I’m Not Pregnant, You’re Just Bad at Your Job

I passed through the double doors into an even brighter fluorescent light. It was late afternoon on an October Saturday, and instead of trying on Halloween wigs, stalking Tinder for high-school crushes, or pretending to write, I was trying to find Bed 36 in my local hospital emergency room[1]. A nurse had given me an EKG she said I didn’t need before sending me on this scavenger hunt unchaperoned.

Six days earlier, I’d hurt my head. I’ve invented juicier narratives (it happened while fist fighting an alt-right troll; it happened while helping to carry a stroller to the subway platform), but really I boinged my head on a wrought-iron air-conditioning grate on badly lit sidewalk. Stoic to a fault, I played it cool for a work week. I had television to produce! And a cat to feed! By Friday, I was barely stringing together sentences. By Saturday, I had nearly fainted in the park.

Bed 36, a better moniker for a horror movie or an early 2000s nightclub, lay beyond ​the bubbies wheeled in with Shabbos indigestion and the cut young afternoon-shift nurses who seemed determined to avoid my cross-eyed gaze. I’ve never been in a Woody Allen movie, but this, minus any sexy-much-younger-oh-god-that’s-gross-starlets, seemed like the vibe.

When I finally flung myself — knee-high boots and coat still on — onto sheets made of cardboard, my body went limp. From the other side of a stained plaid curtain I could hear a middle-aged woman comfort her mother in a lilting accent. A granddaughter’s patent-leather Mary Janes squeaked across the tile as Grandmother spoke of infrequent bowel movements. I was immediately jealous of the company and the conversation. Surely I would die here — alone and of an aneurism — all because I had walked into an inanimate object.

I dozed off to further description of Grandma’s blocked colon and awoke some time later to a man’s voice. Somewhere between 21 and 55 years old, he stood before me holding an empty urine cup. Finally. Some company. And perhaps, a future boyfriend to be politely contacted via social media after a pleasant, above-board interaction in his place of work? Look, I’m very single and live in New York City. I know that exciting romantic opportunities come up in weird places. I focused my double vision. And then he spoke. Loudly.

NURSE: You seem fine. What are you doing here?

I told him I’d hit my head defending American society from rampant xenophobia and Hitler Youth haircuts… or something like that.

He asked me what I did for a living. Uncertain what this had to do with my current state but open to some small talk, I told him I produced on television shows… non-fiction stuff. A crime show at the moment.

He told me he was looking for a woman who made a lot of money (in a tone dripping with confidence that he was, in fact, talking to one). He then told me he likely knew why I was dizzy.

ME: Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say.

NURSE: You’re probably pregnant.

ME: I’m definitely not.

NURSE: How would you know?

ME: (hesitation, horror.. a grasp for words) Do you expect me to… tell you?

ME: (subtext) I can do math. There’s nothing in there. I hit my head… is this necessary?

He tossed the urine cup at me — not violently, but really? First you imply the Holy Spirit barreled past my IUD and now this?

A trip to the tapioca-colored bathroom and what felt like two hours of Law and Order later, the mansplaining version of Our Bodies Ourselves finally returned. The urine cup sat at my heels where I’d been told to leave it. He snapped on latex gloves with dramatic flair and plunged a pH strip in my disappointingly mustard-hued urine.

NURSE: Oh wow. Wow.

I rolled my eyes. Which, by the way, isn’t advisable when you have a head trauma. There was nothing to be shocked over. I was no more pregnant than I was charmed.

NURSE: No, really. You’re going to be shocked… and surprised… but I just want you to know that it’s going to be ok. I’m gonna help you with this.

ME, internally: What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you think you’re funny? Do you think it’s funny to tell concussed women they’re pregnant? To tell any woman that she’s pregnant when she’s not? Do you have any home training — or medical training??? I feel uncomfortable and unsafe and I demand someone to intervene.

ME, for real: Ha… Can I go home now?

…..

About a month later a bill landed in my mailbox. Sixteen hundred dollars before my permalancer-lifestyle health insurance kicked in. All for one EKG by a nurse who said I didn’t need it, one pregnancy test by a nurse who offered to raise or abort my imagined offspring, one shine of a flashlight in my eyes, one DUI-like walk past my cot, one Motrin. I called the billing office planning to scream like a maniac. Instead, I broke into tears.

Over the next couple months, I would spend hours talking to patient advocates and nursing higher-ups. They were all compassionate women who told me they were ashamed by how this man treated me and so sorry I had experienced this. I believed them. I thanked them. I told them it was very important to me that no other woman be treated this way in their hospital. I told them I expected my bill to be waived. Each call ended with a vague promise. They’d see what they could do.

In the end, I was told — via letter — that I was responsible for my bill. I had been seen by a physician and advised on how to deal with my condition (the concussion.. not the imaginary pregnancy). I was a woman scorned by other women. I picked up the phone and called the head of patient services. I told her it was amazing to live in a time when a man could talk about grabbing pussy and become the president, while I was expected to pay for being sexually harassed in the emergency room. Female-presenting people live through all kinds of unsolicited commentary, don’t we? We’re told how our thighs make passerbys feel. That we should smile. That we couldn’t possibly know what’s happening in our own bodies better than a medical professional.

The patient services woman was dead silent as I spoke.

It’s amazing to live in a time when a man could talk about grabbing pussy and become the president, while I was expected to pay for being sexually harassed in the emergency room.

She paused for an awkward beat before wishing me a pleasant day.

Postscript:

I am now on the hospital’s mailing list and now receive their magazine. I received my first issue in April 2017. It had a sonogram of a fetus on the cover.