Praise Red Wine

I'm drinking red wine tonight, taking some red in to make up for all the red I'm putting out.

I waited the whole day for my phone to ring with the test results. Every hour that passed, silent, stacked another weight on the sad end of the scale. But I had excuses, all kinds of rationalizations, like how busy she must have been after taking a few days of vacation, how much catching up the office staff must have needed to do, how many patients they would need to call, and how they usually make their calls in the afternoon anyway...

Even when I stopped in the bathroom on my way out of the office and saw the red spot in my crotch, even seeing that Rorschach test between my knees, I denied it. I knew what it most likely meant, but I devised a plan to go home and lie still and never move again until I'd swollen up like a foil-covered pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn. Just to lie still and let that ball of cells have one more chance to dig in.

It's one of those ironies, how I'd waited the whole day and then the call and the blood came all at once. It was three, maybe four minutes from the appearance of the red spot to the time my phone rang, as if my uterus had coordinated with my doctor to drop their bombshells together, creating an irrefutable, multi-sensory delivery of bad news, a bright signal for the eyes and a careful wording for the ears, so gently matter-of-fact.

The ghost of those words haunted me as I sobbed the news through the phone to my husband in L.A., sniffled my way home on the bus, greeted the cats and fed them their treats, and then sat, just sat, in the plaid chair, noticing how the house had gotten bigger with the expectation of one less inhabitant, how our finances felt suddenly healthier, and how the future felt smaller again, narrower, like a dim tunnel instead of a bright and intimidating dawn.

During the previous five days, names had been discussed, our smallest bedroom had been designated as the nursery, and my search for a new, more satisfying career retreated to second priority. I'd been good, too, so good, quitting the caffeine cold turkey, withstanding days of headache misery with the assistance of a single Tylenol, taking my vitamins without fail, eating healthy meals. I was terrified of the whole endeavor: the pregnancy, the birth, being responsible for a baby, giving up my whole life, as it felt, my whole identity. I was terrified and, of course, there was the thrill of it too, the thrill of growing round and seeing that little face for the first time, touching the little fingers.

Tonight, though, I looked into my small-tunnel future and my thoughts turned to red wine, to wine and pizza and a video. Something unserious but sad, and a little bit happy, too. Definitely a little bit happy.

So after I'd sat in the plaid chair for long enough, staring, teary-eyed, I went out and got all those things. I made friendly conversation with the video clerk and the wine clerk and the pizza cashier, and I came home and ate and drank and ate and drank some more until I forgot, kind of, that there had ever been any other plan than eating and drinking and going to bed and getting up and doing it again.

So let me praise red wine. Because for now I am able to think bravely about the whole affair, and even though only hours have passed, already my mind has started shrinking back to its original size. The burgeoning balloon of hope is shrivelling, and my mind is drawing all its stretched fibers back in like spandex does when you peel yourself out of it.

It's the absence of the word I'm thinking about most tonight, how she didn't say it, how she danced around it with her medical euphemisms. "Your levels are going down," she said, her voice clouding through the cell phone, barely audible above the traffic sounds at the intersection I was crossing.

"So it's definitely a miscarriage?" I asked. I wanted her to say it. And she did, then, she said it, exactly as I'd said it. But without the question mark.