“Steven. I’m late.” I could feel these whispered words echo in the hollow of my ear, reverberating with hope and a little fear. It was the week between Christmas and New Years in 2009. My wife, Jenn, and I were visiting my family in northern Indiana. I was not prepared to consider the possibility of becoming a parent. Jenn and I had only been married for a little over a year. I thought we would wait at least 5 years before we started trying for a child.
We told my sister that we had to drive to the store at midnight to buy some antacids for my stomach. We were young enough then, and so were my siblings, that no one had a bottle of antacids as a permanent fixture in their medicine cabinet or sitting on the nightstand next to the bed welcoming them to the comfort of a good night’s sleep. Jenn and I held hands during the drive to Target, where we bought a pregnancy test and a bottle of Tums. The bottle of Tums was a lie. We walked back to the car and then held hands during the drive back to my sister’s house. We were hopeful.
When we arrived back at my sister’s house, we took the pregnancy test out of the Target bag while we were still in the car. I put the test in my coat pocket, and I threw the receipt from Target away in the trash in the garage. We crept into the house and tiptoed back to the room where we were staying. Everyone was asleep. Jenn took the pregnancy test and went to the restroom. A few seconds later she unlocked the door to the restroom, and I went inside to join her. We sat on the countertop, next to the sink, hunched over the little stick waiting to see our fate. I was balancing awkwardly, half in the sink and half on the actual countertop. We did not speak. We barely breathed.
One pink line appeared. We looked at each other. Surprising myself, I breathed out a frustrated sigh. I had not realized how hopeful I was until then. I started to stand up, thinking we were not pregnant, when Jenn put an arm on my chest. She told me she read that sometimes the second line takes a little longer to appear. We continued sitting there. I felt defeated. A pink dot appeared slowly next to the first line. It became splotch, then blossomed into a line all of its own. Jenn squealed and jumped up. I squealed too as I fell into the sink. Jenn looked back at me with a big smile on her face and put a finger to her mouth. I stood up, and we hugged. Then we danced back to our room and had a hushed conversation about how we needed to get confirmation before we told anyone else. That night we lay in bed together, in a dark room, centimeters apart, with our eyes closed, wide awake.
The next morning we woke up early even though we had barely slept. We spent most of the night researching where we could go to get the pregnancy confirmed, so we could tell our families as soon as possible. The only place we had found was a Planned Parenthood. We were there when the doors opened. Jenn headed back into the doctor’s office, and a half hour later we were told we were having a baby. We rushed out of the Planned Parenthood and went right back to Target, so we could buy some baby clothes. We bought two onesies that said, “#1 Grandkid” to give to my mom and Jenn’s parents as a way to surprise them. Our hearts were pounding.
We drove quickly back to my sister’s house and told my mom that we had a gift for her. We made sure all of my siblings were there to see it. My family was incredibly happy. We made an unscheduled trip to Jenn’s parents house that afternoon to pull the same stunt. Her family was incredibly happy too. Without a care for privacy, we posted on our social media that we were having a baby. We wanted to share our excitement with everyone we knew.
Once we were back at our house, we began rearranging our spare room to be a nursery. We started looking at school systems and planning where we wanted to move for our kid. I started looking for a new job that would pay better. Life felt invigorating. Then one night around midnight, I felt my whole body shaking.
“Steven. Wake up. I’m bleeding.”
These whispered words echoed in the hollow of my ear, ripping me apart. I bolted upright and held Jenn in my arms. “Lay down, Jenn,” I cried. “Put your feet up.” I got up, then picked her up and moved her to the bed. I propped her feet up on pillows, and then I massaged her feet and rubbed her legs. I could not hold back the tear. They were running down my face and all over the sheets. Jenn finally told me to lay down and to try to get some sleep, because this could just be spotting. I lay next to her on the bed for thirty minutes, eyes wide open.
I finally built up the courage to ask, “Is the bleeding getting any better?”
“No. I think it’s getting worse.”
“Fuck.”
“Try to get some sleep,” Jenn said. “I’ll call the doctor’s office and see what they say.”
I stayed with her and frantically prayed. It started out simple. I just repeated over and over again, “Please, don’t let this happen.” After ten minutes, I checked in with Jenn to see how she was doing. She was in a lot of pain and was starting to have contractions. My prayer changed to bargaining. “Don’t take this baby away from us. Take me. I don’t deserve to be here, but the baby’s innocent. Take me. Just stop the bleeding. Stop the pain. Don’t let this happen.”
The tears would not stop.
Sometime before the sun rose, I dressed my wife and then I dressed myself. I walked her out to our car, opened the passenger side door, and helped her inside. Then I walked slowly around the car, trying not to slip on the ice, and entered the car on the driver’s side. Jenn was in a lot of pain.
We drove to the Emergency Room. We checked in and then waited for an hour to be admitted. The pain was getting worse for Jenn. Once admitted, a nurse came back to ask us questions about why we were there. Every question seemed to be pointed at trying to figure out if we were drug addicts. Throughout the questioning the pain for Jenn just got worse and worse. The only other time I had seen her in so much pain was a year earlier when she had a kidney stone that also had caused us to make a trip to the ER in the middle of the night. Both times I held her hand while she squeezed so hard my fingertips turned white. I wanted to hold her, but while the nurses were helping her, all I could do was hold her hand. No matter how hard she squeezed and how badly it hurt, I would not let go. I hoped my hand was absorbing some of her pain.
A little while later, Jenn and I were taken to a different section of the hospital to have an ultrasound. An elderly male doctor entered the room. He did not talk much. After Jenn situated herself in a chair next to the ultrasound machine, we both looked at each other with desperate eyes, trying to muster up some courage. We both knew we were about to find out, for the first time that night, whether or not the baby was alive. We grasped each other’s hands, whispered prayers falling from our lips on a sterile floor.
The doctor pulled out a wand with a cord that connected it to the ultrasound machine. Then he produced a small package of lube. He opened the lube and squirted it on the wand, then he told Jenn she would feel a little pressure. With those words barely out of his mouth, he moved the wand up into my wife and her eyes bulged with discomfort. The doctor moved the wand around without speaking while I watched the screen, hoping to see some sign of life. Jenn watched my face for a sign of what it held, afraid of being sucked into the emptiness of that screen.
“There’s no heartbeat,” the doctor brusquely remarked. “What made you think you were pregnant?”
These words hit my ears like a sledgehammer. I wanted to yell, “The GODDAMN tests made us think we were pregnant! The missed period! The morning sickness! You asshole!” Instead of yelling those things, I just cried. Jenn cried too.
The doctor spent a few more minutes fiddling around with the wand. It was over though. He finally left the room, and Jenn and I just hugged each other and cried until the nurses came to wheel her back to the ER.
Later we would talk about how insensitive the doctor was. Later we would talk about how we were treated like drug addicts when we arrived. Later Jenn would pass a large blood clot, and leave the restroom pale, hollow, and defeated. Later we would tell our family over the phone what happened, and we would hear them cry through wet phone speakers. Later we would explain to countless friends that we had lost our baby, just seconds after they shouted out congratulations and threw their arms around us with toothy smiles plastered on their faces. Later we would go to counseling and try to figure out how we could ever be intimate together again when we knew it could end in so much heartache. Right then, we just gathered our things silently, signed the necessary paperwork, and then went home to lay down in a dark room, inches apart, with our eyes closed, wide awake.
