Chapter 14
When they first started, Bethany hardly clocked the cramps.
Overwhelmed with work, with a string of surgeries that felt back-to-back, and with family stuff, Bethany felt disconnected from her body in a way that she knew wasn’t customary for a pregnant woman.
It worried her, but only passively, until she finally went to the doctor in mid-July for a checkup.
Dr. Schreiber took her blood pressure, noted her heart rate, snapped his gloves against his wrists, and assessed her insides.
His face was grave, strange. When he sat back down, Bethany recognized the shift in the air of the room that indicated something was wrong.
She braced herself, her hands over her stomach.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think of a miscarriage.
“I’m worried, Bethany,” Dr. Schreiber confessed. “I have a hunch that you’re working yourself too hard. You’re too many things to too many people. Have you considered taking a little bit of time off?”
Bethany wanted to scoff at him. But rather than disrespect him and the profession they’d both given their lives to, she shook her head.
“It’s so early on. I have all these surgeries scheduled.
I’m needed at the hospital till it’s impossible for me to go on.
” She’d planned to work there until she went into labor, if she was honest. But she didn’t tell her doctor that.
“To tell you the truth,” Dr. Schreiber said. “I’m considering putting you on bed rest. What do you think about that?”
Bethany’s jaw dropped.
Dr. Schreiber stretched both of his hands out between them. “Don’t panic. We aren’t there yet. But this is your official warning. You need to slow down, or else you’re going to be horizontal for a whole lot longer than you’re used to. I know the likes of Bethany Sutton don't like to slow down.”
Begrudgingly, when Bethany left the doctor’s office, she called the hospital staff to tell them that she needed a sub for her shift that evening. She’d slow down— for today—and assess herself tomorrow. Gina at the front desk was surprised. “You’ve never called in. Are you feeling okay?”
“The doctor said I’m pushing things too hard,” Bethany said.
“I guess you’d better listen to the doctor, just like all your patients listen to you,” Gina teased her lightly.
“My patients don’t listen to me,” Bethany said, laughing.
“Sure. But you know better, don’t you?” Gina said.
Bethany returned home to find Rod and Phoebe in the living room, prepping for one of Phoebe’s shows for theater camp, which was to be held that evening. Phoebe threw herself into her mother’s arms, crying dramatically, “I thought you had to work! But you’re here!”
Bethany smiled, realizing her night of dozing off in front of the television would have to be pushed aside. The theater called. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
For this first performance of The Taming of the Shrew, Alana Copperfield had a makeshift stage set up on the beach in front of the part-family-home, part-artist residency, The Copperfield House itself.
Bethany, Rod, and Phoebe went to the artist residency around six so Phoebe could warm up with the other theater kids.
Maddie and Tommy came shortly before the performance, still in their lifeguard swimsuits.
They were tanner than they’d ever been and strong as oxen.
“How’d it go today?” Bethany asked Maddie as Maddie settled in beside her.
“Johnny’s new girlfriend came by while he was working.” Maddie rolled her eyes. “He wanted to show her off, I think. Or rub the whole situation in my face. It was gross.” But she sounded proud and sure of her decision to ignore Johnny forever. He’d blown it with her. She’d never go back.
Bethany was grateful that Maddie had allowed herself to grow within this experience. She hadn’t given up on herself.
“A tourist thought they saw a shark,” Tommy piped in. “Everyone ran out of the water, panicking. But it was literally just a scrap of wood.”
Bethany laughed, lacing her hands through Rod’s.
Thinking of the baby, of the fact that she didn’t want to overexert herself, she calmed her laughter and her breath and her heart.
She wanted to be in the world with her family.
She didn’t want to be locked away in a bed somewhere, waiting for her baby to grow.
It meant she had to slow down, even when she laughed.
Alana Copperfield stepped out on stage to welcome the audience to the first performance of the theater camp season.
A beautiful forty-something woman with long, dark hair and a figure that spoke of her actress past, Alana spoke animatedly about how wonderful the summer had been so far.
“These kids are boundless with creativity. They know what they want and how to show it. And they teach me something new every single day. Thank you for allowing me all this special time with them, parents. And thank you for coming out tonight.”
Although Phoebe was one of the younger members of the cast, she had one of the more important roles—a fact that surprised nobody in Bethany’s family.
Bethany was captivated, watching her youngest daughter move across that stage as if she owned it.
She spoke to teenage actors four years older than she was with an authority that Bethany hadn’t felt at thirteen.
Who had taught Phoebe to be like that? From which universe did kids come? Bethany laughed softly.
At intermission, Maddie and Tommy agreed that Phoebe was crushing it. They didn’t seem bored in the slightest by the Shakespearean language and instead told Bethany that they’d read Romeo and Juliet last year in English class and really liked it.
“But I think it’s stupid,” Maddie interjected. “I mean, two teenagers in love? Willing to do anything to be together? Willing to die? There’s so much life after high school.”
Bethany laughed, remembering the teenager she’d encountered a few weeks back, the teenager who’d sobbed and begged her boyfriend to stay with her, to forget his mistress and continue to build. But the Johnnys of the world weren’t worth it.
When the second half began, Bethany felt a strange stirring in her gut—one she chalked up to hunger, to unease.
She told herself to remain in the moment with her family.
She told herself to hang on to Phoebe’s every word.
But as the night wore on, the cramps intensified.
She gripped Rod’s hand hard, praying that she could ignore the cramps until they went away on their own.
When it was time, everyone in the audience got to their feet to applaud for Phoebe and the rest of the cast and crew. Only Bethany remained in her chair, clapping and wincing and quietly crying. Eventually, Rod looked down at her, realizing something was very wrong.
“Please,” Bethany whispered when he sat down beside her to cup her hands. “Please, I don’t want to go on bed rest. Please, I just want to slow down.”
That night, after a frantic drive back to the house, Rod helped Bethany to their bedroom, where she changed into a large T-shirt and got under the covers.
The cramps had calmed to nearly nothing, and she was breathing normally, yet checking her pulse all the time to make sure she was stable.
Rod gently touched her hair, then kissed her forehead.
“We’ll go to the hospital whenever you say the word,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Worry echoed from Rod’s eyes. Bethany could feel the worry from her children as well, from where they’d left them in the living room downstairs, demanding if she was all right. She saw the most worry in Maddie, who’d told her from the beginning that it wasn’t safe to have a baby, not now.
“Women do it all the time,” she told Rod now, as though he’d said what was on Maddie’s mind.
“Women do it all the time!” Rod repeated. “And you’re the strongest woman of them all. Your body’s just a little exhausted, that’s all.”
“I have surgery tomorrow,” she told him.
Rod hesitated.
“I’m strong,” she reminded him—and herself. She’d long held the belief that “mind over matter” was the most powerful thing of all. You could convince yourself to do anything, to go the distance. Your mind was always in control, not your mind. You couldn’t give in to it.