After Pains

“I’m late,” she says. She smiles.

I stop chewing the bite of veal I have in mouth and tilt my head.

“So, so I took the test and…”

“When?”

“Um, today-today I took the test and it was positive,” she’s already glowing and I can’t chew anymore. I know what I’m supposed to do, so I do it. I smile.

“That’s…fantastic! Oh my god! Did you call an OBGYN?”

The talk continues and I don’t finish my veal. She says a lot of nice things. Things like family, life, happy. She’s talking so much and running around the house so much and being happy so much.

I think about a sterile needle full of clear liquid piercing a peach-round stomach. I hear his and her reassurance over and over that it’s not like the stuff I’m thinking of- this is real medicine. I hear her crying and asking what to do with this thing inside of her. I feel an officer wrapping a blanket around my shoulders and saying it’s more common than I think. I remember thinking later that he probably thought he was helping. I remember all of this and I think all of this but I tell her that I’m happy. That’s it’s a good thing.

I’m pacing around a waiting room, circling an invisible wheel. I’m pulling my hair out and crying. Family members say it’s going to be okay and I consider believing them. A doctor calls me in.

The hallway feels long and empty. We pass so many rooms before getting there and he leads me in. She’s smiling again and hands me a tiny thing wrapped in a blanket. It’s mine. My child. My girl.

We’re lying in the hospital bed and it’s dark.

“You and Sara never had children?”

“No.”