“You’re going to have to face it.” He wondered if that was why she was sick, because she was refusing to accept it. “May I run some blood tests on you, Alex? Even a simple blood test might tell us a lot. You’re probably anemic.” She was thirty-two years old, and otherwise healthy, but she looked terrible and she knew it, and she didn’t sleep at night, watching him. She was afraid he would slip away or need her so she barely slept.
“You can do a blood test, but I’m fine,” she said stubbornly. “And don’t say anything to Miles about it.” The doctor nodded, ran a blood panel on her, and had the results the next day. He called Alex into his office while Miles was being checked, and she left him with the nurses. The doctor looked at her seriously and asked her to sit down.
“I think we have a situation here, and I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. The blood test tells me that you’re anemic, but there’s an underlying issue.” He gazed straight at her. “You’re pregnant.”
“I’m what? I can’t be.” Knowing how sick her husband was, the doctor wondered if it was somebody else’s baby. People did strange things in stressful situations, and he knew they weren’t married, although he could see how much she loved him. “That’s not possible,” she said, looking vague.
“When was your last period?” he asked her, and she thought backward.
“I don’t know, it was after the diagnosis, or right before. I don’t think I’ve had one since. And that was four and a half months ago, but I’ve always been irregular.”
“Were you and Miles sexually active then?”
“For the first couple of months, but not in the last three or four, he’s been too sick.”
“So if you’re pregnant with Miles’s baby, you could be four or five months pregnant. Is your abdomen enlarged?”
“I thought I was bloated from stress,” she said with tears in her eyes. How could she have a baby now, if Miles was dying? How could she bring up a child without him?
“You need to see your gynecologist as soon as possible to figure out how pregnant you are. I won’t say anything to Miles about it.”
“Please don’t, he’ll worry about me.” She went back to Miles then and said nothing about the test. The only questions were how pregnant she was and what she was going to do about it. She couldn’t have a baby now. She’d never even wanted one before.
She called her gynecologist the next day and asked for an emergency appointment. When she went in, her doctor had no trouble feeling the pregnancy. They did a sonogram in her office and Alex cried as the doctor watched the screen.
“You are pregnant, Alex. The computer says you’re four and a half months pregnant, the baby is due in late May, early June, and the heartbeat is strong.” Alex could hear the rhythmic beep of the monitor, as the doctor turned the screen so she could see it. The baby looked fully formed, and she could see its heart beating. “It’s too late for a normal abortion. Given your situation now, if you want one, I’ll apply to the hospital board for a psychiatric justification, that you are not mentally strong enough to have the baby. I’ll do that if you want.” Alex thanked her as tears poured down her cheeks. “Do you want to know the baby’s sex?” Before she could stop herself, Alex nodded and the doctor told her. “It’s a little girl.” It only made Alex cry more. If she had an abortion now, she would know she had killed a baby girl. And she didn’t want Miles to know about it. He was dealing with enough, fighting to stay alive. If he were to see this baby born, he would have to live till June. Four and a half more months of agony and treatment for him. And she had nothing to give a baby now, she was giving every ounce of love and energy she had to him.
She left the doctor’s office and went home to drive Miles to get another transfusion. He felt better afterward, as he sometimes did. She took him out to lunch in a wheelchair, and he picked at a salad while she ate nothing. She was feeling sick, and all he wanted to do was go back to bed. While he slept that afternoon, she thought about their baby, trying to decide whether or not to have the abortion. It was a living, moving being inside her. How could she kill it? It looked like a baby on the screen.
By sheer bad luck, Rose called her that afternoon and asked if she had any news about when she would finish the book she had been working on when Miles got sick. Alex explained to her that there was no way she could work on the book. Miles was in no condition for her to leave him for a second, she couldn’t concentrate or write, and now she was having health problems herself.
“Nothing serious, I hope,” Rose said, sounding concerned.
“No, just stress. This is very hard.” Alex knew she wouldn’t get any money if she didn’t deliver the book.
“I think if this goes on much longer,” Rose said regretfully, “your publisher is going to want some money back, until you have time to finish the book, and it doesn’t sound like you have time for that right now.”
“How much will they want?”
“A million dollars,” the first payment of the advance on her last contract. The truth was that she had no idea when she could work again. Her priority was Miles. Alex had the money in the bank, but it was going to eat most of her savings. She had invested some money in the stock market, and it hadn’t done well and she’d lost half of it. She still got royalties periodically, but the big money was always the advance. And the farm continued to chip away at her savings too.
“I’ll pay them if they want it,” Alex said nobly. She couldn’t work now. There was no question of it. She wanted to take care of him.
“Let’s wait till they ask,” Rose said kindly. “Take care of yourself, Alex.”
“I need to take care of Miles,” she said firmly.
“Take care of both of you,” Rose said, and Alex thought, “All three of us.” There were three of them, whether Miles knew it or not.
She spent two weeks agonizing over the decision, and lay in bed awake every night after he went to sleep. She could feel the baby moving, now that she knew what it was.
Miles had a bad reaction to a treatment two days later, his heart stopped and they started it again and kept him in the hospital for three days. He rallied and they let him go home, and at some point while Alex watched them use the defibrillator on him, and when he opened his eyes and smiled at her, the decision was made. She wanted his baby. She told him about it that night. He looked panicked.
“Can you manage that right now? I don’t want you to get sick. How can you be pregnant now? I can’t do anything to help you.” Tears of frustration and sadness ran down his cheeks, and hers.
“I want our baby. I love you,” she said, sobbing.
“I love you too. You’re a brave woman.”
“We’re brave together.” She put his hand on her belly and he could feel the baby move, and he smiled through tears of joy this time, and then he kissed her.
—