An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination_ A Memoir - Elizabeth McCracken [42]
Again to Bordeaux in the rented car. We listened to Round the Horne, an old English radio program that Edward had bought me for Christmas. We had a CD of Mozart chosen especially for children for the three of us to listen to on the way back.
“I hate this,” I said to Edward.
“I know,” he answered.
“I hate this,” I clarified.
He nodded.
Sylvie was not there when we arrived. We were taken to an examination room, where a very young male sage-femme — not very sage, not at all femme — shook our hands. He wore a pair of bright rubber clogs. I thought then that I would never forget what color they were, red or green or yellow, but I have no idea, I just remember that they were unusual.
He put the straps around my stomach and turned on the monitor. Nothing. He shifted them around.
He said, in French, I am going to go get my colleague. She is better at this than I am.
He disappeared and instead came back and brightly told us that we would go have a sonogram. Good, I thought. Enough messing around. Let’s see the kid.
He led us into the hall and then out a side door. The sonographer’s office was in a separate cottagey building, covered in lilacs, just outside the hospital. I had been there less than a week before, for a diagnostic scan, which led to a diagnostic X-ray: the doctor had thought there was something a little funny about my pelvis, an odd angle to my pubic bone. An X-ray after all! He had made it very clear: if the X-ray suggested that my pelvis was in fact a little funny, I would have to check into the hospital immediately for a C-section: he wouldn’t want to risk me going into labor. But my pubic bone passed muster — I’d nervously told the technician I was pregnant, just in case it wasn’t glaringly obvious — and so I’d gone home that day. “Thank God,” I said to Edward on the car ride home. “I’m really glad I’m not having an impromptu caesarean.” It felt like a narrow escape. Instead we went home to wait some more.
You cannot.
So. It was a week later. The lilacs outside the entrance to the sonography cottage were still in bloom. We were led by the little male midwife past all the other people in the waiting room and into the two-room office. There was a desk and two chairs in the front room, which is where you sat and talked to the doctor when you weren’t in a hurry. We didn’t stop. Last week’s doctor was fortyish and spoke some English. This week’s was in his sixties, and didn’t. I lay down on the examining table. Edward sat in the husband’s chair in the corner of the room.
The doctor worked the paddle around my stomach. He didn’t pause. He searched and searched. If he stops I know there’s hope. But he doesn’t stop.
I say, “Non?”
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t stop. But he says to the screen, “Non.”
I understand immediately and begin to sob.
Grief is a waterfall, and just like that I’m over it, no barrel needed, I’m barrel-shaped.
Edward doesn’t understand at first. “Comment?” he asks from his stool, and the male midwife says, “C’est fini.” It’s finished.
Here is exactly how I remember it.
The midwife threw himself into my arms. We embraced as the sonographer continued searching with his paddle, though what was he looking for, why wouldn’t he leave me alone? (He was a diagnostician. He was looking for clues.) I submitted myself to the hug. I held still for the paddle. I tried to weep only from the chest up. Suddenly Edward had knocked aside the male midwife to take his place. He stroked my hair and told me that it was all right, it was all right, “Oh, sweetheart,” he kept