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Story by Renee B. Rod

 

Tears streamed down her face, and liquid trickled down her thigh and dampened her sock.

"Oh my God! This better be pee!" Lily screamed.

But her bladder had not burst since she failed to rush to the toilet on the first day of pre-school. She had watched enough movies over the years to understand exactly what occurred.

"How could this happen?" She mouthed the words, but no noise emanated. "I'm only fourteen weeks pregnant," she whispered.

"Evan!" she shouted, as his snoring rivaled a freight train.

But he did not stir.

"Ouch!" he yelled. "Why did you poke me?"

"M-- My water broke," Lily stammered. "I need to get to the Emergency Room. I think our baby is gone."

Lily stared with glazed eyes out the car window. The mid-rise buildings merged into one continuous urban landscape, like a single frame of a movie. Her body trembled violently, and her veins pulsated wildly, as she tried to hold back the tears. Evan's head bobbed back and forth, as he fought to control the steering wheel. He clenched his teeth and did not utter a word.

Lily and Evan rushed into the waiting room and tripped over the receptionist's desk.

"I need to see a doctor," Lily insisted, as droplets ran across her nose.

"This is your lucky day," the receptionist declared. "It's so early in the morning that there are no patients waiting before you. Come this way."

Lucky? Maybe I'm wrong and the baby will be fine. That must be why Evan hasn't spoken or shown any emotion yet. I'm always jumping to conclusions.

"Hi. I'm Dr. Nussbaum. What seems to be the problem?"

"I'm fourteen weeks pregnant, and I think my water broke."

"Let's take a look at the ultrasound and see for sure."

Lily squirmed, as the doctor squeezed the frigid, wet gel onto her abdomen. Dr. Nussbaum focused on the screen, and her jaw dropped. Lily observed the doctor's expression, and tears cascaded down Lily's cheeks. Lily started to turn her head toward the machine, just like she had done for the last several weeks. The news had always been the same - the baby was healthy. But today Lily gripped the cold, steel rails of the exam table and glared at the ceiling tiles in preparation for a different outcome.

"The membrane ruptured, and too much amniotic fluid leaked out. Not enough remains to allow the fetus' lungs to develop and for the fetus to survive. I'm sorry."

Lily turned her head for one last glance. The tiny bean-like body glided gracefully inside her, as her baby's arm waved.

Lily mustered every ounce of strength, as her hands shook when she wiped her eyes. But fear paralyzed her. She took several quick breaths.

Will the doctor remove the baby this time? There is no way that I will carry around a dying baby again.

Lily was pregnant once before, and she and Evan glowed like the summer sun. Evan knew from the day he met Lily that he wanted her to be the mother of his child. His life would finally be complete, he often said, when he became a father. After hundreds of hormone shots and medical appointments, Lily became pregnant.

But the dream was short lived. The tiny corpse-like shell's heartbeat weakened daily, and this pierced Lily's own heart. The baby would eventually die within weeks. This news walloped Lily and Evan. But even more wrenching was that hospital policy prohibited the removal of the fetus as long as there was evidence of life.

Lily sobbed every day, as her stomach churned and her thoughts darkened. The waiting punched Evan's gut and sucked the air out of his lungs. A few weeks passed, and the heartbeat grew ever weaker, but the baby lived on. Lily made an unconscionable decision. She had prayed for so long to become pregnant, and now she had to pray for her baby's death. The next week the heartbeat stopped, and her prayer was answered.

"What happens now?" Lily inquired.

"We need to remove the fetus as soon as possible. I can get an OR in two hours," Dr. Nussbaum replied.

Lily exhaled, and for a quick moment, her mouth formed a small grin. But then reality set in.

"This was our last chance to get pregnant. We spent every penny on the invitro attempts. What could have caused my water to break so early in the pregnancy?" Lily bellowed.

"We don't know. It's extremely rare for this to occur in the second trimester. It's likely that an infection is the culprit," Dr. Nussbaum explained.

"Did I cause it?" Lily's eyebrows raised, and her mouth dropped open. "Maybe I wiped myself funny. Or maybe it was the mayonnaise I ate. Mayo has raw eggs, and perhaps I got listeria," Lily worried.

"No, it's nothing that you did," Dr. Nussbaum stated, as she shrugged her shoulders.

Lily read too much into the doctor's body language. Lily believed that she caused the tragedy.

Evan asked no questions and spoke no comforting words. He did not caress Lily's hand, as he did during the last miscarriage. He stared across the room in an attempt to avert her gaze. But she caught a glimpse of his eyes, which looked like sharp icicles.

"Can't you talk to me? If you are angry, please yell," she begged. "Maybe I should have sought treatments sooner. Maybe I should have avoided stress better. I don't know. I feel like it's my fault this happened," she wailed.

But Evan did not yell or cry. He fixated on the blood pressure gauge until the doctor took Lily to surgery.

Lily awoke from the anesthesia to find Evan in a catatonic state with his eyes focused on the small cracks in the plaster walls. She smacked her lips and snapped her fingers to get a response from Evan.

"I'm back from the dead and ready to go home now," she quipped.

"Okay. Let's get going," Evan announced.

Her mouth formed a quick, crooked grin, as she hoped that Evan would finally begin to share his feelings.

But on the drive home, a loud silence filled the air again. This shredded Lily's heart even more than the loss of their baby. She would have been happier if Evan shouted at her and blamed her. His empty eyes made her shudder.
"My insides are dead," he finally declared. "Our baby took my soul with it when it left this earth. I want to care, but I don't feel anything anymore."

Lily gasped. She lost not only their child today, but also her husband and her marriage. After five years, the hope of a child was the only glue that kept Lily and Evan together.

Her marriage protected her and provided security, just like the amniotic membrane protected and insulated the baby. And when her membrane ruptured and the baby could no longer survive, her marriage also broke, and Lily and Evan's bond was destroyed. Doctors could not repair the membrane, and she and Evan could not mend their marriage. An unrecognizable soulless individual stared back at her, and he would never again be the same.

Lily arranged the blinds and curtains so no ray of sunlight penetrated the bedroom window. The walls turned black, and shadows disappeared. Lily lay motionless in a fetal position, except when her body quaked from chills and frantic wails. She smothered herself under heavy blankets to create her own cocoon. Lily lost any sense of time, as each day merged into the next.

"I have nobody to talk to about what I'm feeling", she cried to an empty room.

Evan was the sole individual who knew what happened, and he would not speak to her. He went to work and returned home each night as if nothing changed. No one even knew about the pregnancy because it was still early. If she expressed her sorrow and pain to her mother, Lily would have received the standard "Keep your chin up" response that she was given after her first miscarriage. And her sisters and friends were too busy with their own kids and happy lives. Lily did not want to burden them, and they would not understand anyway.

Evan's car rolled to a stop, and he flung open the front door of the house. He tossed his briefcase onto the floor and dashed straight to the bedroom. He jarred Lily from her daily trance.

"It has been three days already. You're going to have to get out of bed eventually and go back to work," Evan shouted. "They'll believe you have the flu for only so long."

"I'm not ready yet," Lily snapped. "Even though this isn't difficult for you, it is for me."
"That's unfair," Evan quipped. "This has been just as hard for me. I just deal with it differently. I get on with my life and don't wallow like you."

"Since you won't let me talk about what happened, I have nobody else to turn to. So I'm trying to do the best I can, too," Lily barked.

"Why don't you go talk to a psychologist?" Evan suggested. "The nurse at the hospital gave me a name and number for you."

"For me? How do you know it wasn't meant for you?" Lily shot back.

"There's no way in hell I'm going to talk to a shrink," Evan proclaimed.

"Well, I certainly don't want to go either. You know I'm not big on sharing my feelings with someone I don't even know. I can't just waltz into an office and begin to tell my life story," Lily declared.

"Here, just take the name and number and think about it. It might do some good."
Evan shrugged his shoulders and slammed the door. Lily rocked back and forth and peered into the mirror next to the armoire. Her hand trembled, as she picked up the phone and began to dial.

Water and soap trickled down Lily's skin for the first time in five days. She even colored her cheeks. She did not want the psychologist to prejudge her. Lily always cared how others viewed her, even people who were supposed to be unbiased.

She stepped outside, and the sunlight blinded her, as she had grown accustomed to the dark. She climbed into the driver's seat, and her knees wobbled. A lump in her throat initiated a gag reflex. She opened the car door and leaned her head into her hands. She dried a tear which began to escape from the corner of her eye. She took a few deep breaths and turned back toward the steering wheel.

She approached the dimly lit office, which was sandwiched between an Indian restaurant and a nail salon. The waiting room roared, as a middle aged man gossiped tastelessly on his cell phone while a small boy bounced up and down on an inflatable children's couch. The boy tossed his hands into the air and howled, as he reached peak height.

Lily noticed a colorful poster that posed the question, "How do you feel today?" Below the text were several juvenile cartoon faces displaying emotions - a frown for sad, a wrinkled nose for angry, tears for distraught, and a smile for happy. Lily fixated on the poster and tried to comprehend it. If someone was happy, then why would he need a psychologist in the first place? All she knew was that the caricature with the smile did not stare back at her in the mirror each day.

"Lily," a voice called.

A massive wooden door opened slowly.

"I'm Dr. Pred. Have a seat."

Lily nodded. She fidgeted with her cuticles, as sweat poured down her back.

"So what brings you here?"

"Well, I had a miscarriage a few days ago. My husband has closed himself off, so I don't quite know how to deal with the loss of another baby and my marriage at the same time. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what I'm doing here. I almost didn't make it down the street this morning. I've never been to a therapist, and I'm not a big talker. I can't imagine that this will be helpful." Lily's voice quavered, and she looked down at her shoes.

Dr. Pred reached for a timer on her desk and adjusted the knob to "45". The timer clicked methodically like a metronome, as if it was counting down a prisoner's last minutes before execution.

"Well, this may take several weeks or months, but I will try to help. You need to be patient," Dr. Pred replied frankly. "Let's get to the bottom of your feelings today. Your reactions and emotions can often be traced back to your childhood."

"What?" Lily's forehead wrinkled.

"Yes, let's begin when you were in pre-school thirty years ago. From what you remember, did you shy away from your feelings or were you comfortable enough to express them? And did you communicate well with your mother back then?"

Lily leaned forward and threw her palms into the air, but Dr. Pred continued to press these ideas for several minutes.

"Okay, why don't you just tell me a few anecdotes from pre-school?"

Lily paused for a moment to try to focus, as the clicking became engrossed in her thoughts. She was wary of Dr. Pred's line of questioning, but she played along.

"When I was four years old, the neighbor's dog grabbed my stuffed animal dog and bit off its head."

"How did you feel when the dog attacked your stuffed animal and ran off?" she asserted.

The timer echoed loudly in Lily's ears.

How is this relevant? "I felt. . ." Lily screamed, but the timer buzzed resoundingly.

"It looks like we're out of time today. That forty-five minutes sure can go by quickly," Dr. Pred laughed. "Here's my business card. Just call the office to schedule your next appointment. We'll see if we can get up to kindergarten next time." Dr. Pred smiled and clasped Lily's hand.

Lily folded the card in half and shoved it into her jeans pocket.

The doorbell jingled, and Lily stumbled out of her cave.

"What are you doing home in the middle of the afternoon?" Lily's sister asked. "We were on our way home from Emma's play date, and I saw your car in front of the house."

Lily's four year old niece, with her permanent grin, jumped out from behind Lily's sister.

"Oh, I thought I was getting a cold, so I decided to stay home from work today," Lily responded. Her heart ached, as she lied to her own sister.

"Well, then we won't stay too long."

"Stay as long as you want," Lily mumbled, as she rolled her eyes. She could not fake her displeasure.

Emma rushed to the closet to grab the only toy in Lily's house. Emma banged the oversized blue rubber ball against the hardwood floor, and the noise reverberated throughout. Emma giggled, jumped up and down, and whirled her arms after each toss.

"Is everything okay with you?" Lily's sister asked.

"Sure," Lily replied, as she turned her head to watch Emma.

"I've been so busy planning Emma's birthday party and setting up play dates. And I have to drive her back and forth to her ballet and tumbling classes. You know how it is," her sister sighed.

The corners of Lily's mouth bent down, and Lily looked away.

Emma's eyes grew wide, as they followed the ball, which ricocheted from one hard surface to another. With the ball in mid-air, Emma dashed over to Lily and squeezed her hand.

"I love you, Aunt Lily!" she shouted.

Before the ball touched the floor, Emma quickly darted back and caught it. She held the ball for a moment, smiled at Lily, and then floated the ball up high as she squealed. Lily looked at her hand, as a tear crawled down her cheek.

Lily burrowed under the covers for the next few days until shrieking seagulls awoke her one morning. The loud screeching called her to the only constant in her life. With its white peaked waves that crashed into the jagged cliffs and hurled seaweed and sand, the ocean was a powerful, yet calming force. The repetitive churning of the water and the moist, salty air provided a haven of solitude for Lily. When she was a child and her grandparents died, she dug her feet into the thick, wet sand and listened to the melodious ripples, as her tears mixed in with the murky water. And when brain cancer overtook her college roommate, Lily dangled her legs in the rushing water and filled her lungs with the pristine sea air. No matter what happened to her, the familiarity of the ocean remained ever present, and the beauty of the ocean remained unaltered.

Thirty years after her father first held her hand as she jumped the waves, she sought their comfort again. She was keenly aware of her senses today, as she strolled to the beach on this crisp October day. Her nose wiggled as it detected burnt embers from a late night tryst at her neighbor's house. Her tongue tickled her lips, and her teeth crushed tiny pebbles that ascended from the gravel road. Slinging her arms to the sides, she stroked the cracked red and orange autumn leaves as they floated to the earth. She covered her ears to deafen the shrill of the tattered seagulls circling their prey overhead. She squinted and noticed tiny, unobtrusive dents on the side of a small wooden house. And as partial numbness developed on her uncovered face, her fingers massaged her cheeks.

She trudged along the rocky surface to the parking lot, which was the sole separation between her tiny neighborhood and the vast ocean beyond. A car filled with giggling children swerved behind her and exited. Goosebumps appeared on her arms, as the wind howled and crept up the sleeves of her light jacket. She turned to the right and left and saw no one within a quarter of a mile. The only stirring came from the blowing seaweed and sand across the landscape.

She sauntered over to the large boulder that was her throne in times of crisis. A seagull grazed her shoulder and perched itself on "her" rock. Lily swiftly swatted the seagull, which squawked as it hopped into the air. She pushed her feet into the crevice between rocks and pulled her torso up the side of the boulder in a manner similar to when she was a child. Her body sat stationary atop the boulder while she gazed at the undertow, which ripped shells and small creatures from the shore and dragged them into the swell.

As the wind whipped and caused her ears to vibrate, she buttoned her jacket and climbed down. Lifting her heavy legs, she trampled through the sand in her worn shoes. She abruptly stopped a few feet from the water's edge when she spotted a crab whose broken leg caused it to writhe and twist. Bending on one knee, she grabbed the crab between her fingers and placed it on stable sand so the oppressive waves would not engulf it.

She turned back toward the ocean and whispered, "Who will pick me up and help me?"

She closed her eyes and shuffled her feet in the water. She felt a rush of cool dampness on her socks, which quickly became saturated. Her body shivered briefly from the initial chill. She hurried a few more paces. Her jeans dripped like a fountain, but her body remained upright and undisturbed. The eerie silence interrupted her thoughts, and she inhaled deeply. Her skin temporarily warmed from the radiative heat of the morning sun. Her long and flowing curls sailed in unison in the wind. Dragging her legs against the crush of the surge, she drifted into the immense tide. Her jacket blew up with water and resembled a balloon. Her nose tingled, as the whitecap rushed under it. She licked the saltwater, and her lips curled into a smile, which had been absent for days. Inhaling one last time, she sucked in the fresh air before she would submerge her head.

There was no turning back now. She would finally find the comfort she sought, and she would never again feel pain. She pressed her chin into the water when a lone seagull's high pitched piercing broke the silence and jolted her. She opened her eyes and looked toward the horizon. She saw a glimmer of her niece squeezing her hand and saying "I love you." She quickly shut her eyes and reopened them, and the image disappeared. She stood still, as her waterlogged jacket fell off of her shoulder.

She thrust her hands into her jeans pockets to stay warm. Her fingers became entwined with a small soggy paper. She pulled out the soaked card, which disintegrated into several pieces. The ink bled and was barely legible.

"D,R,P,R,D,P,S,Y,L,S,T," she mumbled, as she made sense of the letters.

Tears streamed down her face.

"Oh my God! What am I doing?" Lily screamed.

She turned around and wrestled the waves, as she trekked back to shore.

Renee B. Rod © 2010

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Renee Rod is a Licensed Architect, Urban Planner, and Writer who resides in Chicago. When she's not tossing around her T-square, she writes short stories and children's books. This is her second published piece, her first short story.