Out of nowhere, a stretcher appears. Stranger’s faces surround me as Jase lowers me onto the flat trolley and then I’m moving, watching the ceiling whizz past above me as I hear Jase and the medical staff try to communicate in broken English and Spanish. I hear sixteen weeks and blood. There is so much blood.
Before we make it wherever they’re taking me, I black out.
***
When I come to, I’m propped up on a hospital bed, and there’s a doctor hovered between my open legs. I come to with a start, trying to press my knees together, trying to remember what the hell is going on. My legs are trapped in stirrups, and I can’t figure out why.
Then it hits me. I’m bleeding. Everything hurts so bad, I’m in agony. Is it already too late?
A hand squeezes my shoulder softly and I turn my head sharply, locking eyes with a generically pretty woman, probably only a few years older than me, dressed in nurse’s scrubs. She’s got one hand on a portable ultrasound machine, the same kind the doctor used just a few weeks ago when we saw our baby’s strong, steady heartbeat and reedy legs that kicked and somersaulted.
“We’re just going to take a look at your baby, okay?” Her voice is kind, her accent thick. I nod vacantly.
I hike up my singlet, my panties already gone, my lap and knees covered by a green hospital sheet, to retain a little dignity, I suppose. The doctor stands and strips bloodied plastic gloves from his hands, glancing at the nurse and nodding before he leaves the room. She squeezes the cold stuff on my stomach, just like the doctor did a few weeks back, and presses the plastic thing onto my skin.
Jase enters the room, wearing green surgical scrubs. I frown at him quizzically for a moment before I realize he was covered in my blood before. They must have given him clean clothes to wear. He rushes to my side, his expression pinched.
“You’re awake,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head. I give him a brave smile and turn back to the screen. The pain is still here, still intense, but being somewhere where people know how to fix me tapers my hysteria dramatically. Everything will be okay, I chant to myself. It has to be.
On the screen, black and white materializes. It takes the nurse a few moments to locate the baby, floating in my womb. Nothing looks different than the other day, but everything is different. There’s no kicking legs, no rolling.
There is no movement at all.
“Do you know what you’re having?” the nurse asks cheerfully. Distracting me.
“A girl,” I say tonelessly, Jase’s hand squeezing tighter around mine.
She nods, a look of intense concentration on her face. My mouth goes dry as I listen to the nothingness that surrounds us, the nothingness that says I can’t find a heartbeat.
“Is the sound on?” Jase asks, pointing to the screen. He must be thinking what I am - where is that noise, where the fuck is that gallopgallop that tells us our baby is okay?
The nurse gives us a tight smile, placing the plastic thing back into its tray. She doesn’t answer Jase. “Let me get the doctor,” she says, patting my hand reassuringly. “He’ll be able to get a better look.”
I swallow thickly as she leaves my peripheral vision and exits the room, my gaze locked firmly on the display, currently empty.
Jase side-hugs me, kissing the top of my head again. “The doctor will find it,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s trying to convince himself or me.
It doesn’t matter, though. I haven’t felt movement in hours, and there’s no heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. I’m not an idiot. I know what that means.
The doctor enters the room quietly, and he searches for a long time for the heartbeat of the baby I already know is beyond this world. Finally, he turns the machine off and turns to me with a grave expression.
“I am very sorry,” he says. “There is no heartbeat.”
“Well keep looking!” Jase yells across me. I squeeze his hand, pull him down to me. As our eyes meet, I give my head a little shake, my lips quivering, and I pull him to me. A strangled cry comes from Jase, breaking my heart all over again.
Jase pulls away from me and punches his fist into the wall next to the bed, making the room shake. I put a hand to my mouth to try and stifle the noise coming from deep inside me, a noise between a sob and a scream.
Our baby is dead. Our baby is gone.
I thought finding out our baby had died inside me was the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me, but I was wrong.
Because she had passed away, her little heart still, but she was still inside me. And somehow, she had to come out.
“Your waters broke with the bleeding,” the doctor informs me, peering at me as he holds a surgical mask over his chin. “You’re in labor. We’ll give you something for the pain.”