Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 20: Then

When we returned home from the police station, I was almost too exhausted to research prenatal care. It was the only remaining step to take in our initial plan, after the first two steps had gone worse than I'd even expected. I'd allowed myself to feel a tiny twinge of hope after Marcus had helped us produce a list of people who'd attended the Christmas party, but Officer Bose's reaction at the police station had knocked the wind out of me.

At least this last step was under my control. Finding a prenatal care facility was something I could take care of right now, unlike anything related to details of the night I'd forgotten.

From among the list of OB-GYNs in our insurance network, Owen and I chose Dr. Hasan Syed based on the convenient location of his office, positive reviews from other patients, and the fact that he had an opening for an appointment that Monday.

And so on the afternoon of February 3rd, Owen parked his Subaru in front of the waist-high piles of grey snow that stood between us and the single-story, unassuming structure off Route 95 that was Dr. Syed's office.

Inside, the waiting room was furnished in muted teal and shades of grey. The sound of bright, rapid chatter burst like gunfire from behind the reception desk. A plump, middle-aged woman with sparse, blown-out bangs gave instructions to an exhausted-looking pregnant woman before turning her cheerfulness on me and Owen.

She gushed for a few minutes about how exciting it was to be starting this journey together, handed me a tablet with a pre-appointment questionnaire, and directed both of us over to a row of chairs against the opposite wall.

I stared down at the screen on my lap, trying to focus on the text.

When was the first day of your last menstrual period? The questionnaire wanted to know. Conveniently, since Owen had been pestering me about tracking my fertility, I knew the answer. December 7th.

"Julie Porter?" The nurse who called my name was just as peppy as the receptionist.

Owen started to stand up with me, but she motioned for him to stay where he was. "We're just going to talk to Mom first. Thanks, Dad," she said.

Making pleasant small talk with herself, the nurse weighed me and handed me a cup to pee in. "You should start to see some weight gain soon," she informed me without looking up from my chart, "since you're eight weeks and two days along today."

"No," I corrected her. "The date of, um, conception was December 21st. I'm sure of it."

She waved a hand dismissively. "That always surprises people. When we're estimating your due date, we start counting at the first day of your last period, not the day you actually conceived."

I did some quick mental math. If I was already over eight weeks along in this pregnancy, that meant I was going to have even less time to make up my mind about whether or not to end it.

After she took my blood pressure, prattling on the whole time about what a fucking gift babies are, the nurse brought me into an exam room and promptly left again to retrieve Dr. Syed.

I was left alone, except for the diagrams of pregnant bodies posted on all four of the office walls. They were cross-section drawings, so the women's organs were visible inside their bodies, along with the fetus in whatever stage of development the diagram depicted. I found the eight-week poster, the one that apparently matched what my body looked like on the inside. The woman in the drawing had long, dark curls just like mine, and her eyes were just as hollow. The fetus drawn inside her uterus was the shape and size of a magenta lima bean.

How had this poor mother come to be turned into a cross-section like that, anyway? I imagined someone taking a chainsaw and methodically bisecting her from the crown of her head, straight down between her shoulder blades, slicing cleanly through her torso and the eight-week-old lima bean fetus, until the two sides fell away from each other like moist slices of bread.

A gentle knock at the door interrupted my morbid daydream.

Dr. Syed was a slim man with kind, olive-shaped eyes and skin the shade of terra cotta. In contrast to the off-putting cheeriness of his staff, he spoke to me with utmost gentleness, as if every word to leave his lips were a thoughtful decision. In another life, he could have been a librarian.

I was relieved when he told me there was no need for a physical examination at this point. After our brief conversation, he offered to refer me to a psychiatrist.

"It's unlikely they'll be able to start you on an anti-depressant, as long as you continue to be pregnant," Dr. Syed said. "But there are other ways to improve your mood. And given your trauma history and the way you've been feeling, I strongly urge you to make an appointment. The soonest one available."

The soonest appointment was a month away and it wouldn't even be an in-office visit. As it turned out, Dr. Almaden, the only psychiatrist in our insurance network who specialized in perinatal care, happened to work in the Boston office on Mondays. So I could either meet with her via video chat on March 3rd, or wait until the following Tuesday when she'd be back in Providence.

A video chat seemed like an impersonal way to meet with a psychiatrist, but that didn't bother me at all. In fact, it was a relief to be able to avoid meeting a new therapist in-person.

It wasn't that I didn't like therapists. I certainly respected them and the important work they did for many people's mental health, including my own. After my parents had died, when nightmares of the car accident wouldn't go away, I'd had a few, first-time appointments with different psychologists and psychiatrists.

All of them had been pleasantly professional, and one had prescribed me Zoloft. But I'd never picked up the prescription from the pharmacy. I hadn't felt comfortable taking a pill at the direction of someone who'd spent a total of fifty minutes nodding slowly in my direction, looking vaguely disappointed that for some reason, I refused to cry.

That was the problem, when it came down to it. I couldn't show the right emotions, or even say the right words, the ones therapists desperately tried to drag up from out of my throat. Maybe a video chat would allow me to speak freely, since I'd be inside my own house, safe behind a computer monitor. I booked the appointment.