Close Call
THIRTY-FOUR
The paparazzi wanted a great big Hayden, and I delivered.
I was five foot two, carrying a six-foot-six man’s baby, and while many women’s pregnancies show just around their bellies, my entire body joined in the game.
I put on forty pounds by my eighth month (mind you, a totally normal weight gain) and they spread from my face to my chest to my belly to my ankles.
There are women who radiate health, joy, rainbows, and unicorns when they’re pregnant, and then there was me.
I felt like I’d eaten the rainbows and unicorns and was going to vomit them up every single day.
There was no way the writers on Nashville could work around my pregnancy, so they made it part of the plot.
In season three, Juliette found out she was pregnant after she cheated on her devoted yet boring boyfriend, Avery, with the handsome, exciting, and much older Deacon.
Because of that, she couldn’t figure out who the father was, leaving a massive cliffhanger for the next few episodes.
I thought the whole plot worked, but that may have been because I’d grown up on soap operas, where everyone and their mother can’t figure out who the father of their baby is.
Regardless, fans and critics loved Juliette’s pregnancy, figuring it was just one more twist in a twisty plot that kept twisting.
I hated it, though. Juliette’s difficult, unexpected pregnancy was clearly the product of Nashville’s writers rejiggering my personal life and making it a plot device.
Years before, my friend and Kaya’s future godmother, Lisa, had adopted a gorgeous white pit bull called Kaya.
I always loved that name, so when I found out early in the summer that I was having a girl, Wlad and I settled on it.
(No, Wlad, I didn’t name her after Bob Marley’s album, Kaya, where “kaya” really means “weed.” But I’m glad you believed that for all of five seconds.) Kaya was due in December, so my assistant and newest best friend, Lanie, decided to plan and execute a Halloween-themed baby shower in Miami.
Wlad couldn’t be there, but his guilty conscience made him more than generous, so he rented a massive house and a private jet and lined up a chef to feed us for the weekend.
Lanie bought decorations, party games, and a set of golden temporary tattoos that were trendy at the time, and I planned out elaborate drink menus, not caring if I couldn’t party with my friends.
After feeling sick, tired, and bloated for most of my pregnancy, I was ready to let loose with the friends I loved most in the world, and this shower was as much for them as it was for me.
A few days before my shower, I made a routine visit to my ob-gyn.
As I lay back on a table, the doctor squeezed gel on a sonogram wand, exactly as he had during every visit before.
Then he placed the device on my belly and moved it around slowly.
I could feel Kaya’s body push against it, and I could see her little arms and legs kicking on the ultrasound screen.
“Whoa, she’s really moving,” I said. “Only a little longer, baby girl.”
All of a sudden, my doctor frowned as he positioned the wand on one particular spot.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked.
My doctor moved the wand around my belly a few more times, then set it down.
“We need to talk,” he answered. “I don’t want you to worry, but there may be something going on.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I just saw her wiggling all over the place on the ultrasound.”
My doctor moved from the foot of the table to the side.
“We’re going to have to confirm this with a radiologist, so I’m going to give you a referral.
But, to me, it looks like your daughter’s arms and legs aren’t growing as fast as the rest of her body is.
Again, I’m not the final word. That comes from your radiologist. But I always prefer to be honest when something looks off.
” My doctor smiled and patted my leg. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
I turned and put my feet on the ground, then slowly untied my hospital gown. If I stood up too fast, I worried I might pass out from shock.
“So what are the chances there’s something wrong with her? Fifty-fifty? One in ten?”
“I can’t answer that,” my doctor said. “But the radiologist will be able to.”
I sighed and closed my eyes as the memory of the robin’s broken eggs flooded my brain.
I didn’t tell anyone about the sonogram except for Wlad and the friends I’d known the longest. I didn’t want to ruin my own shower just because I was tied up in knots, and I also didn’t want anyone to spend the entire trip worrying about me.
“The show has to go on,” I said to Wlad, putting my natural optimism front and center while at the same time exercising my people pleaser muscles. “People are counting on me.”
My friend Lisa and I decided to run some last-minute errands the day before our flight took off.
Just after breakfast, I lowered my big body into the driver’s seat of my car, passed through my house’s gates and onto the road, and sped onto the ramp leading to a stretch of Nashville’s I-40.
As I merged into traffic, I noticed a pickup truck riding high a few cars ahead of us.
A tarp semi-secured by rope flapped from the back, lifting down and up as it exposed a massive pile of junk underneath.
“Let’s get around this,” I said to Lisa, sensing danger and putting on my turn signal so I could move into the middle lane.
“We’re never making it to the store at this rate,” Lisa said, taking the words right out of my mouth.
Traffic slowed, then sped up, and soon we were going about forty.
I didn’t want to get too close to the junk-filled pickup, though, so I hung back.
It slowed down, too, and before I knew it, it was right in front of us.
A few minutes later, the tarp blew up again, and I noticed a long metal object poking out.
I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I didn’t feel right, so I put on my turn signal, anticipating when I could make my move.
All of a sudden, a long, pointy shovel propelled itself out of the back of the truck and began soaring through the air like a football.
Its blade stood straight up, then immediately flipped so its handle was on top.
Time slowed to a crawl, and I watched the shovel spin upside down once, then twice.
Lisa was silent. But my brain lit up and caught fire.
If there’s anything Mom taught me to do, I thought, it’s drive like Mario Andretti on steroids. Let’s do this.
My survival instinct kicked in, and I began judging the seconds we had left.
One second to look in the rearview mirror.
Nope. I couldn’t slam on the brakes because there was a car right behind us.
Two seconds: scan to the right, then left.
Forget it. There were cars on both sides.
Three seconds: the shovel flipped handle down, swinging just a little bit closer, then lower.
Now!
I jerked the steering wheel right as the car next to me inched forward, and we moved halfway into the right lane as Lisa and I both lurched to the side in our seats.
“We made it!” I shouted as the shovel clanged onto the road just behind my car and my heart started beating again. “We’re safe!”
I was lying to myself. Maybe Lisa and my car were out of danger, but I had a few reasons not to feel that way.