”

The doctor looked away and Tom looked at me. I quickly lowered my forehead to my knees and pretended that I was hiding with the words that had been said. Someone, maybe both of them, left the room, but I didn’t look up. I’d needed to keep the words in this little cave of blanket and breath until I found the place within me to tuck them so that I’d still be able to balance myself with the new weight.

When I lifted my face from my knees, a nurse, he said his name was Ivan, hovered beside me. “This happened to me and my wife once,” he said with a smile. “Right after that we had our daughter and she’s thirteen now, you’ll be fine.” He paused to glance at my hospital bracelet. “You’re young, plenty of time.”

Clearly a medical opinion. I looked over my shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief to see Tom in the chair next to my bed. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed. He nodded. I rolled my eyes in the direction of Ivan. Tom grabbed my hand and squeezed.

When Ivan left I ordered Tom to turn the TV to the stupidest thing he could find. It was a reality show about swamp people. They lived in the Florida Everglades, not too far from here, and I wondered if their women ever come to hospitals to have or not have babies, and whether the swamp air prevents chromosomal abnormalities or not. Either way, I thought about getting an airboat and packing my things and living out there for a little while, but I looked over at Tom, with his neatly trimmed nails and clean-shaven face, with his khakis and button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled just so, and knew he’d never go for such a wild scheme.

“I’m not angry, you know,” I said to him, and I realized it was true. Maybe it was because I knew without knowing that this would happen, or because I had been here so often that it was almost routine. Tom didn’t look at me or say anything. “I’m sad, of course,” I added, “but I’m okay. I don’t blame God or anyone. I don’t blame you.”

He continued looking at the swamp people who had moved on to double-fisting baby gators from the water, laughing gleefully through their scummy beards and rotten teeth and didn’t respond.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I’m all of the above.”

No, he would never live with me in the swamp.