Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [17]
“Okay, Meg, calm down. I’m on my way. Will be there in ten.” I whip my headset off and go to hang up, when I hear her screaming through it.
“You don’t know where I am!”
Oh crap. I did, actually. We’d done this before. It hadn’t gone well the first time, either.
“Where are you?” I say, just to placate her.
“I’m in the bathroom of the Pierre! And there’s just blood . . . everywhere.” She hiccups as she tries to take a breath. “I was in a lunch meeting . . . and it’s just everywhere!” She dissolves into sputters, and I race off to save her.
I find her crumpled in a corner stall on the first floor of the hotel. Her skin is pasty and moist, her hands trembling, and her pants are bunched next to the toilet, ruddied and soiled and drenched. I’d already thought to call 911 on the way: Last time, I hadn’t known the extent of the catastrophe and she’d lost enough blood to require a transfusion. This time, maybe I could change the wreckage that the miscarriage was about to wreak.
After the paramedics burst in and after I held her clammy hand in the ambulance and she wailed and begged the EMTs not to let her baby die, we sat in the solitude of her hospital room and waited for the doctors to come and explain what had gone so wrong that caused her body to purge its own flesh and blood.
“It’s not your fault,” I say to her softly, with only the beeping of her heart monitor as our backdrop, just like I said seven years ago.
“How can you know that?” she answers. Fat tears streak her cheeks.
“Because it’s just not. Miscarriages aren’t anyone’s fault. They just happen.” She doesn’t reply and instead turns her face to stare out the window.
“I wanted this so badly,” she says, finally, her voice breaking again. “Tyler and I have been trying for over a year.”
“I’m sorry, Meg.” I reach to touch her free arm, the one that’s not hooked up to the IV.
A sturdy-looking African American doctor with kind green eyes finally breaks our mourning.
“The good news,” he announces, looking at her chart, “is that we’ve stopped your bleeding, and there are no signs of infection.”
“Oh thank God,” I exhale loudly, even though I’d meant to keep it in. I’d gotten there fast enough. Last time I hadn’t. Maybe this time I had. Meg glances over with a look of surprise, but I just smile. Last time, the damage was more severe, so this doctor had delivered far worse news. Last time, he’d muttered things about possible internal scarring, heavy blood loss, unclear prognosis on future fertility.
“But the bad news is,” he continues and I feel my face drop, because this, I had indeed heard before, “that we don’t know why you hemorrhaged. A normal miscarriage shouldn’t bring anywhere near this amount of blood, but because you were so early in your pregnancy, it’s very difficult for us to examine the embryo and assess what happened.”
Megan’s face curls up at the word embryo, and tears trickle out all over again.
“So what now?” she manages.
“Well, you’ll bleed for another few weeks, and once your obstetrician has given you the green light, you can certainly start trying again.” Megan ekes out a smile, and the doctor clears his throat, ready to leave.
“But what about what happened today?” I press shrilly, even though I know Megan had gotten the answer she needed to hear—you can certainly start trying again. “Can’t you get any answers from it? I mean, there has to be something we can take from this so it doesn’t happen again!”
They both furrow their brows and look perplexedly at me, springing up from the faux-red leather chair like a carnival-issue jack-in-the-box.
“It’s okay, Jill,” Megan says. “He told me we can try again soon.”
“Yes,” the doctor chimes in. “Most miscarriages are simply a result of a genetic abnormality, and there’s no reason that she’ll have another because she had one already.”
I watch Meg sigh, and I nod.
What I want to say, what I’m absolutely bursting to say, is that this isn’t a genetic abnormality, at least it wasn’t the last time I sat in the hospital and held her hand. That Megan’s body would