The Week That Sucked, Part 2

Please note: These events happened last March, nine months ago. You can read part one here.

Friday pm: “911 emergency, this call is being recorded.”

“Hi, my husband just slammed my two-year-old’s head into the stair ...”

“On purpose?”

“NO! No, by accident ...”

The dispatcher asked questions: Is he conscious? Is he alert? Is he vomiting? Then he gave instructions: Lay him down flat and wait for the EMTs to arrive.

Brian brought John into the family room, near the side entrance. When he laid him on the floor like the dispatcher said, John’s incessant screaming got even louder. Ben started crying too, he was horrified. Brian and I added to the chaos by freaking out ourselves, Brian yelling, me hyperventilating to the dispatcher. I stepped outside with the cordless so I could hear his reply to my heavy breathing.

“The EMTs should be there soon, any particular entrance?”

“Yes the side door I’m standing out here now is there anything else I should do while I wait?”

“Just make sure he’s breathing ...”

Oh my God, I thought. IS HE BREATHING? I threw open the door to the family room and began hyperventilating to Brian. “Is he breathing Brian make sure he’s breathing IS HE BREATHING??!!...”

“What?” Brian asked, unable to hear me over John’s crying.

“Ma’am,” the dispatcher called to me. “If he’s crying, he’s breathing.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” I said. “I had a miscarriage today,” I offered, hoping to justify my lack of a level head.

Silence.

The EMTs arrived, causing Ben and John to cry even more. After a quick check, they told me I could pick John up, and as soon as I did he stopped crying. They instructed me to carry him to the ambulance, which I did. I stood at the back of the ambulance holding my 30lb two-year-old for about a minute before I realized no one planned to help me get in. “Could I get a hand here?" Silence. "Um, I had a miscarriage today...”

A pair of arms appeared and took John into the ambulance.

John sat frozen on my shoulder as we drove down the highway. After a while I said, “Are we riding in an ambulance, John?”

“Yes!”

“Is it fun?”

“Yes!”

At that moment, I knew he’d be OK. As soon as we got into the ER waiting room, he started toddling around, playing with toys. The doctor checked him out and found no ear bleeding, his eyes looked good. All we had to do was wake him through the night.

After we got home, Brian and I sat on the couch in a kind of stupor. Then I crawled up to my bed, set the alarm for 6 a.m. so I could get to the hospital in time for my D&C, and fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of ambulances and bleeding and my teeth falling out.

Saturday am: “If you would rather have a spinal block, since anesthesia makes you nauseous, it’s totally up to you,” the anesthesiologist offered.

“No thanks, just knock me out,” I said, not wanting to experience any more of this than I had to.

Dr. Curran appeared at the end of my bed. “I’m just going to do an ultrasound to make absolute sure there’s no heartbeat.”

“OK,” I said, feeling a flicker of hope that the ultrasound tech had screwed everything up yesterday. No such luck.

Dr. Curran looks about 30 years old, and she has short wavy brown hair. She was dressed like she was on her way to go sailing – pastel striped crew, white capris, tennis sneakers, pink hoodie -- but decided at the last minute to pop in and perform a dilatation and curettage. Taking into consideration her bedside manner, I guessed that she’d never had a bad thing happen to her. Ever. She’s youthful, she’s sporty, and she’s cold as a cadaver.

“Just so you know, the risks involved in the surgery include perforation of the uterus, hemorrhaging, emergency hysterectomy, infection, ripping, tearing, bleeding, death, perforation, laceration, rupture...”

“Um, I was told that this was the less-risky alternative for me, with my history of hemorrhaging. Is that true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Fine, then do it.”

In the recovery room, I asked for all the anti-nausea medicine I could get and sucked down some ginger ale. Diagonally across from me, a woman about my age lay with her hand in a cast. From the hallway, this loud alarm kept going off. Beep. Beep. Beep. The beeps started about 30 seconds apart and got closer and closer together -- beep beep beep beep beep -- until I thought I would run screaming into the hallway and start ripping cords out of the wall. Then it would stop.

I tried to sleep. The husband of the broken-handed woman came in with their daughter, who looked about five years old.

“Do they know I broke it?” she asked him.

“Yes, they know!” her husband answered, laughing.

“Oh my God.”

More laughter. “I called your boss and told him you wouldn’t be in this week.” He spoke so loud that I figured he wanted us to hear every word. Us and the people next door.

“You what? Oh my God.”

Brian and I guessed she broke her wrist in a drunken binge at the company party, but we never found out for sure. Their daughter sat on the floor at the foot of my bed, playing with something (on the floor, at the hospital!). She went over to her parents and spoke to them in a soft, whiny voice.

“She’s OK, she’s just upset,” the husband said. The little girl went back to the floor. Then I heard her crying. Her dad walked over.

“Did your stomach hurt this morning?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"Is that why you didn’t want to eat breakfast?”

"Yes."

I sat up to catch a glimpse of the girl on the floor, not playing, but leaning over a trash can, spit oozing out of her mouth. I threw myself back on my pillow and looked at Brian. “If I get the stomach flu I’m going to fucking kill someone.”

The nurse came in. “That girl has the stomach flu!” I snitched.

“Oh, I can’t comment on the patients ...”

“Not a patient, that girl,” I said, tilting my head in her direction.

“Oh, what are they thinking?” the nurse hissed. “They shouldn’t even bring her in here.”

“She was on the floor, holding a trash can," I added. "Please, can I just get some more nausea meds so I can get out of here?”

I laid my head back and started to doze off. Just as sleep started to come: beep ... beep ... beep ...

“Ok, that’s it. I’m leaving. NOW.”

“You can’t leave if you’re nauseas,” the nurse said.

“I can’t leave if I’m nauseas? Are you kidding me? I’ll be here until tomorrow. I’m leaving, NOW.”

Saturday pm: At some point, we had a snow storm, so I sent Brian into the back yard with the boys to make a snowman, the last of the season. I leaned over the kitchen sink with my Canon point-and-shoot and snapped a few pictures. I looked at the flowers on the counter and fought the urge to throw them in the trash. I stuffed the papers from the hospital into a drawer, and tossed my Kathy Smith Pregnancy Workout video down the laundry shoot. Reminders, not good.

All evening I lay on the couch. Off and on, the boys snuggled with me. That was the only thing that brought me an ounce of comfort. At bedtime, Ben couldn’t fall asleep so he came downstairs and again curled up with me on the couch. He fell asleep on me, for the first time in forever. It felt like a gift.

Later, I sat on the couch and Brian sat on the floor. We watched some stupid show. I started weeping, and listing all the reasons I was so sad. No newborn for the holidays. No baby this year. This whole year would suck. Every month I would think of where I was in my pregnancy and feel the loss. The holidays would suck. Not having my baby with my two friends who were due the same week as me would suck. For the first time, I had friends pregnant at the same time as me, and now this.

I kept going until I made Brian cry, then I felt guilty. We went to bed. Despite the sadness, we felt lucky to have our health and that we could try again. We both had a renewed sense of gratitude for our two boys. I went to sleep and dreamt of holding them tight, forever and ever.