friendship
A Cruel Twist of Irony
Written on August 12, 2006
What was wrong with me? I hadn’t felt well for nearly a week and, regardless of how much I slept, if I stopped moving, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Further more, I‘d look at my friends, find myself overcome with emotion and begin crying, for practically no reason at all! It was becoming annoying.
After a further two weeks passed, I realized that I was pregnant.
The prospect of raising three babies in a hotel room frightened me, but I wanted this child, badly, and after hitting the six-week mark, I could feel a glimmer of hope swell within my heart. If the baby had survived this long, perhaps it just might make it through the remaining seven and a half months!
My belly had lost the shape of a woman who, in appearance, had spent the better part of three years lifting weights and running marathons, but, in actuality, had merely been attempting to match the energy level of her children. It was beginning to take on the appearance of one who carried a little life within her.
Still, after the multiple miscarriages of the past four years, I wasn’t yet ready to trade anxiety for excitement, but every passing day brought me closer to peace, until, one day, I finally had accepted the pregnancy into my heart.
I began spotting at 7:30 that night. By nine o’clock, the baby was gone. I was crushed… And I couldn’t stay in that little room for another second.
“I’m going out.” I informed Rod as he looked into my eyes helplessly.
Hastily, I grabbed my sweatshirt, yanked opened the door, and began heading downstairs.
A few seconds later, Rod caught up to me.
I knew he wanted to be with me, he’d lost a child as well, but I didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t want to be around anyone, especially someone I loved as much as my husband. It was too painful…
We rode the elevator in a depressingly awkward silence which did not break the instant the doors slid open and I strode as quickly as I could across the Lobby and out the front entrance, unwilling to acknowledge the presence of any living soul.
No one was going to get a piece of me tonight. I’d already lost enough and I didn’t have the energy to cope with questions. I just wanted to be alone. I wanted to hide in the shadows of the building and cry until the well ran dry. I wanted to be selfish and solitary. I wanted to be allowed to be angry, or hurt, or heartbroken, without having to answer for my actions, but Rod had followed me into the parking lot.
He now stood silhouetted by the Lobby’s yellow luminescence.
“What do you want Hon?” I heard him say gently. “If you want me to stay out here, o.k. If you want to be left alone, that’s o.k. too. You tell me…”
I glanced up to meet his questions with me eyes, but, as they reached the level of his shoulders, a movement in the far corner of the Lobby drew my attention.
There, beyond the glass, behind the armchairs, half-hidden by a marble pillar on which rested a dusty green lamp, stood JunE.
She was alert and she was watching us.
I knew that the reflection of the lights on the window panes did not afford her a detailed view, but she was focusing on me none the less. Her hands were clasped together, her face was drawn into a tight expression of concern and I felt a twinge of guilt begin to gnaw at my conscience. I shouldn’t have rushed out of the hotel in such a huff. I shouldn’t have worried her.
“Do you think I heart her feelings?” I asked.
Rod stared blankly at me for a moment, trying to figure out what on earth my reply had to do with anything that had happened within the last few hours, let alone his inquiry until, by following the direction of my gaze, he too held JunE in his sights.
“Well… She knows something’s wrong, I can tell you that.”
I hung my head for a moment. She was my friend. She had known I was pregnant. She deserved to know that I had lost the baby.
“Can you look up the word ‘miscarry’ in my dictionary and show it to her? I want her to understand why I sped out of there so fast.”
He wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea. It was written all over his face, but he had offered to grant any request I might have, so he sighed, asked, “Are you sure?” and, upon my nodding in affirmation, headed upstairs to fetch the book.
Within minutes, I heard my husband’s voice call out, “Elizabeth, someone wants to talk to you.”
JunE rushed forth to my side, placed her hands on my folded arms and began insisting that I be examined at the clinic next door and though her insistence was gentle, my stubbornness was ridged.
I wasn’t going to go. I’d been through this so many times before that I knew there was nothing to be done. Our child was gone. The doctors couldn’t bring it back any more than they could have prevented the miscarriage. It was just matter of healing now. And that would take time…
“I’ll go with you.” she pleaded quietly, “I can tell them what happened. There’s no need to be afraid. Please, let the Doctor take a look.”
I understood her words, but I didn’t know how to reply. My vocabulary was still too minimal.
“Rod, call someone. Anyone. Get a translator down here. I can’t talk to her. I don’t know what to say…”
I felt so helpless. The look in her eyes echoed the sentiment, but I was not going to that clinic. I wasn’t scared. I simply couldn’t see the point.
I believe she sensed that.
With an air of moderate resignation, she looped her arm through mine and led me back into the Lobby to where my husband stood punching buttons on his cell phone.
“I don’t know what to tell you Hon, no one’s answering.”
I peered into his apologetic expression unsure of what to say. He couldn’t help me now. I had inadvertently tied his hands and sitting on the right arm of my chair, obviously uncomfortable with the whole situation was JunE.
I hadn’t meant for this to happen. I had only wanted her to know why I was upset. I hadn’t expected her to rush to my side. I didn’t think she cared about me that much. I knew she liked me, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she considered me as much of a friend as I regarded her. Even with direct evidence to the contrary, I hadn’t allowed myself to believe this. I’d never found accepting love, in any of its incarnations, an easy task, and I felt horrible for landing her in this predicament. As I watched her, a finger of panic began to scratch at my chest.
“We have to find someone to tell her I’ll be o.k., Rod. We just have to! I didn’t mean to cause all of this trouble! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… I just… I just… Oh God, I’m so sorry…”
“I know.” He said quietly, “I know. It’ll be alright. We’ll find someone.”
Sitting in the Lobby during “rush hour” was not the place to be if one desired privacy. Gripping the hand of an employee as one’s husband looks on, anxiously with a phone practically glued to his ear is not the pastime one should engage in if one wishes to remain invisible, but I didn’t care about such trivialities at present, and the sight of another Academy Wife approaching us offered a welcome ray of hope.
My pregnancy wasn’t news to her. She had stumbled upon this fact as I had stumbled over a “’you’re not pregnant are you?” bit of sarcasm.
In her address book, she held one phone number Rod had not yet tried.
She dialed, explained the situation briefly to the person who soon emerged from his room and proceeded directly to JunE to discuss the situation with her.
He assured her that I was well versed in all of the warning signs and, if a problem should occur, I would go to the Woman’s Hospital in the city to be examined.
When he had come to the end of his explanation, she turned to me and said softly, “Mei shi. Mei shi.”
I inclined my head slightly to show I understood, then muttered to no one in particular, “I think I need some time alone”, and returned to the solitude of the parking lot.
She tried to follow me, but Rod and the man who had translated for us stopped her, telling her that I just needed my space.
In some ways, I wish they hadn’t, in some ways I’m glad they did.
I found a secluded spot near the stairwell of the employee dormitories, sat down, resting my forehead against my knees, and wept.
The following morning I discovered the reason for the silence on the opposite end of the numbers my husband had tried to contact: a little girl had been born to one of Rod’s fellow Instructors and his wife.
Mei shi - It's not a problem
*A note on the photo: This was cropped from a picture a friend of mine took (a matter of days after the miscarriage) of me with JunE and another employee at the Airport Hotel. JunE knew I wasn't feeling well, so she held my hand gently while we smiled for the camera. This meant so much to me that I cut it out and saved it as such. Copyright 2006: Sanna Manders (used with permission)
