Chapter 4

Lara’s sitting up in bed, telling me the cramps are worse than normal.

I know what’s coming. And I don’t have the guts to tell her.

It’s at this moment that I wonder: is ignorance really bliss? And how long will this ignorance last?

As my wife walks gingerly to the bathroom, I’m busy praying that I’m wrong.

From the bathroom, a soft voice ekes around the corner. “Something’s wrong. I’m bleeding.”

I try to stay steady. “Is it spotting? Spotting’s normal.” I know it’s not spotting. I know it’s going to be heavy bleeding. Bright red.

“No, it’s more than spotting. I think something’s definitely wrong.”

“Should we go to the emergency room?”

Her voice barely cracks. “Uh-huh.”

So here we are, driving to Northwestern Memorial. Taking the same route that she does everyday. Except now I’m driving and she’s bleeding into the upholstery. When you’re in a rush you don’t have time to think about fabric stains.

I’m pretty sure that when the nurses greet us at the ER, they know what is coming too. By this time, Lara probably has it all figured out. But no one has the guts to say the word. So it just hangs over us. The elephant in the room.

They have to page an on-call doctor to perform an ultrasound. We were scheduled to have our first ultrasound in a week. They say you can see the heartbeat at 7 weeks. That should have been us. Printing out the first picture of our growing child. That should have been us.

The sound waves penetrate my wife’s belly and broadcast the grainy, black & white pictures to the sonogram. The monitor is pointed so only the technician can see it. It’s at this point that I’m waiting to hear the “m” word.

But I don’t.

Instead I hear these words that don’t make any sense.

Blighted ovum.

Anembryonic gestation.

These scientific words pass through my ears without registering a thought. I look for an answer on Lara’s face. But I already know what’s coming. You already know what’s coming.

The technician explains it for me, in layman’s terms. The gestational sac is empty. An “empty sac.” It was empty and misshapen. The pregnancy isn’t viable.

All of these fucking fancy words made to sound like it’s more complicated than it really is. That there’s more to it. Dress the words up all you want. It doesn’t change what’s going on.

Then they tell us they need to perform a D&C. My wife knows what that means. But I ask for an explanation. Dilation and curettage. Now I know why they use the pleasant little acronyms. It’s a lot easier than trying to explain how they are going to dilate the cervix, put her under, and then take a metal rod and scrape the lining of her uterus. They only say that they are going to remove “tissue.” But we all know what that means, they just don’t have the heart to say it. The elephant in the womb.

In just a few words we went from pregnant to not pregnant. From parents to not parents. From fetus to nothing. There won’t even be a funeral. No memorial. No gravesite. No nothing. Just a big fuck you.

That’s all this is. Dress it up however you want. Call it what you will. Charge our health insurance with whatever code you want to. All it is, is a big fuck you. Fuck you, we’re taking away your child. Fuck you, we don’t even need a reason. Fuck you, we’re wheeling your wife into the operating room and the next time you see her, there won’t be anything left.

We didn’t even get to name it. It’s not a baby boy or a baby girl, it’s just an it. And it doesn’t even have a name. No birth certificate. Nothing to remember it by except these painful memories.

Hours later, they finally let me in to see her. And somehow it feels like this was our fault. Like we did something wrong. Usually when one of us feels this way, the other one steps up and apologizes. One of us makes it better. But now here we are and we are both victims. We both need to be helped and neither one of us can do anything for each other.

So we sit there, together, in silence. If we are going to be miserable, we are going to be miserable together.

Nurses bring us dinner. Chicken or pork or potatoes or something. It doesn’t have any taste. Just mush in our mouths.

She’ll be fine in a few hours, they say. It’s safe to exercise, they say. Sure honey, aren’t you in the mood to jog around the block or do some crunches? Maybe some jumping jacks.

I turn on the TV because I can’t take the silence anymore. The box is bright and loud and harsh. Every channel is full of happy people trying to sell me something.

Complete your life with a new TV from Best Buy.

Stay connected with a new cell phone from Verizon.

Keep your kids safe in a new SUV with a 5-star crash rating from Honda.

Neither one of us wants to be the one to break the silence. So we don’t.

It is broken by a doctor who comes to check on us. The doctor tries to explain how normal a miscarriage is. Chromosomal abnormalities are common, he says. It shouldn’t stop us from trying again, he says.

He says that because it was a blighted ovum, there really was never a baby at all. As if that’s supposed to make us feel better.

The doctor says that we should move on. I wonder if he’s just reciting condolences that he memorized on flash cards.

My mind isn’t racing — it’s flashing thoughts and not getting anywhere, like a lawnmower that won’t start. Why do we have to move on? Why can’t we just stay here, for a little while?

We spend so much time devoted to the trivial. So much energy put into things that don’t matter. That when something like this happens, it’s hard to react. It’s hard to function. I cry over playoff losses. I curse when drivers cut me off. I actually care about so much bullshit that it’s hard to find the emotion necessary at times like this.

It feels like I got the wind knocked out of me. A shot to the gut and all you can see and feel is nothing. You can’t even think about it, all you feel is the emptiness.

The only feeling I have is feeling bad about my lack of emotion. I remember the first time I saw Ground Zero. Four years ago, I had a business trip to New York. And someone had told me how I had to walk to the World Trade Center site. How emotional it was for him.

So I went. I was expecting to feel the utter sorrow. I was there to mourn. I wanted to be overcome with grief and connect and get something out of it. But as I stared at the site where those towers used to stand, I felt nothing. It looked like a construction site, complete with bulldozers and chain link fences and signs that told me to get out.

If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know.

I wanted to experience the pain and suffering, to try and gain some understanding. But there was no way to feel for those lives lost. There was no memorial. No fantastic signs honoring those who passed on. Just an empty construction site.

And as I was walking away, I felt bad that I didn’t feel bad. That’s how I feel as I stare at the subtle curve of Lara’s belly. Our new ground zero.