by Scott Blum
“When was the date of your last period?” the doctor asked.
By this time I was used to medical personnel treating that particular question as a salutation, although it was difficult not to interject that she had already answered it twice since we had arrived. Madisyn repeated the answer and patiently waited for the inevitable.
“Okay,” the doctor said while sliding out a chrome-plated apparatus from under the examining table. “Put your feet in the stirrups and let’s have a look-see.”
After putting on latex gloves, the doctor began the invasive examination. I could never understand how even the most immodest woman could tolerate such procedures, especially from doctors they didn’t even know. Thankfully, it didn’t last very long, and within a few seconds he had finished and his gloves were in the white cylindrical repository under the sink.
“Have you had an ultrasound during this pregnancy?”
“Several.”
“I think we should have another one to be sure,” he said gravely.
The nurse followed the doctor out the door, and my wife and I were once again alone in the examining room. Thankfully the medication seemed to have temporarily diminished the pain, and Madisyn closed her eyes and rested while waiting for the next round of tests.
It was in that moment that my attention finally shifted from the immediacy of my wife’s painful condition and came to rest squarely on the potential repercussions of what had happened. Until that moment it hadn’t even occurred to me that Autumn might be at risk, although when I let myself take in everything that had gone on since we’d arrived at the hospital, it seemed obvious. Madisyn’s legs were still streaked with blood, and her abdominal cramps were so severe that there only seemed to be one logical conclusion.
I closed my eyes briefly, and when I reopened them, the examining table appeared to float off the ground as the hospital room fell into darkness. I was standing at the end of a long tunnel, with my wife being wheeled away by a shadowlike figure I couldn’t see. Her face was no longer visible, and the deafening sound of wind overtook the relentless clanging from the air ducts that had been in the background since we’d arrived. As the wind echoed in my mind, a sense of aloneness began to fill my soul, and a profound sadness washed over me. I felt myself falling backward, deep into the dark void around me, when I was startled by another voice in the room.
“Hello?”
The clanging returned, and the examining table was once again next to me. I instinctively went to my wife’s side before looking at who was responsible for the greeting.
A tall woman with pink paisley scrubs was hunched over a bulky white machine with a headlike monitor growing out of its plastic swiveled neck. Her unkempt chestnut hair obscured her face, and her long fingers reached up to tuck the locks behind her ears.
“Hello?” she repeated in a soft, understated voice. “The doctor asked me to take some pictures.”
Madisyn opened her eyes and blinked deliberately while the technician busied herself with wires and buttons until the robot machine sprang to life. She then covered a corded plastic wand in a plastic sheath and spread a generous amount of clear gel onto it.
“I apologize, but I’m going to have to ask you to put your feet back into the stirrups just a little while longer.”
Madisyn reluctantly complied, and closed her eyes when she was in position. Within seconds the familiar ghostlike images began to appear on the ultrasound monitor, which undulated like a sky full of electronic clouds. Periodically the monitor would focus on a gray kidney-shaped figure surrounded by a thin white halo floating in the darkness. I recognized the embryo from our previous ultrasounds, but this time the figure didn’t sparkle with movement the way it had when the former technician had pointed out the blinking heart pumping blood through the translucent body. This time the tiny organs remained motionless.
The technician outlined an array of pixelated boxes around the embryo and typed in various coordinates, then shut down the ultrasound machine. I had the distinct impression that she was trying to avoid eye contact as she wheeled the machine into the hallway.
Before closing the door, the technician fixed her gaze on Madisyn and whispered in a somber voice, “I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Madisyn was eventually released from the hospital after the nurse injected a final syringe of morphine for good measure. Once we arrived home, she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. I was also exhausted, although I couldn’t get the black-and-white ultrasound images out of my head.
At first my mind raced with all the possibilities that kept my daughter “in the pink.” Perhaps the ultrasound wasn’t working properly or the technician had inadvertently misplaced the wand. Or maybe Autumn was simply resting. She was probably just practicing shutting down her heart in an exercise of embryonic meditation, like those cave-dwelling yogis in the mountains of southern India. That was probably it—just meditating. Or sleeping. We had all had a long night, and when it was picture time, she was most likely just tired.
Then I felt it.
It had been easy to avoid in the swirling chaos of the hospital, but within the stillness of our bedroom the feeling was unavoidable.
Nothing.
It started as a nearly imperceptible trickle from the right side of our bed. Within just a few short moments, the trickle begat a stream, and the stream begat a roaring river. An unmistakable void emanating from my sleeping wife’s belly filled the room.
Absolutely. Nothing.
Although I hadn’t been in communication with Autumn since she had entered my wife’s uterus, there had still been a presence that I had taken for granted. In every fiber of my being, I had known she was with us every day. And although I couldn’t speak with her in the same way I had in the past, I could still sense her soul. But now, my daughter was nowhere to be found, and I could no longer avoid the emptiness that pervaded the room.
It didn’t take long before the nothingness had entered my body. It started by consuming the pit of my stomach and gradually slithering up the insides of my torso, numbing every organ one at a time, until even my heart and lungs felt like they were no longer of service. When it reached the base of my esophagus, it ballooned to the size of a beach ball and quickly consumed every inch of my throat.
As the ball swelled inside of me, I felt myself gasping for air, repeatedly trying to extract enough oxygen to breathe. As I flirted with unconsciousness, the bubble burst into a million pieces and forced its essence deep into every cell of my body. I felt nothing like I had never felt it before—a powerful, dark, consuming tarlike void. It emanated from every pore of my skin and leaked profusely from my eyes, skating down my cheeks and onto the bedsheets under my chin.
I quietly sobbed for what seemed like hours, powerless to move and scarcely able to breathe. The emptiness had encased me in a tightly wound cocoon that relentlessly squeezed every emotion out of my tear-soaked eyes.
And within that cocoon of emptiness, my world finally collapsed—I sank deep within the mattress and lost consciousness, before floating into dreamland….
The crimson-azure sky welcomed me, as did the sweet smell of honeysuckle that filled the air. I stood alone atop a gently sloping knoll, perched high above a valley that reflected the twilight in soft shades of pink and purple. An exquisite breeze caressed my cheek, and as I looked up, a majestic raven began circling me in the sky above. The large black bird flew just close enough that I was able to glimpse her shining ebony eyes looking deep into my soul.
Sitting down with my knees to my chest, I watched as the raven circled above me for several minutes until she appeared to get bored and flew off into the distance. I then got up and lazily began walking along the crest of the knoll, vaguely following the direction in which the raven had flown.
Before long I came to a large plateau, and when I stopped, I heard a faint humming sound that seemed to sway in rhythm with the gentle breeze. Looking for a suitable place to rest, I absentmindedly hummed alon
g as the sound gradually became louder and louder. Before I knew it, the sweet and gentle humming had crescendoed into a deafening chorus that enveloped my surroundings.
At first I wasn’t able to discern precisely where the buzzing was coming from, but as I looked to the ground, I noticed that the grasses were alive with a movement that far exceeded what the breath of the wind could animate.
And then I saw them.
The ground was carpeted in an ankle-deep sea of honeybees extending for acres in every direction. Their yellow-and-black–striped bodies were so densely packed that I almost mistook them for the grass, thinking it was a few inches taller than it actually was. And although I was not allergic to bee stings, I couldn’t help but let fear penetrate my thoughts and began to worry that this Army of Buzzers might grow angry.
Then immediately in front of me, thousands of bees gathered together to form a frenetic bell-shaped mound almost three feet tall. Once the bell was nearly solid, a humanlike figure began to emerge from the pile of bees, and within moments an auburn-headed little girl was standing in front of me. The insects had arranged themselves around her into the most perfect shape of a sundress, with a ruffled bodice and two narrow straps that appeared to hang the bee dress from her delicate, pale shoulders.
I instantly recognized my unborn daughter and was genuinely impressed with her fashion acumen.
“You sure know how to make an entrance,” I said loud enough to be heard over the incessant buzzing.
Autumn stood in front of me with a sad expression on her face. It was the first time I had seen her when she wasn’t happy, and it broke my heart. With a nearly imperceptible nod, she appeared to wordlessly urge the bees to “whisper,” and within seconds the insect chorus had diminished.
“You were supposed to be the mother.” My daughter’s childlike voice had a decidedly accusatory tone.
“Madisyn is your mother,” I said softly. “I am your father.”
“You were supposed to be the mother,” she repeated.
“I understand that it was confusing.” I was finding it difficult to explain something that I didn’t understand myself, but she deserved an answer. “In this lifetime, mothers are girls and fathers are boys. And I’m a boy—I can’t be your mother.”
She remained silent and stared at me intently for what seemed like hours. When it was obvious that I had nothing else to say, she finally uttered in a quiet melancholy voice, “I waited for you.”
In that moment I felt wholly inadequate as a father and began to doubt that I was cut out for parenthood. Autumn believed that I had misled her somehow while she had waited in vain for years for me to become her mother. I didn’t know how to explain what had happened, let alone how to make her feel better. I knew Madisyn truly loved her and that she would love Madisyn once she got to know her, but I couldn’t help but feel my daughter’s enormous disappointment. And when I was unable to come up with even a single word to comfort her, my heart began drowning in a pool of tears.
With a final nod, Autumn summoned a chariot of bees to appear around her and gently lift her off the ground. She slowly turned away as the chariot carried her far into the distance, floating gracefully above the sea of honeybees, which once again filled the air with their buzzing drone. Just before she disappeared over the horizon, she turned to me one last time and uttered something entirely unintelligible.
Then she was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was more than a week after the miscarriage before Madisyn was willing to see any of our friends. She was feeling understandably fragile and needed her time alone to process everything that had happened, which suited me just fine, as I was also going through my own emotional roller coaster. But she eventually agreed to see Martika at our home after a flurry of phone calls on an overcast Sunday afternoon.
“How are you feeling?” Martika asked after I led her to the living room, where my wife had been taking refuge for the past several days.
“Much better physically,” Madisyn replied, wrapping her legs in the flannel log-cabin quilt my mother had sewn to celebrate our marriage. “But I’m afraid the emotional wounds will take much longer to heal.
“I keep thinking that I could have done something differently,” my wife continued, after taking a sip of freshly brewed peppermint tea. “Maybe I should have started taking the prenatal vitamins sooner, or rested more instead of working so much. I don’t know. I guess the main thing I keep thinking is that we waited too long …”
“Waited too long?” Martika asked.
“I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore. I’d been telling Scott for years that my biological clock was ticking, but he wanted to wait until the business was bigger, more established—whatever. There was always some excuse, and after days of agony, I didn’t even get the prize.”
Madisyn was unable to suppress her tears any longer, and she finally cried for the first time since we had left the hospital. It was true that we’d had many discussions about her biological clock, but I felt with every fiber of my being that it was necessary to be financially stable before bringing a child into the world. I was raised on the cusp between lower- and middle-class America, and although my family never accepted government assistance, I always suspected this had more to do with my parents’ pride than our not qualifying for it. We never wanted for food or clothing, but there were many times when having more significant financial means would have made life much easier.
But seeing my wife crying that morning made me feel that I might have made a life-changing mistake. It was true that I hadn’t wanted to have a child until I believed that everything was “just right,” but I never thought that by waiting, we would actually lose a child. In that moment I began to wonder if the miscarriage could have been my fault.
Was it possible that I was responsible for my daughter’s death because of premeditated negligence?
“How many times did you try?” asked Martika.
“Try?”
“To have a baby. How many months before you became pregnant?”
“I got pregnant the first month.” Madisyn wiped her eyes and smiled softly. “I’m a fertile goddess.”
“In that case, I don’t think that you are the issue,” Martika replied confidently. “Most of the time the child is responsible for a miscarriage.”
“The child? Do you mean that she might have had an incurable disease and couldn’t survive the womb?”
“Perhaps. But more often than not the child chooses to terminate the pregnancy—exercising her own free will.”
“How is that possible? And why would she do that?”
“Transitioning from the spirit world to the physical world is quite a dramatic shift. Even the most unaware babies must question their resolve to give up the freedom and beauty of the spirit world when they choose to join us on this planet. That’s why the soul of a baby bounces in and out of its new body during the term of the pregnancy—it’s trying to get used to all the unique rules of living here.”
“But what about Autumn?” I asked. “She’s been wanting to come here for years.”
“Wanting to live with you two and being bound by the complicated rules of this planet are two very different things. I’m sure that Autumn is far from unaware, given the simple fact that she chose you two as parents. In fact she’s probably ultrasensitive and found life in the physical world to be crass and severely limiting.”
“I know I do,” interjected Madisyn.
“And that doesn’t even address the individual body itself,” Martika continued. “Many baby souls try out several bodies until they find one that has the perfect balance of protection and sensitivity.”
“Sort of like test-driving a car.” I smiled.
“That’s not funny,” Madisyn said, shooting me a dirty look. I could tell that she wasn’t amused by the implication that something created within the sanctity of her uterus could be so casually rejected.
“What about her soul contract?” I asked. “Shouldn’t sh
e have known what body she was destined for before she was even conceived?”
“Soul contracts are complicated.” Martika sighed. “Yes, it’s true that her soul knew what she was in for before her body was conceived. But part of what makes a soul contract work is that it relies on the inherent separation of consciousness from destiny. That is the bedrock of free will, which starts long before the soul enters the womb.”
“You mean that Autumn didn’t consciously know that she was going to reject the body before it was conceived?” I was trying to follow Martika’s logic.
“Probably not.”
“Well, I’m still mad at her,” Madisyn said plainly. “I suffered through an unbelievable amount of pain because of her little decision—not to mention that it was dangerous. Do you know how much blood I lost?”
“That’s understandable,” Martika said soothingly while rubbing Madisyn’s elbow. “But it’s valuable to remember that the process of birth and death are the two most sacred experiences on this planet that one can share with another. And as a mother, you were in the unique position of being able to share both with her within a very short amount of time.”
“But what was the point?” Madisyn asked sadly. “What possible good could have come of such a brief visit?”
“You gave your daughter the incredible gift of being able to work through some very important karma in a short amount of time. Most of us have to stay on Earth for decades before we successfully work through all the karmic responsibilities of living here. Autumn was fortunate that you agreed to allow her to work through the most significant karmic responsibilities of her lifetime while she was still in the womb.”
“Well, good for her,” said Madisyn flippantly, still obviously hurt. “But what do I get out of it?”
“You were able to learn the ultimate lesson that is at the core of all karmic experiences.”