Chapter Thirty-Two
Hospitals had a certain scent. Evelyn recognized that smell, an acrid mixture of Lysol and latex, before she even blinked her eyes open.
She was standing at the end of a long corridor, doctors and nurses rushing by, in one of the few hospitals in America that still allowed for termination of pregnancy for medical reasons at twenty-one weeks.
She had gone to her latest ultrasound appointment feeling happy.
David had accompanied her for that early-morning appointment.
There were no warning signs that something was wrong.
Aside from some nausea and fatigue, and a strange aversion to chicken, all the testing they had done up to that point had come back normal.
The baby was developing appropriately. They had passed the twelve-week mark and had told friends and family.
She was also fully showing.
The concern that had plagued her in the first few days of pregnancy had dissipated.
She had begun to see herself, and her soon-to-be-role as an ema in Manhattan, differently.
Work emails were now interspersed with emails from The Nest and What to Expect.
She’d started a Pinterest for her developing baby.
Part of that was thanks to David, who said all the right things.
Every time she got nervous, found herself on the verge of freaking out .
. . he reminded her that she wasn’t going to be raising this child alone.
They were in it together. And Evelyn was more than capable of managing a successful career alongside being a great mom.
David had no doubts. His fearlessness in the face of such a dramatic life change made her feel capable.
All the spiraling and anxious thoughts she harbored about loss and divorce faded when her husband wrapped his arms around her.
Though she had no intention of ever giving up her career, she found her focus shifting.
She would take off work to go nursery shopping.
She had started going to synagogue alongside David on Saturday mornings, knowing that Hebrew school and Jewish day school would be in their future.
And though it was considered bad luck in Judaism, tempting the angel of death to name a child before birth, they had decided on April for their little girl.
She had so many dreams for her child. Some nights, sometimes even at work, she would find herself daydreaming about her future daughter’s life.
Her first day of school, driving off to college, the day of her wedding.
That little life, that tiny human being who wouldn’t stop tumbling away inside her .
. . Evelyn was convinced that she was going to be a gymnast.
At twenty weeks, she lay on that table in the ultrasound office with David beside her.
The gel was cold, and she laughed at the tickle .
. . They all laughed. The sonographer, too.
And Evelyn had so much hope in her heart that morning.
She had fantasized so often about this baby since falling pregnant—walking through Central Park on Shabbat afternoon, dressing her up like Queen Esther for Purim, watching her grow into a young girl and then woman—that it almost felt real.
She was so na?ve to the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth that she didn’t even think something could be wrong.
She had made it past twelve weeks, after all.
The danger was over. The sonographer excused herself and left the room, and Evelyn’s eyes wandered to David.
He shifted in the seat beside her and, laying one hand on her wrist, told her that everything would be okay.
He was wrong.
The scan had revealed that the neural tube of the baby was not fusing properly.
An amniocentesis later would confirm what the sonogram had revealed.
Her little girl—her future bouncing gymnast—had anencephaly.
And then, with a solemn frown, the doctor laid out the course of her unborn child’s life in three distinct possibilities.
The first was that Evelyn could choose to continue carrying the child.
However, if the child died inside her, she risked sepsis.
If the fetus did manage to survive past twenty-three weeks, what was often considered the age of viability outside the womb in terms of abortion laws, it would likely only live a few hours .
. . all of which would be in pain. If the child made it any longer than that, it would be a life of severe disability.
The safest choice for Evelyn, the doctor told her, would be a TFMR. Termination for medical reasons.
She had never heard the term before. She knew it more colloquially as an abortion. And the woman who once agonized over having a child now fought like hell to bring her to term.
For days, she and David argued. She was lucky to live in a state that allowed abortions up to twenty-four weeks, but every day they hesitated, she risked complications.
She remained at home, watching to see if the baby was dying inside her.
And still, she wasn’t ready. Evelyn wanted to bear the risk, to bring her child to term, to hold her baby in her arms just once.
David reminded her of the danger. He showed her research and studies, stories about similar children being born with the disease before reminding her that Judaism always put the life of the mother first .
. . that an unborn child, in Jewish law, wasn’t even alive until it took its first breath.
That she had a halachic responsibility to safeguard her life no matter the cost. That he loved her, that proper health care now would ensure they could have more children.
But she didn’t care. She wanted April. She had dreamed of a future for this little girl inside her—for all of them, together—and the reality felt far too grave. And then, David wondered aloud when in gestation a baby could start feeling pain.
The news changed something inside her. She began to see each of those tumbles as her child calling out to her. Mommy, help me. Mommy, I’m hurting. Mommy, what’s happening? She heard her little girl crying, from somewhere, and she couldn’t bear the thought of her child in pain.
She couldn’t stand the idea of this little girl she loved so much, so damn much, with her brain leaking fluid, her heart struggling to beat. How could she, as a devoted and loving mother, curse her with the gift of life. And so, she made the hardest choice of her life.
She chose to love her baby girl enough to let her go.
Present-day Evelyn walked down the hospital corridor with slow steps, unsteady . . . that stupid fucking rescue chicken accompanying her on the journey. The other version of herself was in Room 116, giving birth to a baby girl who would never take her first breaths.
David was at her side, tears rolling down two bright red cheeks. He kept crying. He kept kissing her hands, telling her he loved her. She wanted him to stop. She wanted him to be strong enough to hold all their suffering.
There were three options.
But there was never a choice.
They had been so happy on the day of that appointment.
Twenty weeks. They felt like they had made it past the danger point.
Everything was normal. Everything was okay in their relationship, too .
. . until a schism occurred and shattered all the love they had built.
And the irony of it all, beyond the fact that they’d lost their baby on Hanukkah—a holiday which celebrated miracles—was the double-edged sword that came with her faith.
The same tradition that highly ritualized the dying process with shiva and kaddish—that went above and beyond to comfort mourners—had no such rituals for miscarriage, abortion, or termination for medical reasons. An unborn child was not a child, at all, in Judaism.
And yet, Evelyn felt grief. She went home that day bleeding and cramping, and crawled into bed, wanting to disappear.
She still had her belly. Her nipples still leaked milk.
And when she had the strength to check her email, she found newsletters waiting from all those mommy blogs and websites she had subscribed to.
She could watch the child she didn’t have any longer progressing.
Twenty-five weeks. Twenty-six weeks. Twenty-seven.
And nobody knew what to say. A few cards from colleagues, meals sent by her sister-in-law in the aftermath, and then, the entire world expected her to move on.
But the heartache was unbearable. The guilt unfathomable. Her mind ran through every scenario, what she could have done differently, what she must have done wrong . . . until her thoughts were just a nonstop hodgepodge of blame and what-ifs.
Did she take too much folic acid, or too little?
Should they have done the genetic testing sooner?
She even blamed herself for putting up the crib before the baby was born, fixating on an old Jewish wives’ tale that warned Jewish mothers against celebrating their pregnancies, lest the angel of death take notice and strike. She blamed herself, constantly.
Maybe if she had been a different person, she would have shared those thoughts and feelings with David.
But she couldn’t stand to watch him fall apart.
His grief pulled her into reality, forced her to confront it .
. . and she didn’t want to confront it. Who would want to confront it?
And soon, her grief turned to anger. At God.
At David. At her doctors. At the intake nurses at the hospital, asking over and over again if she wanted this child.
If she was terminating for any specific reason.