I stare at him as though he is mad. As though he really is one of those doctors from a telenovela, and he might also tell me that I have an evil twin.
Pregnant? Of course I wasn’t pregnant! We were careful … most of the time. Nearly all of the time. I always assumed that I’d have kids at some point in my life, but certainly not now. And Harry … well, he only ever talked about them with mock-horror – or maybe real horror, I was never quite sure, and it never mattered too much, because we were too young anyway.
That’s why we were careful, nearly all of the time.
Except … well. Perhaps ‘nearly all of the time’ isn’t quite careful enough?
‘Are you sure?’ I ask Dr Martinez, my hand going automatically to my stomach. He nods gravely. I’m still not sure I believe him; it seems like one layer too much of strange for me to process on top of everything else.
But then I start to remember how I felt on this holiday. How Harry was winding me up about my hormones because I was snappy with him.
I was feeling off, physically. My stomach wasn’t right. I was more tired than usual. I was expecting my period any day, and I was probably late – but that wasn’t unusual for me. I’ve never been one of those women blessed with clockwork regularity, so I didn’t give it a second thought. When I was younger, I always kept pregnancy testing sticks in the bathroom cupboard because my cycle was so messed up it made me paranoid. In recent years, I just accepted that was the way I was made. That it was no cause for alarm.
Except, of course, when it is. Or is it? Do I want a baby? Am I ready? What about me and Harry? What would he think about it all?
Even as all of those thoughts swarm through my mind, in the seconds it takes for my thoughts to catch up with reality, I start to remember something else. I remember the pains I had while I was beneath the ground – how my arm hogged the spotlight but my tummy was sore. I remember that I am wearing a sanitary pad. I remember that Dr Martinez used the past tense.
The hand I have on my belly freezes. I have spread my fingers across my skin, as though I am striving to protect a child that I suspect no longer exists. A child I never knew existed until it didn’t.
I remember, I realise, and I feel something crumple inside me.
‘I was pregnant?’ I repeat dumbly.
‘Yes. We did a routine test before we treated you. Approximately seven weeks. Elena, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the foetus didn’t survive.’
Of course it didn’t, I think. I barely survived myself. The poor thing didn’t have a hope. It was lost before it was found, it died inside me before I had a chance to love it. To keep it safe.
‘You’ll need to have a few more tests,’ he goes on. ‘But so far it looks routine – this is terrible news, I know, but there is no reason to think the worst. There is no reason that you won’t be able to go on and have other children. Harry’s condition … even if he doesn’t fully recover, many men with spinal injuries successfully become fathers. It’s not the end for you.’
I am unsure how to react, knowing that I have a part to play here but unable to play it. I am falling to pieces, fracturing, splitting into particles that might disintegrate and float away, become nothing but fragmented specks of loss and disappointment, scattering like clouds of dust into the ether. I am empty and cold and made of nothing at all.
‘Thank you,’ I mumble eventually, decades of training in polite behaviour kicking in as he looks at me. I don’t want to disappoint him, so I try to smile. It is a twisted thing, I am sure.
‘Do you have any questions for me?’ he asks.
Oh yes. I have a lot of questions. I want to know why this happened. Why Harry is lying in a coma, facing life in a wheelchair. I want to know why so many people died. Why my baby died. Why Alex’s wife died. Why I survived, when right now I wish I hadn’t.
Why the whole fucking world is so extremely cruel.
‘No,’ I reply politely, asking him none of those questions. There is a limit to what medical school will have taught him, and none of this is his fault.
I stand up, weak and floppy, using my good hand to steady myself on the desk. I accidentally knock a pile of papers over, and apologise.
‘I need to go and see Harry,’ I say simply. ‘Where is he?’
Dr Martinez is clearly concerned, worried that I might collapse, or break down, or scream. He looks on the verge of telling me I need to rest. That I need to lie down, to hydrate, to process my loss. And normally he’d be right – but there is no normal about this.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘I understand what you’ve told me, and I know I need to deal with it. But right now it’s too much. I can’t let myself go there … I can’t. I might not come back from it, and Harry needs me. I need to get through this in stages, and I can’t concentrate on myself until I’ve seen him. So please, help me. Will you take me to him?’
The doctor reluctantly agrees, but insists that I use a wheelchair. I agree, and am in fact relieved to not have to walk. To not have to concentrate on sending messages from my brain to my body, on the all-consuming task of putting one foot in front of the other.
He pushes me through busy corridors, wheels squeaking, overhead lights sizzling, people making way to let us through. Nobody meets my eyes, even the staff who say hello to him, the patients and relatives who stand to one side to give us passage. It is like I’m invisible, and I am glad.
Everything feels strange, alien, off-centre – the bright colours and the signs in Spanish and the chatter in a language I don’t understand. It’s a hospital, but not in the way I know it. Like I’ve been transported into a place that is both drably familiar and utterly new. Into a life that feels like a beginning and an end, in so many ways.
I was pregnant. And now I am not. I was whole, and now I am not. There is a part of me that will be forever missing, forever left behind on a hilltop in a foreign land. And now I need to set that aside, if only for a small while. I silently apologise to myself, to my baby, to the universe, and grab hold of the doctor’s sleeve as we approach a room in the intensive care unit.
‘Do they know?’ I ask, gazing up at him. ‘About the pregnancy?’
