6
1293 Words
The waiting room was quiet, not peaceful, just suspended. People are sitting with their own reasons, not looking at each other.
I was very much inside my own head.
My foot was going against the floor without my permission, a small, rapid tap that I noticed and stopped, and then started again without noticing. The skin beside my thumbnail was raw. I had been pulling at it since I sat down, and I made myself stop, flatten both hands on my thighs, and look at the wall across from me.
They called my name.
The doctor was a woman, somewhere in her fifties, with reading glasses pushed up into her hair and the manner of someone who had sat across from a lot of people in this room. She had already gone through my sample results before I came in.
She put the gel on my stomach, turned the screen toward herself, and looked at it for a moment longer than I expected her to.
"How far along do you think you are?" she asked.
"Around a month. Maybe a little less?"
She nodded slowly. "Just past four weeks." She set the probe down and picked up my file, and went through the results quietly, turning pages, occasionally making a small sound that gave nothing away. Then she set the file down and looked at me.
"The embryo is weak," she said. "Considerably so for this stage. Your hormone levels are low, not critically, but enough that we need to take them seriously. There's also some irregularity in the uterine lining that we'll need to monitor." She folded her hands on the desk. "These things together mean the pregnancy is at a high risk of not continuing on its own. The next few weeks will determine a lot."
I looked at the screen. The small grey shape that was barely a shape at all.
"If you want to carry this pregnancy," she continued, "you'll need to treat it very carefully. Complete rest where possible. No heavy lifting, no physical strain. You'll need hormone supplements. I'll write the prescription now, and you'll need to come in every two weeks minimum so we can track whether the lining is stabilizing." She paused. "No alcohol. No significant stress if you can help it. Eat properly, sleep properly. Skipping meals will affect your hormone levels further." She looked at me over her glasses. "I want to be honest with you. Even with all of that, there is a real chance this pregnancy will not be viable. The body sometimes makes that decision regardless of what we do. But without the care, the chance of loss is much higher."
My hands were curled together in my lap under the edge of the table.
She was still watching me steadily. I had come here knowing what I was going to say. I had the words ready the entire cab ride over.
"I'll follow the instructions," I said.
She held my gaze for a moment. Then she picked up her pen and started writing the prescription.
She went through each medication carefully, what it was for, when to take it, and what it interacted with. Hormone support. Something for the lining. A supplement. She told me the next appointment needed to be in two weeks, that missing it was not optional given the situation, and that if anything felt wrong before then, I should call the clinic number directly and not wait.
I nodded at each thing she said.
Outside, it was raining. Aldenvale has pretty wet weather; I had noticed that in the past few days. I stood under the narrow overhang above the clinic entrance with the prescription envelope in my hand, my coat pulled around me, and looked at the wet street.
The doctor's voice was still going in my head, itemizing. Low hormone levels. Irregular lining. High risk of loss regardless. Every two weeks. No stress. No strain.
The prescription was thin in my hand. I looked down at it.
The embryo was weak. The doctor had said so herself; there was already a real chance it wouldn't continue regardless of what I did. These things happened. The body made its own decisions sometimes.
The rain came down on the pavement in front of me, and I stood under the overhang and thought about what it would mean to simply not fill the prescription. To not come back in two weeks. To let the situation resolve the way weak things sometimes did on their own.
It would be cleaner. It would be the most practical version of this by a significant distance.
I stood there long enough that a woman leaving the clinic had to excuse herself past me.
Then I tucked the envelope into my bag, stepped out from under the overhang, and walked into the rain toward the main road.
She was halfway down the block when she stopped.
The pharmacy was across the street. Green sign, lights on inside, visible through the sheet of rain coming down between them. She stood on the wet pavement and looked at it.
Her feet were not moving.
She looked down at them as if they belonged to someone else. Then back at the pharmacy. The rain was soaking through her coat at the shoulders and she was standing completely still in the middle of the pavement like an i***t, and she was very aware of both of these things, and her feet were still not moving.
What are you doing, she thought. You just decided. You stood under that overhang and you thought it through clearly, and you decided. So keep walking.
Her feet did not keep walking.
The embryo is weak, the doctor had said. High risk of loss regardless.
Regardless. That was the word. Regardless of what she did or didn't do, there was already a real chance this resolved itself. So the medication was almost beside the point. Almost a gesture toward something that might not need gesturing toward at all.
She was still looking at the pharmacy.
Fine, she thought, shifting tack, because the first argument wasn't working and she was getting wetter by the second. Fine. The hormone levels. That's a separate issue. Low hormones affect her, not just the pregnancy her energy levels, her cycle, her body's ability to function properly at work. She needed to be functional at work. She could not afford to be running on low hormones while trying to prove herself to a man who had already decided she didn't belong there. The medication was for her. Her health. That was a completely reasonable and separate thing from everything else the doctor had said.
She would take the hormone support. That made sense for practical reasons that had nothing to do with anything else.
The other things, every two weeks, no stress, rest, and eating properly, those were a different category entirely, and she was not committing to any of that. That was the part that was optional. That was the part she was choosing not to do. So this didn't count as changing her mind. This was just being sensible about her own body.
She was across the street before she finished the thought, pushing through the pharmacy door, shaking the rain off her coat in the entrance.
She found the counter and handed over the prescription before she could look at it too closely.
The pharmacist took it without comment and went to fill it, and Victoria stood at the counter with her wet hair and her soaked shoulders and her very reasonable and practical decision that had nothing to do with the small grey shape on the ultrasound screen that was the last remnant of Alexander. It was definitely for her own sake.
- Writer
