Page 60 of Perfect Chemistry

She nodded. “That’s to be expected. Can you tell me what you remember?” she asked.

My mind flooded with the memories of Tyson. His funeral. Losing our baby. Drinking in my bathtub.

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” I deadpanned.

She smiled sadly. “No one thinks you did. That’s not why you’re here,” she said.

“Then why am I here?” I asked.

“When you miscarried two weeks ago, did the hospital give you a complete exam? What did they tell you about your condition?” she asked.

I closed my eyes, trying to forget the condescension that poured out of the doctor who had treated me. “I most likely lost the pregnancy due to stress, malnutrition, exhaustion, or any combination of other factors including excessive alcohol consumption,” I stated quietly.

Her breath sucked in, and it prompted me to open my eyes to see her. She looked mortified, and then her face flushed with anger. “That damned hilly-billy, back woods, quack!” She yelled.

She paced the small room, and then stopped at my bedside. “You had an ectopic pregnancy, Katie. Do you know what that means?” She was seething and trying not to take it out on me.

I remembered back to health classes, “Something to do with an egg latching on a tube instead of the uterus?”

Dr. Carson nodded. “That’s exactly it. Ectopic pregnancies are never viable. They are aborted by the body, naturally, or terminated artificially to save the mother’s life. They cannot go to term without killing the mother.”

I nodded, but felt confused. “What does that have to do with me?” I asked.

“Yours was an ectopic pregnancy, Katie. If they had scanned you when you were miscarrying they would have seen that your body was not able to flush everything,” she explained.

I must have looked as confused as I felt, because she sighed and sat down in the chair next to my bed.

“Basically, your body recognized that you couldn’t carry the pregnancy and tried to abort. You miscarried. You were in forced premature labor, for all intents and purposes. The problem was your body couldn’t flush the tube, and so the nonviable fetus was still there.”

At first I didn’t understand why that caused me to be hospitalized, but she continued to explain.

“The nonviable fetus began to break down, but because it couldn’t go anywhere, it was rotting in place for lack of an easier way to explain it,” she continued.

“Oh my god, that’s disgusting,” I whispered, clutching my stomach.

“You had toxic shock due to early stage sepsis. When the ambulance brought you in, you had been lethargic for at least three days, and had a fever of 104 at the time you were admitted.

“A series of scans and blood work confirmed what I suspected. We couldn’t do a dilation and curettage because of the location, so we went in laparoscopically. The surgery was a success and you have responded well to the antibiotics and post operative care.”

I felt my eyes watering up. “I didn’t- hic,” I tried to force the words. “I -hicc- I didn’t kill my baby?” I finally wheezed out the question.

Dr Carson’s expression softened and she leaned forward to take my hand. “There was nothing any of us could have done to save the pregnancy, Katie. This was not your fault.”

I leaned my head back and sobbed. It felt like an enormous weight lifted from my chest and I could breathe for the first time in weeks. I didn’t kill our baby, Ty.

* * *

Unknown Point of View

“Is she home? I thought you were driving her home?” Her mother’s voice questioned.

“I didn’t see her. I looked everywhere and couldn’t find her. Can you call her phone again?”

She was holding the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she knocked on the door.

“Can you hear it ringing in the house?” she asked.

The young woman could hear it ringing from inside. “Yes!! Shit! She’s not answering. Where’s the key?”

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