Chapter Six
She read the consent form in a diner booth and said, “I’m going to kill him.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m going to kill him carefully. I have training.”
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I laughed. It was the first time in three days.
Then I did something I hadn’t planned. I told her the truth.
“I’m not only angry he hid it,” I said. “I’m angry because I think I’d have said yes.”
Jess put down her coffee.
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“If he’d come to me in November,” I said, “and told me a woman was dying and he could save her, I’d have cried, and then I’d have said yes. I’d have driven him to the tests. I’d have made her soup.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“He didn’t let me.”
I pressed my thumb against the edge of the table until it hurt.
“He decided I was too fragile to be good. And he was wrong. And I can’t prove it now, because he never gave me the chance.”
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Here’s the confession I didn’t say out loud to Jess.
Part of me was relieved.
Relieved that he’d hidden it, because it meant I got to be the wronged one. Being the wronged wife is simpler than being the generous one. Nobody asks the wronged wife to make soup.
I’m not proud of that. I’ve stopped expecting to be.
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My OB appointment was at 2:30.
Elias had asked, twice, if I wanted him to come. I’d said no, twice. He had his own pre-op appointment at 3:00, at the same medical center, four floors up.
He’d told me that. On the new rules.
I noticed I was grateful he’d told me, and I noticed how low the bar had fallen in three days.
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Dr. Anand took my blood pressure herself.
Then she took it again.
Then she took it on my other arm, which she has never done in thirty-nine weeks, and I stopped breathing normally.
“One forty-four over ninety-four,” she said.
“That’s high.”
“That’s creeping.” She sat down on her little wheeled stool and looked at me over her glasses. “Any headaches? Spots in your vision? Swelling in your hands?”
“My hands are fine.”
She looked at my rings. I looked at them too. They were tight. I hadn’t noticed.
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“Wren,” she said, “is anything stressful happening at home?”
I thought about the glovebox. The binder. The tab with my name on it, and the tab with hers, the same thickness.
“No,” I said.
It was the first lie I’d told in this story. I’d like it counted.
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She ran bloods. She sent me for a monitor strip. The baby’s heartbeat galloped along at 140, perfect and oblivious.
At 4:10, she came back with my results and a calendar.
“Your labs are okay. For now,” she said. “But I don’t like the trend, and with your history, I’m not waiting for it to become an emergency.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I want to see you Wednesday. If your pressure’s still up, we don’t wait for your due date.”
She tapped the calendar.
“We induce Thursday morning.”
?
I looked at the square she was pointing at.
Thursday.
March 12th.