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A Devastating Poison
Jake hoversover me protectively as I retch into the toilet, gathering my hair from my face so it doesn’t mingle in with the puke. When I’m certain I’ve gotten it all out, I move to lie on the floor. Revel in how soothing the chill of the hardwood feels against my cheek.
Jake lies in front of me. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “You okay?” he asks softly.
I nod.
“Too much fun tonight?”
I hesitate. Something like that. I can still tell him. Spill everything that happened. Three weeks after we slept together, I took a pregnancy test. I’m on birth control, so my periods are usually regular. This one was off. Was it stress? Did I need to eat better? The pregnancy test was more of an assurance, really. Surely, I wasn’t pregnant. I’d never had a scare before. After all, the pill is ninety-nine percent effective.
I was in the one percent.
I cried for a week straight. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. And I knew Jake probably wasn’t ready to be a parent either. How was I going to tell him? I also feared being met with swift and vicious judgement; that I only got pregnant to latch onto him and syphon money.
I then waffled between abortion or having it secretly. Did he really need to know? Did I want that kind of attention—a Nascar driver’s baby momma? Maybe I should just take care of it and act like it never happened.
But something inside me couldn’t do that. I couldn’t knowingly erase something that was part me, part him. And so, I feebly decided to tell him. Had worked up the fragile nerve to hunt down his manager’s number.
Then Mother Nature decided for me, and our baby was no more.
I wasn’t prepared for the devastation that would bring over something I wasn’t sure I wanted in the first place. I also wasn’t prepared for the hormonal rollercoaster it put my body through. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. The thought of red wine, specifically Merlot, since that’s what I remember drinking the night I conceived, made me want to puke…and it still does. It would figure that just as I had hope of sharing this with the one who helped me create him…or her, I was back to being alone in my suffering.
Not that Daphne wasn’t there for me. She was. But there’s a singular kind of aloneness for those of us who’ve miscarried. Something that, despite their good intentions and constant checking-in, they simply cannot share or empathize with. They hardly know the right thing to say…because there isn’t much to say.
She did the best she could for me though, and that’s all I could ever ask.
I’d be lost without her.
And now I’m here, still lost, on the floor of this poorly decorated bathroom facing the one person who I’d once hoped could share all of this with me. But as we lie here breathing the same air, wondering where to go from here, I chicken out and let him think that’s all this is—I threw up because of the alcohol and not because I was so close to telling him about our child.
Maybe now’s not the best time anyway. He’s already lost so much. Is about to lose even more.
Another time, then…if it ever presents itself. Not that there’s ever a right time to tell someone that.
“Want to get into bed?” he asks, then makes sure to add, “To sleep.”
That makes me smile. “You’re not still turned on?”
“Oh, I’m really turned on right now.”
I utter a laugh.
“But I figure maybe we could just…chill for a little while.”
Good idea. “After I brush my teeth, though.”
“I’ll get you some water.”
While he grabsme something to drink, I brush my teeth, wash my face, and strip down, then slide into bed. It cradles me like a heavenly cloud and as soon as I settle in and allow my body to relax, exhaustion hits hard. I down half the glass of water Jake brings, then he settles in beside me. Gathers me into him until my head rests neatly against his shoulder. My eyelids struggle to stay open, so I allow them to shudder close.
“Sorry again about Ruby,” he whispers.
“It’s fine,” I whisper back. “You did warn me, remember?”
A pause. “That she would yell at you?”
“That I’d get the full experience.”
