by Stacey Grice
Me: How are you feeling?
I sent the text then sat down at my desk, staring at my phone screen, awaiting a reply like a pathetic loser. Too many minutes passed. I tore my eyes away to log in to my email and began answering a few messages then a few minutes later, I heard the telltale ding of a text notification.
Andie: Awful.
Me: Still? What’s wrong?
Andie: Stomach bug from hell.
Me: Anything I can do or bring you?
Andie: NO!
Andie: Thank you, but stay away—you don’t want any part of this.
I tried to remember the last time I had an actual stomach bug. It had been a few years, but I was still able to recall how horrible I felt for those twenty-four hours. It was only a day, I thought, two max. What on Earth had she contracted to be so sick for four days now? I supposed working in the emergency room did expose you to all sorts of ridiculousness, but four or five days of a stomach bug seemed a little intense. I mean, I wasn’t a doctor, but it seemed extreme to me. Couldn’t Rowan or one of her other healthcare friends put an IV in and get her feeling better? She certainly had access to labs, tests, drugs. I couldn’t help but feel an uneasiness in my own stomach that I wasn’t getting the whole truth.
The more I thought about it, retraced every step, recalled every conversation we’d had the last time we were together, I came up blank. I couldn’t think of anything that was even close to wrong or upsetting. Our time together was the best it had ever been, which made this odd distance even more unsettling.
I was confused and lost, completely bewildered about what was wrong but even more perplexed as to how to fix it. Was this some sort of game? Was I failing the test by not going to her and demanding to know what was wrong? Was this where I was supposed to fight and show how committed I was to her, to never letting her get away? That sounded insane in my head. Surely Andie wasn’t that immature. What if she was actually just sick and genuinely wanted to be left alone? Was I supposed to listen and steer clear? Or should I have been proving my dedication by showing up uninvited with a grab bag of Gatorade and chicken noodle soup?
I stopped in that moment, literally praying to anyone above who would listen, asking them to send me some sort of sign.
Chapter 43
Andie
I had spent the last three days locked away in my house, glued to my laptop. Stopping only long enough to eat, pee, and sleep about five to six hours per night, I felt like I was back in med school. I couldn’t remember the last time I had showered and was growing quite tired of eating sandwiches and salads. My baby and his or her anencephaly captivated my every thought.
My baby.
It sounded so strange in my head. The words vibrated around, bouncing off the walls of my mind like a foreign object rattling obnoxiously. I simply couldn’t get used to the realization, but I was trying to with all of my might. The diagnosis had come just seconds after the confirmation of my pregnancy—talk about an emotional roller coaster.
Congratulations! You’re with child…oh, but there’s also this: your baby has no head and won’t survive.
How exactly was one supposed to wrap their mind around that news? The only thing I knew to do was learn as much as I could. I could only and would only be able to cope with it if I was equipped with all the information I could possibly get.
In my entire time employed at Springfield Health, I had never called in sick for a single shift. It wasn’t something surgeons did. You were expected to power through whatever illness you may have, and there was rarely enough staff to pick up the slack if you weren’t able—but this was different. My mind wasn’t there enough to perform at the level that was required of me. I was afraid someone would get hurt or even potentially die as a result of me being distracted. As far as Springfield was concerned, I had a plague-like stomach bug and wasn’t going anywhere near the ER unless it was as a patient. You can’t exactly treat a trauma victim when it’s coming out of both ends, so my chief was receptive and wished for me to feel better soon.
The stomach bug facade was also what I offered to Vaughn as the reason for me being distant. I felt awful for lying to him, but I just wasn’t in a position to face him. I couldn’t tell him about what was going on yet, and I definitely didn’t trust myself to lie to his face without him seeing right through me. Avoidance was the only way, but I was going to have to see him eventually. Stomach bugs rarely lasted more than a few days, and even a non-medical person could figure that out.
It was quite daunting trying to reconcile how to reveal to your boyfriend that you’re pregnant with his child but the baby will never live long enough to smile up at your face, say their first word, or learn how to walk. None of that would ever come to pass because the majority of your infant’s skull and head was missing, completely absent.
I had poured my heart into learning everything the internet had to offer about anencephaly. What the web didn’t teach me was how I was supposed to reveal this information to the man I loved. How was I supposed to keep it together emotionally and explain what was happening so he could understand? He wasn’t an idiot—he was quite brilliant, actually—but the medical terminology was intimidating.
Anencephaly was a congenital neural tube defect and meant our baby would be born with a brainstem that, together with the spinal cord, would control the baby’s unconscious functions like the heartbeat along with voluntary movements, but the remainder of the head wouldn’t be there at all—no cranium, no cerebellum, no skull, no scalp, no hair. It would feel like a normal baby to me, growing and kicking, but would never live beyond a few hours, if it didn’t pass away in utero at some point during my pregnancy. My research revealed that it was most likely a girl since females were affected significantly more than males, and that about twenty-five percent of babies with anencephaly die before or during birth, with those who survive having a life expectancy of a few hours or days.
I trusted Dr. Francisco and had no doubt that she knew exactly what she was looking at, but the physician in me had to question things. How reliable had the ultrasound been? Didn’t I need more extensive testing to determine a finite diagnosis?
As it turned out, no, I didn’t. Anencephaly can be reliably diagnosed between eleven and fourteen weeks of gestation by ultrasound scan. With the advances in technology, diagnoses could be possible even earlier. The malformation is very easy to see on a routine scan. If a qualified specialist makes an ultrasound scan diagnosis after the eleventh week, the likelihood of a misdiagnosis is minimal.
I also learned that the body of a child with anencephaly is entirely unaffected. She looks completely normal except for the vault of the cranium missing from the eyebrows up. Usually, halfway up to the back of the head is covered by skin and hair. Vivid dark red neural tissue covered by nothing more than a thin membrane can be seen through an opening in the head. The size of this opening varies considerably from one child to another. I even read that the eyeballs can protrude because of a malformation of the eye sockets, which is why children with anencephaly are sometimes pejoratively described as looking like frogs. It described exactly what I’d seen on the ultrasound screen.
Once I understood in detail what the disorder meant and what I was facing, my thoughts immediately gravitated to possible organ donation. I didn’t think I had it in me to terminate my baby unless she was suffering somehow. My research yielded that there would be no danger to me personally in carrying the baby to term. Really, the only complication even mentioned was polyhydramnios—an excess in amniotic fluid—since the baby wouldn’t have the appropriate reflexes to swallow enough fluid. Women walked around with polyhydramnios all the time.
I was a pretty determined person, as far as my life and reaching personal goals went, but this situation was like nothing I had ever had to face before. If I made the decision to carry this child as far as God would allow me to in hopes of donating as many organs as I could to help other babies in need, how would the rest of society see that? Would I be able to endu
re people asking me on a daily basis about my growing baby? The normal looks and questions a pregnant woman gets constantly—would I be prepared and able to answer them without it being awkward? Would people judge me for not terminating a pregnancy that’s incompatible with life? Would they think ill of me for growing a baby for the sole purpose of donating the organs?
I had made the mistake of reading some message boards for parents affected by the same diagnosis and while most people were kind and genuinely looking for education and support, there were also horrific and awful people who trolled those very boards with the sole intention of hurting people through their shocking and damaging comments.
I wasn’t there for long before I hastily exited the site.
A poor mother pregnant with an anencephalic baby had inquired about organ donation, and I was just about to take it upon myself to comment when a response came over the thread before I hit enter.
How dare you want to grow your baby to term just to turn around and chop it up for parts? You might as well have an abortion now. Either way, you’re a monster.
I just about lost it. Was this person right? They were appalling and heinous in their attack of this stranger, but it made me think. What was the right decision?
NO! I wouldn’t allow this random bully to put doubt in my mind.
I would love this child as much as I possibly could for as long as I possibly could. Some physicians were of the opinion that anencephaly infants could neither see nor hear, nor feel pain, that he or she was the equivalent of a vegetable. However, I had read numerous articles and interviews with families of children with anencephaly, and their experiences overwhelmingly didn’t match up with that opinion. My research suggested that the brain is affected to varying degrees, depending on the child, and the brain tissue can reach different stages of development. Some children are able to swallow, eat, cry, hear, feel the vibrations from loud sounds, and react to touch and even to light, but most of all, they respond to love. Their parents loved them and all felt that their babies didn’t need a complete brain to feel that love, as long as their heart was intact.
The somewhat cheesy articles gave me hope and comfort that I could face all of this head on. It would be painful, emotionally exhausting, and certainly a long uphill climb, but I could do it. I had to do it. I was consumed with the feeling that there was a reason for all of this, a bigger picture, one I didn’t necessarily need to understand, at least not right then.
Chapter 44
Andie
As I was spreading mayo on the heel of the loaf of bread to make a sandwich, my doorbell rang. A harsh wave of dread filled my body at the thought that it could be Vaughn. I wasn’t ready to face him.
Fretting over my hair in the mirror in my foyer in an attempt to make myself look as sick as I had told him I was, I hesitantly opened the door, instantly relieved to see Rowan standing on the other side of it.
“Oh thank God,” I muttered. “Get inside.”
She walked in, tossing her handbag to the sofa and entering the kitchen. I followed her to finish making my lunch.
“I’d offer to make you one too but I’m out of bread.”
I watched her fish a wine glass out of my cabinet and set it on the counter. She then opened the fridge and extracted a half-empty bottle of moscato, uncorking it and pouring herself a glass almost all the way full.
“It’s okay. I want a liquid lunch today.” Without looking me in the eyes, almost awkwardly, she walked past and made her way into the living room to crash down on the couch.
“Is everything okay?”
I loved Rowan and would have done anything in the world for her, but the fact that I was going through the most significant crisis of my life and she was somehow appearing to make the moment all about her wasn’t lost on me.
“No,” she answered quickly. “It’s not okay.”
I stared blankly, giving her space to continue.
“I need to talk to you,” she announced somberly. “And I don’t know quite how to start.”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong?” I joined her in the living room, leaving my sandwich on the kitchen counter. Taking a seat directly across from her, I sat back into the cushion and waited for her to say what she had to say.
After taking a few large sips of her wine, she stilled herself then finally looked up at me.
“It’s Vaughn,” she snapped. “I need to tell you about Vaughn.”
“What about him?”
“I found out some stuff about him and I’ve been keeping it to myself, not sure how to bring it up to you, but it’s eating me alive, and now with this whole pregnancy business…I need to get it off my chest. You need to know.”
Pregnancy business? The way she referred to my circumstance was offensive, and I felt insulted.
“Need to know what? I don’t understand.”
She let out a ragged breath and fidgeted with her hair.
“I thought I knew exactly what I was going to say. I practiced the whole way over here, but now I’m at a loss. I guess…well, there’s no easy way to get this all out so I’m just going to… He’s got a past,” she declared. “A rough past. I’m not sure he’s the kind of person you want to be involved with.”
I sat, without expression or response, trying as hard as possible to digest what she was saying to me.
“I’m sorry to be the one to reveal all of this, but I’m also glad it’s me…glad I found out early so you don’t have to go through a bunch of unnecessary bullshit. You know I have your back, Andie.”
“I’m sorry, slow down. I’m so confused. What past? What’s going on?” I was a patient person, but I needed her to get to the point, and fast.
“Okay. So, I’m not sure if you noticed during the party, but Richard was acting strange for most of the night. I thought it was nerves or whatever but when we got home, he finally told me what was going on.”
“And…?” I probed.
“Richard knows Vaughn—well, not knows him knows him, but recognized him.”
“How?”
“Years ago, when he was working for the state attorney’s office right out of law school, he worked on a case—Vaughn’s case.” As her voice cracked on the last two words, an awful feeling took residence in my gut.
“I don’t understand. Vaughn’s case?”
“Andie,” she pleaded, hesitant and gentle. “Vaughn is a convicted felon.”
My ears began to ring and my body broke out into a sweat.
“I’m so sorry.”
We both sat for a few moments, her giving me space to digest it all.
“What did he do?” I asked in a strained whisper. I had to know everything. I couldn’t just get pieces of the story. If this was going to break us, I had to know every detail.
“He… Andie, I don’t remem—”
“Just SAY IT! Tell me, Ro. You can’t say something like that and not tell me the entire story.”
A few seconds passed, the two of us in a stare-down, and then she calmly and clearly said the words that rocked me to my core.
“He killed someone.”
The room went white, like I’d been beamed to some sort of alternative universe. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t even breathe.
I wasn’t sure how long I was in a fog but eventually, I heard Rowan speaking, rambling on and on about caring about me and wanting the best for me. Blah blah blah. I wanted—needed to know more, every single detail, but I couldn’t listen to her for another second.
“I want you to leave.”
It was a simple, quiet request.
“What?”
“You heard me. I want you to leave. Now, please.”
“Andie? What the hell? This isn’t my fault. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you told me, but now I want to be alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let’s talk about this.” Her tone was insistent and demanding, and I wanted to smack her.
; “Let’s talk about what? You just dropped a bomb in my living room when I’m already fragile, and what now? You expect me to just walk away from the rubble like it’s nothing?”
“No. I know it’s hard to hear this, but you needed to know.”
“I got it. Now I know. My boyfriend is a murderer.”
“Andie…listen, I just thought…with some tough decisions coming up about…well, about the baby, I thought you’d need all the information to make the right decision.”
“And what’s that, Ro? What’s the right decision?”
“I—I don’t know, but I would want to know,” she confessed, remorseful. “I’d want to know if the man I was falling in love with grew up in foster care with one of the most horrific childhoods you can imagine. I’d want to know if the man I was about to bring a child into the world with had been in prison for eight years.”
“Bring a child into the world? WHAT CHILD?” I screamed, standing up, needing to move and walk around. “My baby won’t even survive. It’s not like we need to agree on parenting styles and talk about how we’re going to discipline our adolescent.”
“I’m sorry. You know what I mean. This is going to be hard enough as it is, but knowing what I know about Vaughn, I couldn’t not tell you.” Her pitying face was getting under my skin.
“That’s why you looked so relieved at the OB appointment. You were thinking, Oh good, now she can just abort and never tell Vaughn and it will all be okay. Unbelievable!”
“Not exactly,” Rowan said defensively. “Okay, yes, I was relieved. For just a split second, I felt like the decision was made for you.”
There it was—her truth. She knew Vaughn’s past, had made her judgment, and was actually relieved that my baby had a congenital disorder that was incompatible with life. She saw it as a blessing, no big deal. I could just do away with it like it was nothing and not have to feel guilty since it was going to die anyway.
“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not killing my child.”