squinting at the screen like it’s the first time she’s ever done an ultrasound before.
Obviously this is my first time, but I feel like this is taking a lot longer than it should.
“Is everything all right?” my mother asks.
“Um.” The tech hesitates. “Why don’t I grab Dr. Robbins? I’ll be right back.”
She leaves in a hurry and I look to my mom.
“What’s that about?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, sweetheart. Maybe she’s new?”
The gel on my belly is cold and wet and I haven’t moved an inch since she left. A couple minutes pass before the door swings open, and in walks the tech and a woman with kind eyes the color of violets and shiny silver hair that curls in where it hits at her shoulders.
“Brighton, hi. I’m Dr. Robbins,” she says. Her voice is sweet and mild, but she doesn’t smile. “Let’s take a look and see what’s going on, shall we?”
I feel like that’s not the kind of thing an obstetrician would say to a patient unless there was a problem, but I wait in silence and let her do her job.
Dr. Robbins squirts more jelly on my stomach and moves the transducer from side to side, trying to get a look from different angles. A couple of times she pushes so hard it hurts, but I don’t say a word.
A few times she presses a button on the machine and pictures begin to print out.
“Okay,” she says a minute later, handing the transducer to the tech. Flipping on the room lights, she takes a seat on a rolling stool. A pained expression paints her face and the tech hands me a warm washcloth to clean my belly. “I’m so sorry, Brighton, but it appears that you have an ectopic pregnancy.”
She begins to explain what it is and how it happens, but I tune her out.
“So we’ll schedule your procedure as soon as possible,” she says. “We’ll go in laparoscopically and remove the gestational sac. The sooner we get in there, the better the odds are that we can save that fallopian tube.”
The doctor apologizes once more and tells me to call if I have any further questions after I leave. The tech hands me my file and tells me to check out at the desk around the corner, and that they’ll call me with my surgery appointment time by the end of the day.
My mother walks me out a moment later, and as we head to the checkout desk, I glance down at my file where the doctor has marked the appropriate diagnostic code for today’s visit.
ECTOPIC PREGNANCY – NONVIABLE.
Nonviable.
Like Madden and me.
How poetic.
We finish checking out a few minutes later and head to the parking lot. My mother is abnormally quiet today. Either she doesn’t know what to say or she’s still in shock from the initial discovery of “my situation.”
“Are you still going to work?” she asks. “After … what just happened?”
“I am.” I don’t have a choice. I’m three weeks into this job.
“You’re a lot stronger than I give you credit for,” she says, her smile bittersweet as she rubs my arm. “I’ll see you tonight?”
I nod, and she wraps her lithe arms around me before heading toward her car on the other side of the parking lot.
It’s a fifteen-minute drive from here to work, but by the time I get there, I have no recollection of having driven at all.
This entire morning has been a strange blur. The future I’m looking at now is very different from the one I was looking at when I first woke up a couple of hours ago. It’s funny how quickly life can change.
While this pregnancy was unexpected, the tiniest part of me was growing more excited with each passing day … even looking forward to meeting the little babe when the time came.
And now … they’re going to go in and remove it.
Like it’s some kind of tumor.
I head into the lab, stomach swirling, head pounding, heart breaking.
My veins flood with a cocktail of grief, relief, and then guilt. When I board the elevator to my floor, I feel nothing at all.
For the rest of the day it comes in waves—one minute I feel everything.
The next minute I feel numb.
Some minutes I don’t know what I feel.
It’s almost like I’m broken—like that butterfly Madden caught as a child and set free.
Forty-Six
Madden
* * *
Another full weekend of silence.
I won’t say I don’t deserve it, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Even