The One That Got Away

by Leigh Himes

  He put down his penlight and looked at me: “Why, Abbey, are you having some sort of problem? Strange thoughts? Anxiety?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I said, trying to be nonchalant. “Just curious.”

  “You sure?” he said, touching my arm in concern.

  “I’m sure. It’s nothing. Though sometimes I do feel like I’m living someone else’s life.” I laughed at my own joke, but he didn’t. Instead, he picked up my hand and took my pulse, then peered into my eyes once again.

  As he began to examine my bruised knee, I couldn’t resist more questions. “But let’s say I did have some sort of chemical imbalance. What would you do for me? Pills? Electroshock?”

  “Psychiatry isn’t really my specialty,” he said, grave faced. “If you feel like you need to talk to someone, why don’t I write you a referral? I have a colleague who would be a great fit for you. She’s very good with housewives.”

  I smarted at the term “housewives” but nodded assent.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” he continued. “Mirabelle tells me you are under tremendous stress with the campaign—and the new beach house. And of course your charity work.”

  He walked over to a drawer, took out a prescription pad, and scribbled down a name and number. Then he slid the pad back into a drawer, locked it, and turned back to me as I sat motionless, wondering why Mirabelle was discussing my health with Dr. Cohen. I guess she felt the same way about doctor/patient confidentiality as she did about calling before stopping by someone’s apartment. Those silly rules didn’t apply to her.

  “I almost forgot!” said Dr. Cohen, spinning around again. “I have that referral for Gloria. Dr. Ramsey. He’s at Cypress Street Psychiatry, so not too far from you. He said he could see her right away.”

  I stared at him.

  “To help with her enuresis,” he continued.

  “Enuresis?”

  “Bed-wetting.”

  I stopped mid-buckle and stood up straight.

  “You want to send a five-year-old to a psychiatrist for bed-wetting? It’s a perfectly natural thing. Especially for someone whose bladder is as tiny as Gloria’s.” I had done enough online reading to know that the worst thing a parent could do was make a big deal out of it, to turn what is a mechanical issue into a psychological one. Nine times out of ten, children grow out of it by second grade.

  “Of course, I didn’t mean to say she was abnormal,” he said. “But, well, her grandmother thinks this would be a really good thing for her.”

  I don’t give a flying fuck what Mirabelle or anyone else thinks would be good for my little girl, I wanted to shout at him. Jimmy and I had decided long ago, after a series of tests that made everyone miserable, most of all Gloria, we would not make her size, or any medical ramifications of her size, an issue. I was not about to start now.

  “Gloria is already aware of the problem,” I said. “And unless this Dr. Ramsey has some magical way of making her bladder grow bigger and stronger, I really don’t think—”

  “Abigail, I realize this is upsetting,” interrupted Dr. Cohen, misreading my outrage as distress. “I urge you to give it a try. For everyone’s sake.”

  For everyone’s sake? Isn’t the only “sake” of importance Gloria’s? I was dumbfounded. Were Mirabelle and the van Holts embarrassed by this? And, God forbid, not just of the bedwetting, but of how tiny Gloria was? And had Abbey van Holt condoned this? Was this yet another aspect of parenting she had subcontracted? I was stunned. And furious.

  I felt a sudden urge to hightail it to Gloria’s school, yank her out of class, and run far, far away.

  But I couldn’t. This was my world now and I had to make it work.

  “All right. I’ll consider it,” I said, taking the note and slipping it into my purse. He smiled and excused himself.

  Later, walking across Washington Square, its dry concrete fountain full of toddlers writing their names in chalk and throwing tennis balls, I became angry again.

  I knew what was best for Gloria; I had since the beginning. I tore the referral card in half and shoved the pieces into a trash can.

  “Just a minute,” said the ultrasound technician, a forced smile on her lips. “I’ll be right back.”

  Not the words you want to hear in the middle of your thirty-week ultrasound, your protruding belly exposed and vulnerable, your husband nervously tapping his foot.

  “Jimmy,” I said, my head twisted toward him, my body heavy on the padded exam table. “Did you catch that? Did she seem worried?”

  “No,” he said, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t notice anything. I think she’s just going to get the doctor. She always goes to get the doctor.”

  I wasn’t convinced, and I knew he wasn’t either. I stared at the ultrasound, trying to decipher what could be amiss in the blur of black and white. Waiting for the door to swing back open was torture. Jimmy tried to distract me by asking me what I wanted for lunch.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lahey,” said Dr. Zardari, a tall, thin Pakistani man who had a funny habit of ending every sentence with “okay?” like a Valley Girl. Everyone in Grange Hill knew him; he was the only ultrasound doctor at Delco Memorial and he had pretty much scanned every kid in town. More than once I heard a pregnant friend joke, “Don’t tell Dr. Z!” before stealing a sip of wine or taking a drag off a friend’s cigarette.

  “Let’s see how we are doing, okay?” he said as he squirted more cold gel on my tummy. He scanned the baby’s head, limbs, and torso once, then twice, scribbling notes on my chart. He motioned to the technician and they spent a few minutes quietly conferring, ignoring Jimmy and me.

  My heart was beating fast, my throat was dry, and Jimmy had stopped rubbing my arm as he focused on the doctor’s face. Dr. Z sat down beside us and, in his lilting tone, told us words no expectant parents would ever want to hear.

  “I’ve found something concerning.”

  Time stopped.

  “It could be nothing, but it could be something,” he continued. “We just don’t know, okay?”

  “Something like what?” Jimmy managed to say.

  “The fetus is small. For thirty weeks, we would expect it to weigh at least two more pounds, possibly three. Are you certain you are thirty weeks along? Did you mistake when you had your last period?”

  “No,” I told him. “I know it was June eleventh, because that’s my husband’s birthday.” He listened, scribbled more notes in the chart, and then looked up at me.

  “We have to get you in for some more tests,” he said. “The good news is that the baby seems to be functioning adequately, and the head size is disproportionally large compared to the body. That means the brain is getting most of the nutrients, which is what we want to happen. The body can catch up later, okay?”

  “So what do we do?” asked Jimmy.

  “We’ll continue to monitor the fetus via ultrasound for the next few weeks and hope for some progress. But if we don’t see any, we’ll get the baby out early—thirty-four or thirty-five weeks—and put him or her on a feeding tube. We see good results with this in cases of IGR.”

  “IGR?” said Jimmy.

  “Sorry. Intrauterine growth restriction. A condition where the fetus isn’t getting proper nutrition—and no, Mom, it has nothing to do with what you are eating or not eating. It could be a problem with the umbilical cord, could be a placenta issue. Sometimes we never find out why. So again, we’ll monitor it closely and schedule a C-section if we have to, okay?”

  “But thirty-four weeks is so early. Too early,” I pleaded.

  “Having the baby early isn’t the risk. We deal with preemies all the time. What we can’t ascertain at this point is if the nutrient deficiency has affected development, in particular the baby’s cognitive function.”

  This time he didn’t finish his sentence by asking us if we were “okay?” We weren’t.

  Jimmy continued to ask a stream of questions, but I stopped listening, overwhelmed. Had I not been eating right? Or en
ough? The panic I felt was physical, my skin tingling, my stomach churning, and my lungs working double time. It didn’t help that the room was small and dark; now it felt like it was filling with water.

  Jimmy looked over at me, saw my face, and began overcompensating as a way to distract me. He spoke louder and louder and became weirdly cheerful. It was like we had switched personalities: me now silent and stoic, Jimmy talkative and awkward.

  In the waiting area, me trying not to look at the other women with their perfectly normal pregnancies, the receptionist patiently helped us book five appointments and fill out some forms. She tried to calm us with smiles and two plastic cups of water, but to this day, whenever I use a pen attached by a silver chain to a clipboard, I feel sick.

  Back home in our house in Grange Hill, I lost it. Jimmy held me as I cried and rambled, stopping me only when I started blaming myself. Together, we analyzed every word the doctor had said; the words “functioning adequately,” “nutritional deficiency,” and “cognitive function” repeating like the CNN scroll across our kitchen walls. That night, when I couldn’t sleep, Jimmy came downstairs with me to watch Project Runway reruns. He held me in his arms on the couch, both our hands on my belly, both of us secretly willing the baby to grow.

  The next five weeks were terrifying. I spent all day Googling “intrauterine growth restriction” until Jimmy finally had to confiscate the computer and hide it in the basement. I told total strangers at the grocery store about my baby’s condition but kept it from my closest friends, too afraid of their looks of concern and pity, too afraid of making this nightmare an irreversible reality. I sleepwalked through work, my mind busy bargaining with fate for just a few more ounces, a few more centimeters. And I ate and ate and ate, gorging on avocadoes and mashed potatoes and Greek yogurt, hoping that the more I consumed, the better chance the baby would have to be normal.

  If anyone asked me today what we did that winter, whom we saw, or what we gave each other for Christmas, I’d still have no idea. The only memories I have are of the five ultrasound appointments, two of which showed progress; three did not. My weight ballooned while the baby’s stayed frustratingly the same. At the final appointment, at thirty-four and a half weeks, our anxiety having grown to near hysteria, Dr. Z asked us, “Time for the baby to come out, okay?”

  “Okay,” we replied in unison.

  And then the strangest thing happened.

  The next morning—up early and getting dressed, ready to leave for our scheduled C-section—I went into labor. It started as soon as I woke, an unmistakable twinge that progressed steadily. By the time I got out of the shower, I was into full-blown contractions. I waddled to the stairwell and called down to Jimmy that we’d better leave earlier than expected. Gloria, already smarter than both of us, knew it was time to come out.

  And boy was she in a rush. By the time we made it to the hospital at a quarter past seven, I was eight centimeters dilated, too late for the operation or even an epidural. After half an hour of me clawing at air and screaming until I had no voice, she slid into the doctor’s arms with barely a whimper.

  Holding her birdlike body, barely heavier than a Diet Coke, was infinitely frightening. She was trussed up in a heating pad and foam neck support, her little blue-tinged face the only part of her visible. But looking into her wide eyes, and feeling her little fingers wrapped around my thumb, I felt her strength and her determination. Something inside told me she would be fine.

  Gloria’s first two weeks of life were spent in the crowded, noisy NICU at Delco Memorial, where we watched her suck milk from a syringe and cast irritated glances at her noisy roommates. When we were finally discharged, she slept the whole way home but then woke with a start as we stepped into the house. She looked around the kitchen, stacked with dishes and mail from weeks of neglect, then at each of us, haggard and unshowered, then at the large black Labrador who would be her childhood pet. Her expression was one of resignation and exasperation, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d gotten herself into. But I couldn’t have been happier… after months of agonizing worry, our journey was over. And we had a small, but healthy, daughter.

  In the days that followed, it was Jimmy’s turn to lose it. He had held his own emotions back—in order to be what Dr. Z called “positive and supportive for the mother”—and now they burst forth like a violent summer storm.

  “Why is she crying?” “Is she hungry?” “Is she still breathing?” “Is that a rash?” “What’s that thing on her belly button?” “Why does she need another shot?” he asked, his questions peppering me wherever we went: the hospital, the pediatrician’s, on a walk, in the middle of the night. I allowed the overprotective new father bit to continue as long as he needed, knowing it was my turn to be the strong one.

  Only after she began putting on weight—slowly, but surely, half ounce by precious half ounce—did we allow ourselves to relax a bit. Jimmy turned his attention back to Lahey Landscape, which he hoped to launch by Labor Day, meeting with potential clients and researching zero-turn mowers. I was back at work too; my home life of sleeplessness, diapers, and onesie snaps interspersed with days in the now irrelevant and irresponsible world of public relations. And though it wasn’t the perfect life portrayed in diaper commercials, it was still wonderful, each day electric with the heightened emotions and countless surprises that first babies bring.

  And then later that summer, our relief about Gloria was overshadowed by another catastrophic event. But this time, we would wait for death, not life.

  On a hot August Sunday, just weeks before Jimmy officially launched Lahey Landscape & Design LLC, his mother, Jane, announced that she had just months to live. After the lasagna, while dishing out slices of her famous key lime pie, she told us that the stage three breast cancer she had successfully fought four years before had returned with a vengeance. It had metastasized from her breast to her lymph nodes and finally found its way to its ultimate goal, her liver. She dutifully got her two scans per year, but this cancer had hidden from the technician, silently moving from organ to organ in the most devious and elusive way. The odds of beating it, she said, were slim.

  As she broke the news, Miles kept his eyes on her face and held her hand. I was nursing Gloria under a baby afghan, unable to move. Jimmy and his brothers listened with their heads down, as if they were being punished.

  After a few seconds of heartsick silence, Jane spoke again. “Now, boys. It’s going to be all right. Really it is.”

  No one responded, so I ventured, “There are some amazing experimental therapies out there. I just read about this Temple doctor who invented this thing that helps target tumors. And there’s holistic healing and herbs and—”

  “Abbey,” said Miles, but I kept talking. He said my name again, still gently but much louder, and I shut my mouth.

  My father-in-law looked around the table, all of us crammed into the small daisy-papered dining room where the Laheys had eaten thousands of family meals. He took a deep breath. “We’ve been through this before. We know how hard it is even when you have a good prognosis. And we had a second opinion, a third, even a fourth. They all say the same thing. Surgery won’t help, and if we did chemo again, well, at this point, that in itself might kill her.”

  The words “kill her” rang out. Patrick frowned, angry. “What? That’s ridiculous. Of course you’re going to fight this.”

  “I know it’s quite a shock, my darling,” said Miles, addressing his youngest son as if he were still a baby. “But try to understand. This is cancer, and try as we might to fight it, it fights harder. And dirtier.”

  Now Jane spoke. “I want my last days to be spent in peace with the ones I love, not on some fool’s errand.”

  “How long have you known?” asked Jimmy, with hurt in his voice. “Why didn’t you tell us before now?”

  “You had enough to deal with, with Abbey and the baby, and the new business,” Jane explained. “And there is nothing—absolutely nothing—any of you could have don
e. Now, someone please hand me my granddaughter.” End of discussion. She was a sweet woman, but stubborn, and her boys knew when it was pointless to argue.

  I passed her Gloria and she held the tiny pink face to her own. She breathed deep, taking in the smell of talcum powder and regurgitated breast milk. The smell of new life. Gloria let out a little gurgle and Jane laughed and looked around to see who else had heard the delightful sound.

  She died five months later, four days before her granddaughter’s first birthday. It was the same day we found out Gloria had actually made it to one percent on the doctor’s height/weight chart, as if Jane had sent her that extra ounce as a parting gift.

  Again, I found myself nursing my husband’s heart back to health, but this time instead of questions, I got silence. He spent more and more time at work, leaving before sunrise and poring over paperwork late into the night. He was a new business owner with a lot to prove, toiling over lawns and shrubs and mulch, coming home grubby and exhausted and distant. I helped as much as I could. But I was a working parent myself, and time was a luxury that was becoming harder and harder to share.

  Jimmy and I were still in love, and we were as happy as the next couple, but the sadness and stress of the past year filled our house with shadows. And the invisible chalkboard in the sky—the one that keeps track of who got up with the baby last, who unloaded the dishwasher, who folded the laundry—began to get marked more often, wiped clean less. We no longer watched the sunset from the front porch; instead, we texted updates on car repairs and day care schedules from different floors in the same house.

  It was sometime during that year, with a one-year-old, two client-focused careers, and an eighty-year-old house in constant need of attention, that life started to get away from us.

  Like millions of other families across the country, we went from living for today to simply getting through it.

  Now, six years later, walking down the thickly carpeted hallway to this apartment in the sky, the pain of that pregnancy and Jane’s death felt so far away, as distant and muted as the traffic outside. How different life was here with the van Holts. Instead of clogged drains and recycling schedules and late fees, and multitasking and running late and barely making ends meet, I didn’t have to take care of anything; it was all done for me. My only responsibilities were to attend a few events, manage the help, decorate, and occasionally see the kids. And I had a handsome, charming husband who not only appreciated the few tasks I did manage to accomplish each day but rewarded me with anything I could possibly desire.