Finally, A Truth
The two-seater Toyota truck rushed through the darkness of early morning in Fayetteville, N.C. We were on our way to the hospital on Fort Bragg’s Army base. My pain made sitting up monumental, whimpering inevitable. I was aware of every centimeter of my body and yet, somehow, also entirely outside of myself. God, it hurt.
Two weeks earlier, I had shuffled down a hallway at the same hospital with a nurse and Jon, a man I recently, and unexpectedly, married. A man who was also the father of the unborn child I carried. The obstetrician’s office ordered us there after a second failed attempt to hear the baby’s heartbeat. A benefit of being pregnant in the Army, I suppose, is that all your care could be handled under one roof. The fluorescent lights raised the beginnings of a headache, and while I wanted to pretend that’s what had me on edge, I’d never been good at lying to myself.
The nurse eventually opened the door to a room that was dimmer, an unexpected relief. “Hop onto the table,” she directed me, “lie down all the way and pull your shirt up.”
This nurse. Her bedside manner was about as warm as the hospital room. But truthfully, I didn’t mind that much. I wasn't entering the room with any illusions of hope. I didn’t have a desperate need to hear positive news. Instead, I was a curious bystander to my own life. Like a National Geographic narrator, I could watch the outcome without any skin in the game: Here, we see a nineteen-year-old girl, pregnant even though she faithfully took her birth control. Married to the father in a shotgun ceremony in an attempt to do the “right” thing. Watch now as she steps into a room where a nurse will tell her if she is or is not having a baby after all.
The nurse shook a small, white bottle, the gel slapping inside as it moved up and down. The splurting sound of a viscous liquid filled the room as she squeezed it out onto my stomach. I flinched. God, it was cold.
“How far along are you?” she asked.
“The doctor said about 12 weeks.”
“And you’ve never heard a heartbeat?”
I glanced over at Jon and watched his eyes roaming the room, looking everywhere but at me. “Correct.”
“Well, let’s take a look and see what we can find.”
The ultrasound wand rolled slowly over my stomach. The nurse focused on the small, black, null space on the screen. Her silence stretched out over ages.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I can’t find a heartbeat either.” She paused before continuing with a slight catch in her voice. “The pregnancy looks smaller than it should be at this point, too. I don’t think the embryo is viable any longer.”
Part of me wished I could feel devastation hitting like a truck, felling me into a sobbing, quivering mess. But I cannot cry on demand, and no well of tears waited in my body to spring forth. Instead, this curious detachment continued in a twist of thoughts as I considered the nurse’s news.
Is there a reason to use the word embryo instead of baby?
Why, oh, why, did I rush into marriage?
What happens now? To me? To this relationship we built trying to make the best of a situation neither of us wanted.
“I’ll give you all a few minutes, and I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said. She stepped out of the room, closing the door with a soft click.
*
When she returned with the doctor, I learned that up to one in three women would have a miscarriage at some point in their lives. I learned about the term “missed miscarriage” and how it means a fetus is no longer alive, but the body does not recognize the pregnancy loss or expel the pregnancy tissue immediately. And I learned that I was expected to wait for my body to instigate a natural miscarriage; that I would have to walk around for days, and at any moment, my body would rebel against the pregnancy and start the process of miscarriage.
Jon and I returned to our tiny, two-bedroom rental house (that was never big enough for a family anyway) at the end of a cul-de-sac to wait. Morning after morning, I lay in bed while he got ready for work on the base. Since the doctor confirmed the miscarriage was coming, I had been on bed rest.
“Call me if you need anything.” Jon placed the phone on the nightstand before kissing my forehead. These were always his parting words as we waited for the clock to wind down on the pregnancy. I marveled at the idea that he couldn’t bring himself to say the word “miscarriage” out loud, as in, call me when the miscarriage starts.
“I will,” I replied as he left, my role complete in this repetitive morning routine.
He wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes when the first cramp hit me, a firebrand across my belly that left me gasping in surprise. A sticky wetness surged down my legs as I pressed the redial button on the phone.
“I’m turning around right now. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Jon said by way of an answer.
When he arrived, I was on the bathroom floor, where I had hobbled to save the bed from the blood. The pain pulsing through my abdomen made it impossible for me to sit, though. I was still in the pajamas I had been living in for the past week — Army grey sweatpants and a physical training t-shirt that surely needed a wash — as Jon half-carried me out to his truck. And we were off.
We blew through red lights, zigzagged around other cars, and arrived at the base’s hospital because it was too early for the doctor’s office to be open. When we pulled up to the entrance, I could no longer walk. Jon deposited me into a wheelchair, and we rolled into the ER to wait for a triage nurse. Wait, we did.
It felt like an eternity. Was my pain creating a hazy timeline, stretching out the minutes we sat there? Possible, but I didn’t think so because Jon grew more and more impatient. Finally, he walked back to the check-in desk for the third time, and his voice was no longer even or controlled. “When will we be seen?” he demanded of the woman on duty. “We’ve been here for nearly an hour. She’s bleeding everywhere! This is ridiculous!”
Curiously I wasn't upset.
Instead, I was surviving in that numbed place people find themselves after an extended time of hurting.
Instead, I was watching in fascination as the blood seeped farther and farther down the leg of my pants. They were crimson almost to my knees now.
Instead, I was improbably feeling guilty about how the staff would have to sanitize the chair I was sitting in. Maybe throw it away entirely.
Jon’s anger returned me to the world. “When will she be taken to a room, at least?”
“At this point, it’s better to take her downstairs to the OB office. They’re almost open,” was the reply.
Jon was in disbelief. I was relieved to have a place to go.
He rolled my wheelchair to the elevator, my body more slumping than sitting, my sweatpants covered in blood, no nurse or doctor in sight to help, and pushed the down button.
We waited again, but only a few minutes before the first person showed up to open the office. This kind soul hurried us into a room and administered an injection that finally numbed my pain.
After a while longer, we were free to go. You are one of the lucky ones! Your body did all the hard work, so no D&C is needed! I had no idea what a D&C was. I was just happy to be done with that place.
Back at the house again, Jon cleaned up two messes — the blood and informing anyone who needed to know what happened. Days passed, and sympathy flowers piled up. They made me feel a little squishy. I didn’t believe that I needed sympathy.
Becoming a mother at nineteen years old hadn’t been in my plans. I wasn’t sure that I ever wanted to be a mother, which was one reason I had taken birth control even before becoming sexually active. Somehow I had become the 1%. And I wasn’t sad to drop back down into the ranks of the other 99%. That wasn’t something I thought I could say out loud, though.
I stared at the latest flowers to arrive. The card said that they had a special meaning – something like a rebirth, hope for the future, or other nonsense. On the phone, my co-worker and one of the only other female soldiers in my unit, Gloria, went on and on about this idea. “I know it might not mean much now, but like the flowers, you have hope for the future, too. I’m sure you and Jon can try again, and everything will work out.” Her voice broke. Gloria had been quietly weeping since answering my call, an awkward one I made only due to societal expectations. “I can’t even imagine how you must be feeling. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Finally, a truth.
I believed that she literally couldn’t imagine the sense of relief I’d discovered as I lay on the OB table after receiving a shot that numbed my body. A numbness that finally allowed my brain to imagine what this turn of events meant for my future. How I wouldn’t have to be a teenage mother like my mother was, how I could go to college on my chosen timeline, and how I wouldn’t have to stay married to someone who was mostly a stranger to make ends meet. Right or wrong, there was one less hardship in my future now, something I was grateful for, and no one else seemed able to consider this possibility.
Gloria prattled on, and my thoughts turned to things no one mentioned: How in sadness you’re expected to hold a portion of everyone’s grief for them. How, somehow, you become the one responsible for helping others know how to interact with you. Also, what to do if you don’t actually feel sad about something everyone thinks should be sad. It seems that no matter what a woman feels after experiencing a miscarriage, it is never an easy process. And who can you talk to about that?
*
These memories are interrupted by the sudden click-clack of a receptionist’s keyboard, bringing me back to current times. Today I am twenty-five, long divorced, recently returned from six months backpacking in Europe alone, and slogging through the paperwork required for an annual exam at a new gynecologist. The soft whoosh of an air conditioner blows a quiet breeze that goose-pimples my skin. I wish for a sweater to wrap myself up in.
I’ve arrived at the part of the form that covers medical history, and two questions that go hand in hand (number of pregnancies? number of deliveries?) loom on the page, taking up more space than I’d like. I am zero for one. Or is it one for zero in this case? I think of all the things I would have missed in the past six years, of how different this life would be if I were one for one. And it feels very aggressive that I have to share such a multidimensional story in two small numbers.
With a feeling of dread for the conversation to come (You’re so young! We’re so sorry for your loss. Do you need any coping resources?) I carefully note my answers and move on to the next question.
-Tiffany Nieslanik
Tiffany Nieslanik has loved writing books since she could hand-stitch two pieces of cardboard together, cover it in whatever fabric was lying around, and fill it with notebook papers full of her imagination in written form. She spends her days as a content creator and community builder for companies and a mom to three young kids. She spends her evenings reading as many books as possible in a lifetime and continuing to write her own stories.