Bend (16 page)

“Secrets?” I ask, relieved that she’s changed tracks.

“You’ve never heard of it? Oh, my God, you’re missing out. It’s like a Tupperware party but with sex toys. It’s so much fun. You’ll love it.”

“Okay.” That’s the night before I drive up north for Grandma’s party, but that doesn’t matter. If there’s alcohol, I just won’t have any—or much. “I’ll be there.”

We finish up our meal and head back to work. I spend the entire drive wondering how to ask Jay to come with me on that trip. A few weeks ago, it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but things are different now. I don’t actually
want
to ask him, I realize. Somehow I know in my gut that he’s going to get weird about it and ask all kinds of questions I don’t want to answer.

Then again, maybe it’s a nonissue, since it’s possible he’s decided to disappear from my life.

Suddenly, asking him to go with me to my grandma’s party doesn’t seem all that terrible. Relatively speaking.

Angela pulls around the back of our office building, but after parking, she leaves the engine running. I look at my phone. Ten minutes left of our lunch break.

“Why friends with benefits?” She looks at me sideways, her nails tapping on the steering wheel.

I groan inwardly. Should’ve known she wouldn’t let it go. Trying to deflect, I reply, “Why do you want him as your boy toy?”

Her lips are twisting. “No, seriously.”

I stay mum. But she stares at me for so long that I finally give in and grind out, “What?”

“You sound like me. Why’s that?” Her eyes are dead serious now. “Who was he? High school boyfriend?”

All right, fine. I could pretend I have no idea what she’s talking about, but that seems self-defeating. With a sigh, I admit, “College.”

“What did he do?”

“Cheated on me.” With Sarah French. Shy, quiet, blushing Sarah. I clench my hand around the handle on my purse.

“Pretty bad, huh?” Angela asks, her voice unusually soft.

I give a nod. “He was my first…everything. First serious boyfriend. First time I was in love. Like, actually
in love
. Picturing wedding bells, kids, grandkids—happily ever after. I thought I’d found my soul mate.”

I also gave him my virginity. And he made it a perfect experience—nothing like all the horror stories about your first time.

Angela lets out a loud sigh. Turns off the car engine and unbuckles her seat belt. “Well, I’d tell you that’s no reason to give up, and I’d be right. But I’m the wrong person to be saying it to you.”

I meet her eyes from across the car. The corners of her mouth dimple, and I smile back and say, “Thanks.”

If we didn’t need to go back into the office now, she’d probably dig for more details. Hopefully by our next lunch break together, she’ll have forgotten about it. And the reason I’m wishing for that is not because it’s too painful to talk about.

I don’t want to discuss Matt Nolan because I never think about him, I don’t give a shit about him, and he sure as hell has nothing to do with my life choices right now.

Jay is wrong about that, and now Angela is, too.

“How are you feeling today, Tricia?” I ask as I enter, carrying my notebook computer, into the exam room with its soft pastel walls covered in newborn photos and informational posters about birth control and STDs.

A high-risk obstetric patient of Dr. Crane’s, Tricia Michaelson is here for her thirty-seven-week visit. She’s a cherub-faced woman in her late thirties with shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair, and she’s sitting at the end of the exam table, one hand resting on her enormous belly and the other holding in place the paper draped from waist to knees.

“Oh, just peachy,” comes her mildly sarcastic reply after I shut the door.

I give her a sympathetic smile before crossing the room to set my computer down on the counter. “The last few weeks are tough, but you’re almost there.”

“I know,” she says while I look over her chart on the screen, plucking a pair of latex gloves out of the box on the counter. “He hasn’t been kicking much today. It’s been nice to get a little break from that. Still, he’s been sitting on my bladder the whole time...”

“Yeah, baby doesn’t have much room to move in there anymore, so if he’s starting to move a little less, that’s perfectly normal,” I reassure her while reviewing the data Dr. Crane’s nurse, Emily, entered. Tricia’s weight, blood pressure, temperature, and urinalysis all look fine.

Pulling on the gloves, I do a mental rundown of what to do at a thirty-seven-week prenatal checkup: measure fundal height, listen for the heartbeat, evaluate the baby’s position, perform a pelvic exam to check the patient’s cervix, and do a swab to test for Group B strep. All of it straightforward. Her age is the only reason Tricia is considered high-risk, and so far her pregnancy has proceeded normally.

Since I don’t have a midwife certification, I deal mostly with gynecological cases. I have nothing against obstetrics in general—the year I spent in Labor and Delivery was a very rewarding experience—but I have no interest in a job where I have to be on call for deliveries. I want to leave work at the office and be able to actually enjoy my time off.

“Okay,” I tell Tricia as I move to her side, taking hold of her elbow for support, “let’s go ahead and have you lie down.”

“So Dr. Crane said something last time about scheduling an induction?” she says as I nudge her black maternity shirt up and above her taut and swollen abdomen. “She was kind of pushy about it.”

Stretching the soft tape measure from her pubic bone to the fundus, I grind my teeth together, clamping down on my gut response. Which is to ask her to please not let Dr. Crane bully her into hurrying things along for no reason other than the risk of interrupting the good doctor’s weekend tennis matches.

Since it’s not my business to give that kind of advice and I’d catch all kinds of hell if I interfered in any way, I tell Tricia in a tone that I hope sounds convincing, “Yeah, she likes to play it safe, especially with her high-risk patients. I’m sure she’ll bring it up again when you see her next week.”

After finding the fundal height spot-on at thirty-seven centimeters, I grab the fetal Doppler. I squeeze on some ultrasound gel and place the probe right in the middle of her abdomen. Slowly I start to slide it up toward her belly button and out to the sides, searching for the heartbeat. All I hear is the swishing static noise. I keep moving the probe around, but there’s still nothing—no rushing sound of fetal blood flow and no whistling placental sound. And no heartbeat.

My own heart gives a painful thump.
No.
No, this is absolutely not happening. I’m just doing something wrong. I have to be.

I look up at Tricia’s face. She’s watching me. Her eyes are round, brimming with questions. An ugly, sick feeling is twisting and coiling in my chest. I force myself to smile at her, hoping it doesn’t look as rigid and fake as it feels.

“The Doppler’s not picking up the heartbeat today,” I tell her lightly, and I think—I hope, I pray—that my voice isn’t in any way reflecting the panic that is slashing through me. “So we’ll try an ultrasound, okay?”

Tricia nods silently, still wide-eyed. There’s fear in her gaze but also trust, and it’s the trust that breaks me. I can’t do this. Not by myself. I need to find a physician. Someone who knows how to deal with this, because I can’t.

“Let’s give it a few minutes,” I say to Tricia. “Go ahead and stay there for now, okay? I didn’t see the result of your urine sample on the computer, so I’m going to go check on that. I’ll be right back.”

She nods. Feeling like I’m being remotely controlled by a foreign being, I give her hand a pat and flash another smile. Then I tear off my gloves and toss them in the trash before leaving the room, shutting the door quietly behind me.

At the nurse’s station, I find Angela in conversation with Dr. Borawski.
Oh, thank God.
Borawski is the senior physician in this office, and he’s a calm and soft-spoken man, always willing to help and answer questions.

He and Angela both look up as I approach them. My terror must be showing on my face, because Angela’s expression turns instantly to alarm. “Hey,” I say to the doctor, “I have one of Dr. Crane’s high-risk patients. She’s at thirty-seven weeks, and...I can’t find a heartbeat with the Doppler.”

“Did you do an ultrasound?” he asks.

“Not yet. I—”
I’m terrified, and I need help.
“I don’t have a ton of experience with this and would like a physician’s opinion. If you don’t mind.”

“All right,” he replies easily, gathering up the papers sitting on the tall counter in front of him. “Just give me a minute.”

He strides away down the corridor, and I’m left there with Angela. I clench my hands around the edge of the counter, closing my eyes and drawing in deep breaths. What the hell is wrong with me? I saw more than one stillbirth in L&D. It’s a horrific and harrowing thing to witness and assist in, but I always managed to keep my cool, at least while I was in the middle of the whole ordeal and needed to be a damned professional.

So why is this different?

Because I’ve never had to be the one to tell a woman the baby she’s carrying is dead. I’ve never been in charge in that kind of situation before. And Tricia isn’t even my patient, but I’ve still failed her. Left her in that room all alone. She’s probably terrified, racked with worry.

I don’t even know if I can go back in there.

“Hey,” Angela says, and I open my eyes and meet hers across the counter. She’s watching me gravely, her head tilted. Tears are pressing behind my eyes.

Reaching across the counter and putting a hand on top of mine, Angela says in a low, urging tone, “Go. Go in there and hold her hand. You can do this.”

I swallow hard. Give a quick nod. And do as she says.

I
wake up as the sun is going down, opening my eyes to find my apartment murky and gray from the waning light of late afternoon. My head feels stuffed with cotton, groggy and heavy and aching. The vacuum-like silence from my earplugs creates a sense of disconnect from the world, like I’m trapped inside myself.

Sometimes I see myself twenty years from now, still pulling night shifts in the ER and still hating this part of the job.

Then again, that’s not really the path I’m planning my life to take. Working in the aid camps run by Relief International will be anything but routine. And I won’t have to deal with people demanding that I give them antibiotics whenever they have the sniffles.