“A Breakthrough, Bleeding” (Story 8, Excerpt 2)

The following excerpt is the second part of “A Breakthrough, Bleeding”. You can read the first part here.

When I returned to the table, my food was waiting, but my appetite was gone. I looked at the scrambled eggs and felt they were mocking my own feminine discomfort.

I drew a smiley face on the eggs with ketchup and realized that I was too preoccupied for even this to amuse me.

Tato’s chicken-egg omelet confused me even more, with the pieces of ground chicken in the egg. He flipped through the selections on the miniature jukebox attached to our table and placed one quarter into the machine, playing a song that I had never heard before. Mama started to hum and sway in her seat.

“I remember when this song came out,” said Tato. “Your mother and I were having a picnic in a park, talking about whether or not we were ready to have a child. Little did we know, Veda, your mom was already pregnant with you.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked. “I mean, you didn’t even have a chance to plan for my arrival.”

“That’s just what happened. A lot of women didn’t want to use the Pill because it was new, and the side effects were horrible,” said Mama. “I tried it for a while, but then I gained a lot of weight. I didn’t think it was worth it.”

When we were done eating, I stood up from the table and looked twice at a thick, red smudge staining the pleather booth material. More than likely, the spot was dried ketchup, but I felt my face redden and hoped no one else noticed.

The gynecologist was open until noon on Saturdays. After breakfast, I drove myself to Dr. Girard’s office. In the main reception area, Caroline, the front desk attendant, was pregnant. Why was everyone pregnant?

Caroline’s breasts hung over the front desk. When she stood up to find my file and check my health insurance information, one of the doctors in the practice walked in large swooping movements around her. Caroline even bumped into the copy machine.

I felt sorry for Caroline because her body would probably never fully recover from the pregnancy. But maybe Caroline wanted to become soft and matronly. What did I know? The only thing I knew for sure was that I was not ready to sacrifice my body for a child.

I thought the way pregnant women ate was disgusting too. On the desk, Caroline had unpacked not only a breakfast sandwich but also a tub of hash browns and a yogurt parfait.

When she waved me over to the door that would let me into the hall of examination rooms, Caroline’s two-carat engagement ring caught the fluorescent light. I knew that Caroline was trying to make me jealous, but her tactics weren’t working.

“Please undress and put on the paper gown,” she said. “Dr. Girard will be with you in a few minutes.”

I did what Caroline said and was glad I had an extra pair of panties because mine were already soiled, despite my heavy duty tampon. The room was cold, and I folded the paper gown under my butt as I sat on the examination table, worried that I would bleed all over it.

My examination room was in the corner of the suite on the second floor of the medical building and had a view of the park across the street. Today, the view disturbed me. It included balloons, children with balloons, balloons attached to carriages, and balloons leaving hands and floating off into the sky until they were no more than a colorful speck among the clouds.

The stupid Pill was no bigger than the colorful speck in the sky.

I wondered what Theo would say or do if he knew I was going through this crap today. Knowing Theo, I guessed he would probably want to use condoms during all future encounters. Maybe the news would scare him and bring us closer as a couple.

Dr. Girard entered the room while reading my chart.

“So you’re bleeding, and it’s not time for your period?” Asked Dr. Girard.

“Yes, since this morning. I know breakthrough bleeding can be normal, but this is violent and particularly messy,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be disgusting.”

“I deal with disgusting,” said Dr. Girard. “Medications?”

“Just the Pill, that’s all.”

“Is there a chance you could be pregnant?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I take the Pill consistently. I’ve never missed one.”

I thought about all the tiny pills I had swallowed since I had first starting taking birth control and about how those hormones built themselves up in my body.

“You know it’s not one-hundred percent effective, right?”

“Well yeah, of course. There’s always a chance then, yes, maybe, I don’t know. What’s your definition of pregnant? Because I read something today that made me wonder.”

I pulled the “Catholic Truths” pamphlet from my purse. I opened to the page with the information and held it out for the doctor, who looked at it skeptically.

“See? Here, it says that the Pill doesn’t always prevent an egg from being released. Do you think I could have gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage because of the low-dose hormones?” I asked. “Did they kill the fertilized egg? Is that what this is?”

I felt relieved that I said what I wanted to say, even though I knew it was probably a crazy and convoluted diagnosis.

“We practice medicine here, not religion,” said Dr. Girard.

She took the pamphlet, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the trashcan. I shivered under my paper gown. I didn’t want to ask the doctor anything more.

“I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t trust literature that hasn’t been written by a medical professional. I’m sure you’re fine, but we can give you a blood test to check the levels of the hormones in your body,” said Dr. Girard. “You can check for pregnancy yourself, with a home pregnancy test.”

“If I had been pregnant within the past twenty-four hours, would the test be positive?”

“Yes, but you really should be more concerned about whether you’re pregnant now,” said Dr. Girard.

“But why would I be pregnant now?” I asked. “I thought the Pill was supposed to protect me from that.”

“Because the Pill isn’t one hundred percent effective.”

“But I don’t want to be pregnant,” I said.

The doctor prepared the needle and stuck me in the arm.

“Here’s a super pad,” said Dr. Girard, holding a sanitary napkin out to me. “You’re fine, Veda. We should have the results in a few days, and they probably won’t tell me anything I don’t already suspect.”

The doctor asked me if I had any more questions, and, when I didn’t respond, she left the room to let me dress. When the doctor closed the door, I fished the pamphlet out of the garbage can, smoothed the paper on the examination table, refolded it, and put it in my purse.

I dressed and shook a little bit, holding my hips and pressing my fingers into my abdomen, which burned.

I wanted to know that something was wrong so I could explain to Theo what had happened and give him a reason to worry about me. I couldn’t wait for the blood test results from Dr. Girard. I rushed out of the waiting room and ran down the three flights of stairs to the pharmacy on the first floor.

Caroline was there buying a chocolate bar, and she was flirting with the cashier in between customers. It would be impossible to buy anything without her noticing. I saw Caroline lean over the counter, her swollen breasts brushing the plastic container filled with travel-sized nail files, from where I stood by the large freezer with the bags of ice.

I was disgusted by Caroline’s protruding belly and also by the way she flirted with the young man, blatantly, not even attempting to hide her engagement ring.

I found the Family Planning aisle and made sure that I was out of Caroline’s view. The shelf of pregnancy tests held boxes of different colors. I had never imagined myself buying a pregnancy test.

Perhaps at a later, more stable time in my life, I would choose the most expensive test and want everyone in the store to know the possibility that I might be pregnant. But today I did not feel that way. I chose the least expensive test and hoped that cost had little to do with accuracy. Caroline was still standing by the counter.

I stuffed the cardboard box under my shirt and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror-covered pillar at the end of the aisle. I wondered if my own stomach looked larger than before, but the cardboard box under my shirt distorted my figure.

I went to the back of the store to the swinging door with the peek-through window to the stockroom. I pushed against the employee bathroom door and found it open. I slipped behind it and closed the lock, relieved to have found such luck.

I dropped my purse in the corner and removed the box from under my shirt. I unfolded the many-creased instruction sheet, scanned the directions for the most important information, and hoped I didn’t miss anything important.

I tried to remember something funny about the instructions so that I could tell Theo later, when the whole mess was over, but there was nothing particularly funny about them.

I placed the open cardboard box on the toilet paper dispenser and ripped the plastic wrapper that held the wand. I tried my best to hold the wand under my urine stream and counted “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” up to five, the way I learned to do in preschool. I didn’t know any other way to accurately count seconds.

I pulled the stick out of the stream and stared at it.  Only one line materialized. Meaning negative. Now what?

I stood there for a few more minutes, waiting for the other line, which would complete a plus sign. Nothing happened.

I gathered everything: the wrapper, the box, and the pregnancy test, and I threw them in the trash can. I no longer cared if anyone found me with the stolen merchandise. I thought about saving the instructions to show Theo proof of what I did, but they were not really of any use anymore.

On my way out, I saw the pharmacists in their white coasts behind the pharmacy counter and remembered that I had forgotten Arthur’s textbook at the diner, in the rush of wondering whether or not I had bled on the pleather seat. The stupid book!

I returned to the diner. When I got out of my car, I heard two voices arguing behind a dumpster, and I decided to see what was wrong.

“You know you can’t take breaks right now, since it’s lunch hour. We are short on staff,” said Jimmy angrily.

“I’m sorry, I was feeling nauseous and needed some fresh air!” Screamed Sally. “Could you at least have some sympathy?”

“I know you’re pregnant, but I have a business to run,” said Jimmy.

Just as I had suspected, Sally’s pregnancy was making work difficult for her. I had never been behind the diner before, despite having visited so many times. This part of the parking lot was unkempt; the ground showed potholes and was covered with colorful soda cans. By the dumpster, rusted shopping carts with bent wheels, missing plastic hand-grips, and tilted carriages had gathered.

I heard Sally stomp away angrily, and my heart raced when I realized that I might be caught. Without any better ideas, I decided to climb into the shopping cart and crouch down, hiding in it, even though anyone could see into the spaces between the steel bars.

I remained as motionless as I could and cursed myself for choosing a hiding place without any escape. Where could I go from there?

I thought of the scene that my mom had described over breakfast: Baby Veda in the carriage, bumping over the sidewalk. But no one was around to push me. I was stuck, and the cart rolled a little, crackling over the rocks beneath the wheels.

“What is that? Who’s there?” Asked Sally, startled.

I must have been in shadow because Sally didn’t notice me. I was happy, at least, that I didn’t have a lot to carry and that my body was small, capable of maneuvering in tight spaces. In my purse, all I had was the Catholic pamphlet, my car keys, and my wallet.

I could rest in the cart for a while, until Sally and Jimmy were safely out of sight.

I may have been trapped for the time being, but I was relieved anyway. The situation was risky, but Arthur’s textbook was still in the diner. I had to get it back to him, in case he still needed it.

(Photo by klynslis)