Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(46)

“This way, then.”

The nurse, a muscular woman in her forties with a military cut, asked a battery of stupid questions. Monica answered them with her eyes closed.

“Mister Drazen,” Blakely said as she stepped into the exam room in front of the gurney, “Dr. Solis says you’re immunosuppressed?”

“Yes?”

“You shouldn’t be in a hospital.”

Monica opened her eyes. “Go.”

“I’ll text you our findings,” Blakely said as they moved Monica from the gurney to the table.

Monica seemed so helpless, so separate from her mind and will, so corporeal as she stretched across the table. Her dress hitched above her knees, and I saw the Sharpie script of Jo and erty.

I wasn’t abdicating responsibility. Not the medical part. I knew my limitations, but I wasn’t turning my back on her. I wouldn’t let her sit, alone and hurt, while I protected my immune system. “I’ll stay, thank you.”

“Jonathan, please,” Monica said. “She’s right. I’ll be okay if you keep your phone on. Really, I’m not freaked out. You need to go.”

But she was freaked out. From the ends of her hair, through the writing on her thighs, to the tips of her toenails, she was terrified. I hadn’t known her that long and I had plenty to learn about her, but I knew goddamn well when she was lying about her comfort to protect me. We’d both done that enough to get PhDs in it.

“I’m not going,” I said then turned to Dr. Blakely. “This is my wife, and she needs me. I don’t want to hear, from either of you, that I should go home and live in a bubble and wait for a f*cking text telling me what’s happening with my family.” I sat in the seat next to the table and held Monica’s hand.

“He can wear a mask outside maternity,” the nurse suggested as she tapped on a computer keyboard.

“Will you?” asked Monica.

“Fine.”

Dr. Blakely sat on a stool at the end of the table. “You’re not my patient. Dr. Solis will chew you out if you get sick. Let’s get these underpants off.”

Monica picked up her butt, and the doctor helped her slide out of them. The nurse started to pick up Monica’s dress but glanced at me once she saw the words Jonathan’s Property. I wanted to mention it or make a tension-splitting joke, but I didn’t want to embarrass Monica. The nurse put crinkled paper over Monica’s abdomen. The doctor spread Monica’s legs, and I thanked God Solis had recommended a woman.

“Well, no question of paternity,” she said, looking over the paper. “The baby has to work on his handwriting though.”

The joke wasn’t that good, but I was glad she’d made it. The tension fell off my wife as she laughed.

“All right.” The doctor smiled behind her mask. “Let’s see what we have here.”

Monica cringed, and I heard a squishing noise. I squeezed her hand.

“Plug is in place.”

More tension dropped off Monica. Maybe she was right. Maybe the book had been the wrong tool. Maybe I would have to start getting proper toys. I had to stop using whatever was on hand if it made her bleed.

The doctor put the sheet back and put her Monica’s legs down. The nurse wheeled a cart over.

“I’m supposed to tell you jokes,” I said to Monica. “Something clever and funny to take the edge off.”

Blakely and the nurse said things I didn’t understand, and they exposed Monica’s abdomen. So much like my own experience as a patient. Experts talking about me as if I wasn’t there, huddling together before approaching me with an approved line of bullshit.

Blakely squeezed clear gel on Monica’s abdomen as if every patient had the baby’s ownership scrawled backward on the mother.

“I’m waiting,” Monica said. “I know you have a few thousand jokes in there.”

“Knock, knock.”

She laughed as if that were the entire joke, which it was. I didn’t know any knock, knock jokes.

The ultrasound screen went live as if it had been fingerpainted in shades of grey. We watched as if it were the seventh game of the world series, but we had no idea of what we were seeing.

Silence. Too long. Shouldn’t we be hearing a heartbeat? I’d had sonograms when I was in the hospital, and I always heard whooshing. I squeezed her hand. The doctor slid the wand over Monica’s abdomen while tapping keys.

“Okay,” Blakely said. “Well, that explains it.” She pointed at a black oval. “This is the ovum, and typically we have a little peanut-shaped blur in there, and there isn’t. It’s empty.”

“What does that mean?” Monica asked.

“Well, it’s a blighted ovum. Meaning the egg was fertilized and made it to the uterus, but the cells stopped dividing. Either the cells were reproducing incorrectly or there was some other technical malfunction. Your body kept doing its job though, so you have an ovum and the beginnings of a placenta.” Blakely shut off the machine.

Monica went white, and something in me did too. I wanted to throttle this young doctor. I wanted to choke her until she admitted she was wrong, that she’d misread the images. It was all a big mistake. There was a baby in there, right as rain and thriving.

“I was traveling,” Monica said. “Did that do it?”