Hannah asked a few more questions before standing up with the promise of the doctor being in shortly, and then I was alone.
If I thought sitting in the waiting room was nerve-racking, it had nothing on watching the clock slowly tick, second by second, in here. Something about staring at stirrups and a physical representation of what ten centimeters dilated looked like had me on the verge of bolting.
A gentle knock sounded from behind me, and then the doctor was walking in. She had to have been about my mom’s age—her face creased ever so gently with wrinkles—and her auburn hair was down, but clipped back from her face. The way she carried herself screamed competent, but also compassionate, and some of the tension eased from my body.
“Darcy? I’m Doctor Vanessa Thompson. It’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand and I shook it, expecting it to be cold for some reason, but it wasn’t. It always seemed like doctors had cold hands.
“You too,” I replied.
“How are you feeling?”
I shrugged. “Um, okay. I’ve been pretty nauseous and my boobs hurt, but other than that, I’m fine.”
Doctor Thompson laughed at that. “That sounds like the first trimester, though . . .” She trailed off, scrolling through thenotes on her computer. “We don’t know how far along you are, correct?”
The tension from earlier resurfaced. I had no idea how far along I was. It could already be too late, and that thought made me panic more because too late for what? I hadn’t officially decided what I was doing because I had no idea I was pregnant until a week ago.
I wet my lips which were suddenly, painfully dry. “Correct.”
“Okay, then let’s go ahead and get you an ultrasound. Then we’ll know for certain how far along you are, and can give you an estimated due date.”
I nodded, placing my hands under my thighs so that, hopefully, the doctor wouldn’t notice the way they were trembling.
“But first things first, we’re going to need to remove your IUD. From what I’m seeing in your records, it’s expired, which is probably how you ended up here.”
Of course it was.
“Don’t you guys usually call with reminders about that kind of thing?” I tried and failed to keep my voice from sounding accusatory. This wasn’t their fault, but also, how was I supposed to know when it expired?
She nodded. “We do, but the number you gave us today doesn’t appear to match what we have in our file for you.”
Fuck me.
No, and of course it wouldn’t because, as the doctor’s statement had me realizing, I’d never updated them with my new number. When I moved from Boston to Pennsylvania three years ago, getting a new phone number with the right area code seemed unnecessary, but eventually I caved. I updated it with my bank, credit cards, landlord, work . . . all the important people, but I’d completely forgotten to update it with the gynecologist’s office I visited once a year.
“Right. Makes sense. Okay, so after we remove it, what happens next?”
She turned toward me on her stool, her expression gentle. “Well, we go ahead and do the ultrasound to determine viability and gestational age, and then we can discuss next steps. Whatever you’d like those to be . . .” She said the last part with so much sensitivity and without judgement that my eyes started watering. Damn pregnancy hormones.
I didn’t trust myself to speak so I simply nodded my head.
Five minutes later, I was leaving the exam room, expired IUD officially gone, and several pamphlets detailing my various options in my hands. Back in the waiting room, I returned to my seat from earlier for about ten minutes before an ultrasound tech called my name.
The room the tech brought me into had drastically different vibes than the exam room I’d just seen the doctor in. For starters, the lighting wasn’t fluorescent. It was warmer and significantly dimmer, probably so that there wouldn’t be a glare on the TV screen during the ultrasound, but still. The mood was much less clinical. The table still had the plastic lining on it, but it sat lower to the ground at a more normal bed height, alleviating the slightly embarrassing act of having to climb up onto it.
I laid back on the table, resting my head against the pillow, and tried to calm my pounding heart. Everything about this moment felt surreal, like it was happening to someone else, because there was no way it wasmeabout to get a fetal ultrasound. Any minute now the tech would turn to me and say, “You’re not supposed to be here. You need to be pregnant to get an ultrasound, and you’re not pregnant.” Then we’d share a laugh about it, and I’d go home to my normal life.
Except the tech wouldn’t, and I had seven positive pregnancy tests to corroborate my need for being exactly where I was. And that was more than just weird, it was scary.
It was also a little . . . exciting?
When the tech grabbed the bottle of gel and brought it over my exposed abdomen, I braced myself for it to be cold, but was pleasantly surprised when warmth spread across my skin.
She placed her wand in the middle of the gel, and began moving it back and forth, a black and white image, that I assumed was my uterus, appearing on the screen. When a white speck centered in a void of black came into focus, her movements stilled, and I somehow got stiller myself. Or maybe that was simply everything inside me coming to a halt.
“Is that it?” My voice was barely a whisper—so quiet I wasn’t sure she’d heard me.
“That’s it! That’s your baby!” I felt her smile at me, but my eyes remained locked on the monitor on the wall in front of me.
