Dreaming

I have always been prone to nightmares; I wake up covered in sweat, heart pounding, unable to move nor speak. These dreams come in cycles sometimes a year or two will pass without a visit from the Old Hag, but when life has its way with me, she’ll pay a call.

This pregnancy, aside from a few lingering symptoms, still seems unreal. After struggling with infertility with our first and fearing the same with our second, it did not seem possible to suddenly find myself pregnant, but that is where we stand. Fourteen weeks in and my dreams have yet to come to terms.

Several nights ago I found myself in Publix wearing a paper gown. I was sitting on a gurney in the canned vegetable aisle under the fluorescent light. I sat there waiting for my doctor, studying my hands, wishing for something to read, and just hoping for the appointment to be over. My doctor appeared; she pulled up a stool, looked at a chart while shaking her head, “I’m sorry” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“You’ve lost the pregnancy and failed to miscarry. The baby has been dead for weeks,” she looked at me sadly and wandered away, leaving me holding an ultrasound picture of an unrecognizable blob.

I shouted after her, “But we saw the heartbeat!” She was gone and I was sitting by the canned peas in my socks, as my neighbors filled their carts. I looked for my clothes, but they were gone. Carrying the picture and fighting back tears I began to walk to the front of the store.

“Miss! Miss!” a woman standing by an operating table gestured wildly at me, “You have to come over here.”

I told her I wanted to go home, sobbed that I couldn’t find my clothes or my keys. She grabbed me by the arm and ushered me to the table. I was too weak and heartbroken to fight as she strapped me down. People I barely knew walked by staring with pity in their eyes as a machine hummed and a metal bowl on the floor was filled with what had once been my child.

I awoke fighting my blankets, still hearing the machine, and begging her to stop.