The bird chirped with shrieks as though an alarm clock at regular intervals. She tried muffling the sound by burying her head deeper within the pillows but it was no use.
“Close the window,” she mumbled to her husband sleeping on his back next o her.
“Hmm,” he replied burrowing deeper within the sheets.
She sighed and got up, walking over to the window to shut out the shrieking bird.
The house still quiet, she sighed with relief as she pulled the covers over her once more, a few more hours of sleep and then after lunch, we can go home, she thought. She stretched her legs and suddenly her eyes opened. What was that sensation, that slightly wet sensation?
With a finger she touched the wetness and held it close to her face. The world suddenly went silent. Red blood.
No, she thought. No.
“K Get up!” she shrieked, “Blood! I’m bleeding, We have to go home!”
He sat up rubbing his eyes, “bleeding? Calm down. Was there a nail by the window?”
“No! I’m bleeding!” she said, tears already running down her cheek as she paced the room, her heart racing.
“Bleeding where?” He said now standing infront of her, a bewildered expression on his face.
She pointed to the bedsheets, “There.”
Running into the bathroom she began grabbing the toilet paper, “no,” she repeated in horror at the bright red blood. The bleeding was light, she felt no pain.
Running into her bedroom, she locked the door and grabbed her cell phone dialing frantically.
“Northside/Northpint OBGYN answering service.” Said a tin voice on the line.
“I need to speak with a doctor. I’m almost 11 weeks pregnant and I am bleeding.”
Two calls and thirty minutes later the phone rang. A pleasant sounding doctor whose name escaped A assured her there was no need to panic.
“We see this all the time,” she said in a soothing voice, “You have a heart beat and that is good there is likely nothing wrong. Schedule an ultrasound in the morning just to make sure.”
“I’m not having a miscarriage then?” She said with relief.
“I can’t tell you that,” she said with hesitation, “but you have no cramping, just mild bleeding and that does happen, if it gets worse, if you begin soaking up more than one pad an hour with blood and if you have strong cramping, go to the ER.”
She hung up the phone and turned to her husband, “she said it might be okay,” a smile forming on her lips. Hope sending a rope in her direction.
They decided not to tell his family whom they were visiting that morning. No sense in needless worry, they couldn’t do anything after all.
The car ride to Atlanta went slowly as mild cramping began. She had read about this in her frantic google searching. This was the next step in a miscarriage- but- STOP- she told herself. You’re doing this to yourself. These cramps are in your head, they’re not real.
That evening they sat together on the sofa curled up in a blanket arm in arm watching “Baby Mama.” The cramping began to make itself known. Not a figment but a real impending pain.
“Should we go to the ER?” he asked her that night as they lay in bed. “Should we call your doctor?”
“No,” she responded, “I’ll call her in the morning, I can make it through.”
Except the pain did not ease, she lay in bed for an hour feeling her stomach painfully contract. Her husband’s snores served to egg on her own pain. Getting up she went downstairs and looked at the nurse hotline on the fridge posted next to the ultrasound photos.
“Are you having more bleeding than one pad an hour?” asked the nurse. As she spoke those words the pain grew exponentially worse, she pulled her pants down and saw blood gushing out of her like a water faucet.
The next moments went by in a daze. She remembered screaming to her husband that they needed to go to the ER. The nurse still on the line. She remembed standing in the bathroom to remove her pad when suddenly the most horrifying sight made itself known as the fetus in its fist shaped gestational sac fell out of her and onto the floor.
She screamed. She thought she would never stop screaming.
Maybe Baby? 