“It’s a small bear.”
Granted, that last one seemed unlikely, but I was mentally prepared for almost anything—anything except for what the doctor actually told us: That there was no heartbeat. That the baby was dead. That “these things happen for the best.” And this is when I broke. It wasn’t obvious from the outside. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I went numb, and then I realized that this was all my fault. If I’d gone to church, or believed in the right God, this wouldn’t have happened. The exam room door was the unlucky number that falls after twelve, and I’d wanted to ask for another room but had been too embarrassed to say why. If I’d demanded another room, the baby would still be alive. There were a million reasons why this was happening, and all of them were because of me.
I numbly followed Victor down the halls, and for the first time in my life I seriously considered suicide. I wondered if I would be fast enough to slip away from Victor before he noticed that I was gone. I wondered if the building was tall enough to kill me if I jumped, or if I’d just wake up, broken physically as well as mentally, in a hospital bed. I wondered what I could do to not have to ever deal with this, because I knew I wasn’t strong enough to come out whole on the other side. Victor seemed to sense that I was planning on running, or maybe he was just on autopilot himself, because he held on to my arm almost painfully, leaving me no room for escape. We went home, and while I waited to miscarry, I had Victor call everyone and tell them to never, ever mention this to me again. No flowers, no “I’m sorrys.” Nothing. Because I knew that the only way I could survive this would be to block it from my mind.
And that might have been easier to do except for the fact that I didn’t miscarry. I continued to carry the baby for another month and then I had a nervous breakdown. I’m still not sure what triggered it, but my coworkers found me crying hysterically in my office. I didn’t even recognize the sounds as human, and I remember wondering what that horrible noise was, until I realized it was me, keening uncontrollably until I finally exhausted myself. Victor took me home, and my doctor eventually realized I needed this to end immediately and performed the surgery. There were complications from the procedure, and I ended up having a painful, hemorrhaging miscarriage that night. A week later I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and put on an antidepressant that made me suicidal. Which is not really how an antidepressant is supposed to work, turns out. Victor found me trawling online for suicide message boards, pulled my Internet access, and got me on another drug that worked. My psychiatrist worked with me until I was eventually able to leave the house without having a breakdown, and then he mailed me a letter telling me that he was retiring suddenly, which I’m pretty sure is code for, “You’re too fucked up even for me. I’m totally breaking up with you.” But that was fine, because I was better and stronger and ready to try again.
And then I got pregnant again.
And then I lost it again.
I switched doctors and demanded to be tested for everything in the books. That’s when I found out that I had antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, which I could barely even spell. I went home and looked it up on the Internet and it basically said, “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE,” but then my doctor told me that it wasn’t that big of a deal. It’s a rare autoimmune disease that causes blood clots, and worsens during pregnancy. I told her that I was pretty sure that I also had polio and testicular cancer, and she said that I wasn’t allowed to read WebMD anymore.