Chapter 3 #3
For the first time in what feels like hours, I feel a laugh bubble up. “No, I mean, I’ve been seeing Dr. Mantillard since I was a teenager.”
“Ah. She’s a good doctor. Attentive.”
I nod. “Do you like working for her?”
“I do,” Georgia says, and she smiles, and I smile back, and then we sit in a weird silence.
To my surprise, my name is called less than a half hour after we arrived. I suppose a woman with contractions is a ticking time bomb. The nurse gets behind the wheelchair, takes the handles. “Come with me?” I ask Georgia, my voice small.
She puts her hand on my shoulder and squeezes, then follows.
The nurse isn’t even finished with my vitals when an ER resident pulls aside the curtain and introduces himself. “I’m Doctor Wycroft?” he says, as if he’s questioning it himself. He checks the chart that the nurse hands him, then asks me what happened.
When he brings in a portable ultrasound, time stops. He slathers gel on my belly and then passes the wand over the skin.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh.
Beside me, I hear Georgia exhale. Tears slide down my cheeks. “That’s the heartbeat?”
“That’s the heartbeat,” he confirms.
“So that’s good, right?” I ask.
“Yes, but you’re not out of the woods yet.
When you hit your abdomen, sometimes the placenta can separate from the wall of the uterus.
It’s called an abruption and can lead to preterm labor.
What we’re going to do is hook you up to a monitor to watch the baby’s heart rate and see if you’re having contractions.
If you’re not, you can go home after six hours.
If you are, we’ll have to keep you.” He turns to the nurse.
“Get a CBC and coags and put her on a monitor. Check the strip and the toco every fifteen minutes.”
Each time I feel a cramp, Georgia threads her fingers with mine.
She tells me about her cat, which she rescued from a shelter and which escaped her apartment to slip into the one next door so often that she finally let her neighbor have it permanently.
She talks about the weather, and how the Farmers’ Almanac predicted that this New England winter was going to be one for the ages—-and why on earth did she think that moving here would be a good idea?
When my stomach growls, she goes in search of a vending machine and brings back three kinds of snacks so that I can choose.
When she runs out of stories, she asks me mine: where I grew up, how I got into emergency management, how I met Jesse.
Every few moments I turn to the monitor, looking at the proof of the baby’s heartbeat. Stay, I mouth.
We are both startled by a loud buzz, and I scrabble under the covers to answer my phone. “Baby, what’s going on?” Jesse asks.
“I’m in the ER. I’m hooked up to a monitor because I’m having contractions.”
“What?” He mumbles something unintelligible. “I’m driving to the airport right now. I’ll get on the first open flight to Boston.”
“But the arson—-”
“We’re done with the polygraph, Molly,” he says. “Who brought you to the hospital?”
“Georgia. The receptionist from Dr. Mantillard’s office.”
“Thank her for me.” Suddenly he curses. “Shit, I missed a turn. This place is like a knot of highways. I have to get off the phone so I can use the GPS. I’ll text you my ETA. And, Mol? It’s going to be okay.”
I close my eyes. I do not think I realized how badly I needed to hear Jesse say that, even if it is an outright lie.
My hand relaxes, the phone falling into the folds of the blanket. Georgia reaches over to take it and sets it on the table beside me. “Your husband?”
I nod. “He’s coming back.”
There’s irritability on the toco.
That’s what I hear through the curtain that separates my ER cubicle from the nurse, who is calling a specialist to come see me.
I turn to Georgia. “What does that mean?”
It’s nearly midnight now; we’ve been here for six hours. After being delayed by the storm on the East Coast, Jesse is finally in the air, on a flight without working WiFi. “I don’t know,” she admits.
The last time I got up to use the bathroom, I was spotting.
My throat contracts. I lean back against the pillow and stare at the ceiling, feeling the tracks of tears sliding into my hairline. Maybe it is time to follow my work playbook. Hope for the best, but ready yourself for the worst.
The curtain rustles, and I find myself looking at two women, one in blue scrubs, the other in pink. “Hi, Molly. I’m Dr. Ramachandran,” she says. “And this is Dr. O’Boyle. I work in maternal fetal medicine, and Dr. O’Boyle is a neonatologist. We’re here to talk to you about options.”
“Options?” I croak, trying to sit up. My hands cross over my abdomen, another layer of protection.
“We have been measuring your contractions,” Dr. Ramachandran continues.
“They’re not getting less frequent yet, which means that there’s still a chance an abruption is happening or that you’re going into preterm labor.
What we want to do is keep that baby inside you for as long as possible,” she says.
“But if labor continues to progress, we need to talk about what interventions you’d want us to take. ”
Dr. O’Boyle meets my gaze. “If you’re at twenty--three weeks, the baby’s lungs are just not at a place where they can absorb oxygen yet.
It’s like those balloons that are really, really hard to blow up—-no matter how much air you push into it, the balloon won’t inflate, because the material is too taut.
It needs to get a little more relaxed for that to happen, and that takes time. ”
I swallow. “Can’t you . . . intubate her?”
“We can try, but there is a chance her throat is too small. And even if we do, we might not be able to inflate the lungs.”
Dr. Ramachandran nods. “We also need to talk about route of delivery. If we monitor the heart rate and there’s an abrupt deterioration, we have to do an atypical C--section.
Unlike a normal one, the uterine scar goes up and down, and it’s a more complicated surgery.
There’s greater risk of blood loss and infection, and there are implications for future reproductive health. ”
“You mean I won’t be able to get pregnant again?”
“It becomes riskier. There’s an increased chance the uterus could rupture if you do. In the event you carry a child to term, you’d have to have another C--section, this time at thirty--six or thirty--seven weeks at the latest.”
I wipe my eyes. “Is there any good news?”
Dr. O’Boyle smiles sadly. “I know this is a lot. But it’s best to address all the worst--case scenarios. Especially considering the odds of survival for the fetus.”
“Which are?”
“For your stage of pregnancy,” Dr. O’Boyle says, “about twenty--three percent.”
I start crying in earnest and feel Georgia’s steady hand on my arm. “I can’t make these decisions without my husband. He’s on his way here from California.”
“I understand how upsetting this is, Molly,” Dr. Ramachandran says. “But you need to decide soon, because if your labor progresses, we have a very narrow window to make these choices.” She meets my gaze. “Why don’t you take a few moments to think? We’ll give you some privacy.”
The curtain falls like a whisper as the doctors leave the cubicle.
I wonder who else has sat on this gurney and heard terrible news: the cancer has spread, the limb can’t be saved, a loved one in the same car accident did not make it.
“I didn’t think I wanted a baby,” I murmur.
“And now it turns out it’s the thing I want most.”
Georgia looks at me. “Why didn’t you want a baby?”
“I thought I’d be a terrible mother.” A fresh wash of tears clogs my eyes and nose. “Guess I was right. I can’t even keep her safe when she’s inside me.”
“I know that feeling,” Georgia admits.
“Do you have kids?” I realize that in all the hours we have been together, I have been too self--absorbed to ask.
She shakes her head. “I lost my baby.”
Suddenly I understand why she is here, although she hardly knows me. I wonder how she can work for an obstetrician and face, daily, women with swollen bellies and the future in their eyes.
I think of Kate, of her miscarriage. Of the millions of women in the world who have heard tragic news from doctors but still managed to get up the next morning.
“Do you think . . . it’s my fault?” I whisper.
“Anyone could have slipped on the ice.”
“No, I mean . . . do you think this happened because I . . . I . . .” I can’t even say the words out loud.
So Georgia says them for me. “Because you wished you hadn’t gotten pregnant?”
I nod. Before I’d absorbed the reality of this baby, or of the love between me and Jesse, I had worried about my job.
Maybe the universe had been listening.
“I don’t think anyone can be held accountable for thoughts. Only actions,” Georgia says quietly.
I look down at my belly, with the sensor strapped to it. If I can stand in the path of a nor’easter and mitigate its impact with provisional plans, then surely I can look Death in the eye, too, and make him change course.
“I’m sorry you lost your baby,” I tell Georgia.
She turns away, and I wonder if I’ve crossed a line. But then I realize Georgia is staring at the printout from the monitor. “Molly. Look.”
She holds up the long loop of ticker tape. I still see hills and valleys, same as I have for the past three hours. They’re just spread farther apart.
“Your contractions,” Georgia says. “They’re slowing down.”
Instead of coming every three minutes, my contractions come every five minutes. Then every eight. By four in the morning, they are afterthoughts, occasional hiccups. Dr. Ramachandran and Dr. O’Boyle tell me that although I am not entirely safe yet, this is very good.
Georgia falls asleep in the chair beside me, her head tilted back and soft snores rising. I do not sleep, out of sheer superstition. If I watch the monitor, nothing else will go wrong.
At 6:11, there is a commotion—-I hear nurses’ voices—-and then, unmistakably, Jesse. A moment later he is standing in front of me.