The Hospital: Part 2

I got a call from my doctor's office. Come and see us please. Now.

In the waiting room, with other people waiting, my doctor (not my friend Thomas) told me that the results showed I might have an ectopic pregnancy.

The only thing I knew about ectopic pregnancies is that they can be fatal.

In my head, I just knew that couldn't be true. I had already been told, unequivocally that it couldn't be that.

For the first time since I discovered I was pregnant, I was given a pregnancy test. I was in his office and he said that it looked like it was negative.
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Minutes later I was told an ambulance was on its way.

The test was actually positive.
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Hospitals can be such dull places. On the telly it's all life and death.

In real life, sure, it's life and death too, but on a different scale. People talk about what's important to them, most pressing at that moment. Have you fed the cat? How much was the power bill? Has Penny called to ask about me? Did you eat the last of those bread rolls before they went off?

They want to know what's happening in the outside world. They want to know about the weather, the important murder trial all over the papers.

They're not going to talk about dying. They're not going to tell you that they cry in the night. That they miss being more than the sum of their medical conditions, that one time they were a dancer, a lover, an artist.

Days are highly regulated. Breakfast at 7.45. Doctors do their rounds. Milo at bedtime.

Time passes. One day I woke to see snow on the hills.

Jules and I spent long hours together. Talking, reading, staying close with Jules only going out if he really needed to and couldn't put it off any longer.
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I was told that I was lucky to be here. That the internal bleeding had been extensive. That the operation was complicated. That I lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion.

In the night, I felt pain that I never want to feel again.

Somewhere far away, I could hear crying. I could hear a hurt and tortured soul calling out and I wondered who it was.

It was me.
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I was really sick. It was confirmed for me by the way the doctors looked at me, the way the students made nervous notes when standing by my bedside.

I had another blood transfusion. I had drains and stitches removed. I had a lot of drugs.
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It had all happened so quickly but so slowly all at the same time.

I was in shock.

I was angry and sore and shocked, so very shocked.

Mostly, I cried for my baby, the Christmas baby I would never have. The baby that suffered an undignified, unfair and highly medical death. The baby that no one was talking to me about.