9. Willa
Chapter nine
Willa
Two years ago
S lipping into bed, I smile, cradling my small, hardly noticeable baby bump as I’m filled with a surge of happiness. For the first time in years, I have a reason to be. Working as an actress has been fun, but it doesn’t fulfill me. Not like the idea of being a mother does.
I didn’t even realize how strongly I wanted to be a mother until I saw those two lines on my pregnancy test. I didn’t feel anxiety or trepidation. I felt elation like I’d never felt before.
In that moment, it felt like all the scattered puzzle pieces of my chaotic life snapped together and I could see an image of my future with clarity for the first time.
When I told Baron I was pregnant, he was shocked because we weren’t trying to conceive a child. But sometimes nature finds a way, and I’m so glad it did.
I’ve only known about my pregnancy for seven weeks, but these last forty-nine days have been the best days of my life. In two days, I'll be thirteen weeks pregnant and officially out of the first trimester .
Baron is still reticent to accept his impending fatherhood, but I feel confident he’ll come around. And if he doesn’t, I certainly have the financial resources to raise our child on my own.
As I settle into bed, I feel an uncomfortable series of twinges on my side.
This is my first pregnancy and I'm a natural worrier. Unfortunately, my anxiety has only been heightened since learning of my pregnancy. I’ve already called my OB’s office twice after hours because of phantom aches and pains, so I force myself to relax, convinced that these pains are nothing but another symptom of my overactive imagination.
When I called last week, the on-call nurse reassured me, reminding me that I need not worry about every little thing. Her comforting words float through my mind. Your body is changing. You're growing a baby. It's natural to feel discomfort at times.
The exhaustion I’ve felt over the past few weeks has been wild.
I can fall asleep in two minutes flat and sleep for twelve hours straight, which is what I hope will happen tonight.
So, I flip onto my other side, ignoring the pain by focusing on happier topics.
I'm not sure yet if I want to find out the gender, so I've been keeping a mental list of both boy and girl names that I like.
Soon enough, I fall asleep dreaming of more baby names to add to the list. Josephine, Bennett, Charlotte, Nora, Vaughn, Tate…
I awaken sometime later because my lower back hurts. I adjust my position in bed and fall back into a restless sleep.
The next time I awaken, the pain is stronger, definitely more than a simple ache or twinge, and impossible to ignore. I hate to be a bother, especially in the middle of the night, but I feel compelled to call my OB's after-hours office number. Sitting up in bed, I flip on my bedside lamp .
But as I rise up from my lying position, I'm overcome with painful cramping, and I instinctively know something is wrong.
Terribly wrong. Throwing off the covers, I stumble out of bed.
There's a sticky dampness between my legs and when I look down, I see streaks of bright red blood between my thighs.
A series of sharp pains hit me, and I gasp as I fall to my knees, overcome with the sudden onslaught of agony.
My obstetrician told me that occasional spotting was normal.
But even as I sink into denial, attempting to persuade myself that everything is okay, I know it’s not.
The next few hours unfold in a tangled, disordered series of events. I remember bits and pieces, but the single memory that stands out the most is when the doctor performed an ultrasound. When the sounds of a rapid heartbeat should have filled the room, there was only a haunting silence.
I was admitted to the hospital a scant twenty-three hours before the news of my hospital stay hit the tabloids.
In the days since, the media’s speculation has been relentless.
The possible reasons for my hospital admission—everything from a drug overdose to plastic surgery gone wrong—have been splashed across the headlines for all to read.
My management team had to hire security so I could recover in peace without the risk of a journalist sneaking into my room.
Fame is a double-edged sword, and it does not go hand-in-hand with privacy or anonymity.
Yesterday morning, my publicist released a statement on my behalf explaining that I’m being treated for dehydration and exhaustion, common maladies for celebrities.
I give the public a lot of myself, but I refuse to allow the world unfettered access to my personal trauma and medical records.
My agent, Jada, came to visit me as soon as I was admitted to the hospital. She had the audacity to suggest that I should go public with my story. That I could garner positive press if I told the world that I suffered a miscarriage.
She wants to use my sorrow as a means to gain sympathy. Yet all I want to do is grieve privately.
God, I can barely say the word miscarriage aloud, so there’s no way that I'd be strong enough to share my story with the world.
I had a miscarriage.
A miscarriage, also known as a spontaneous abortion.
Miscarriage has another meaning. It also means a failure to obtain the just, right, or desired result.
And I desperately desired my baby.
Unfortunately, my body failed me. The baby that was created out of love died inside of me, and with its passing, a large part of me died too. How does one go on after such a loss? How do I pick up the pieces and move forward?
I know I'm far from the only woman to have suffered a pregnancy loss, but I feel so alone. Besides members of my professional team, hardly anyone knew about my pregnancy. My boyfriend, Baron. My brother, Aiden. My best friend, Maggie. I wanted to get out of the first trimester before telling others, and I almost made it to that magical milestone. Now, I’m glad I waited to share the good news, as there will be fewer people to tell about the bad news .
Do I pretend the miscarriage never happened, that I was never pregnant? Do I put my acting prowess to use and pretend that everything is fine and dandy? And hope that one day it will be.
Eventually, I'll have to feel happiness again. Right?
My boyfriend, Baron, should be here soon.
Baron is a professional baseball player, and he was playing games in an out-of-state series when I lost our baby.
He offered to skip out on last night’s game to come to my bedside, but I declined.
What was the point? He’d get fined and for what?
To sit here next to me and watch me cry and stare off into space, lost in my melancholia. It seemed pointless.
But he’s due to arrive any minute, and while his presence should be a comfort, it isn’t. I’m dreading his arrival.
What if he blames me for losing our baby?
If only I’d listened to my intuition and called my OB’s office instead of falling asleep, maybe things would have turned out differently. But I didn’t listen to my body. I dismissed my fears as irrational, as symptoms of my anxiety.
I know I shouldn't blame myself, but it's hard not to find fault.
When Baron walks in an hour later, he looks handsome, even with his stupid mullet. As an athlete, he’s superstitious and once the season starts, he refuses to cut his dark hair.
He strides into my private hospital room with a smile on his face and a laissez-faire demeanor. His attitude baffles me. Can he not read the room and feel my anguish?
Why doesn't he appear to share my pain? It was his baby too.
“Doll,” he greets me as he always does. From the first night we met, he’s called me doll because he says that with my porcelain skin, large eyes, and diminutive stature, I remind him of one.
I've always hated the nickname because it renders me a possession rather than a person, but he persists in using it. He kisses my cheek as I chew my chapped lip and then he plops onto the chair next to the bed. “What’s the plan? How long do you have to be here?”
“This afternoon, I think.”
“Cool,” he replies, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
I look down at the hospital blanket, pick at the rough material, afraid to meet his eyes. Finally, my voice thick with tears, I stammer, “I’m sorry.”
My eyes flick upwards to see his face, readying myself for his judgment. I expect to see anger, blame, disappointment.
I expect to see fucking something .
Some type of emotion from my boyfriend in response to losing our baby, but what I see is a flash of bewilderment.
I hear a quiet exhalation. One that sounds an awful lot like a sigh of relief.
Then there's a pause that stretches on a beat too long before Baron offers forced words of commiseration. He tries to hide his true feelings, but I sense them. I’m knee-deep in sorrow and regret and grief and his words and actions are too disingenuous to be real.
Baron spouts all the cliché platitudes that people routinely fall back on to explain times of hardship and suffering.
It wasn’t meant to be.
Maybe it’s better this way.
The timing wasn’t right.
And my personal favorite: Everything happens for a reason. As if there could ever be a good enough reason to explain why my child never got a chance at life.
When I don’t say a word to disagree with him, Baron accepts my silence as permission to continue. I sit in a daze, as he lets loose, telling me everything I need to know about him as a person and as my boyfriend .
I thought we were in love. Sure, we didn’t see each other often because we were both juggling demanding careers, but I thought we shared a vision of our future together.
But as he continues talking, I realize how mistaken I was.
We haven’t been together long enough to have a baby.
I'm not ready to settle down into family life.
I don't want to be saddled with the responsibility of raising a kid for the next eighteen years.
We’d be absentee parents given our work schedules.
Do you really want your kid to be raised by a series of revolving nannies?
A baby will ruin your body. Casting agents won’t book an actress with a mom bod.
Through his asinine, insensitive litany of excuses and comments, one thing becomes undeniable—Baron isn’t sad or distraught that I lost the baby. He’s relieved he isn’t going to be a father.
"Doll, it worked out for the best.” He pats my hand. “Hey, since this has given me an unexpected break in my schedule, maybe we could head down to Mexico for the weekend."
Instead of mourning, he's planning a fucking vacation.
I yank my hand away and turn my back to Baron. I can't look at him. “Get out.”
When he doesn't move, I repeat, "Get out. We’re done. I never want to see you again. Leave.”
I creep slowly through my house until I make it into the kitchen, so I can brew a cup of tea. My mum keeps my tea stash well-stocked, and I find the ritual of afternoon teatime comforting.
And I need all the comfort I can get right now.
I’ve been home from the hospital for a few days, and physically, I feel much stronger, but emotionally, I’m still a mess.
I’ve stopped crying. The epic sadness I endured in the hospital has been replaced with an eerie emptiness.
I've become a zombie, but I prefer this numbness to the pain. I don’t feel anything in particular. I simply…exist.
I haven’t heard from Baron since I broke up with him in the hospital. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad about that. I don't have the strength to fight with him.
Besides Aiden and Maggie, I haven’t told anyone else about what happened, so I’m left mostly alone.
It’s lonely, but it’s better this way. Suffering in solitude is preferrable to dealing with people's pity.
If anyone found out, my story would be splashed across the front pages of every newspaper and tabloid.
Hell, I'm already front-page news, but at least all the media has is speculation. I'd rather them think I had a mental breakdown than know the truth.
The truth is too personal—and too painful—to become fodder for public consumption.
Maybe one day I'll be brave enough to tell my story, but I'm not there yet.
It's a bizarre experience when something terrifying and tragic occurs because your life is forever altered, yet the world continues moving on around you. My body and heart are broken, but time doesn’t stop.
The neighbor two doors down still walks her dogs every morning.
The birds still squawk outside my windows and the squirrels run along telephone lines.
The emails in my inbox continue mounting.
The monthly bills still need to be paid.
Everything moves forward like nothing changed.
But I'm changed, and I'll never be the same.