Page 22 of This Is How It Started
Funny that I should go from loving a romantic to loving a pragmatist. Then again, I was just a girl when I fell for Campbell. Things change, people change.
I look at the time on the enormous schoolhouse clock Josh hung on the wall over our minuscule pantry. “I thought you had a meeting at the Ferry Building at ten.” It’s the only reason he’s still here and not at the office.
“Cancelled.” Josh takes over the chore of making the coffee. “I thought I’d go with you to the doctor.”
I wonder if the so-called meeting was a ruse to go with me in the first place.
“Um, okay.” I grab the cups from the dishwasher, which I’d started to empty when Campbell called.
“You don’t sound that into it.”
“Not into you coming with me or having a stranger inspect my uterus?” I’m definitely not into having my private parts probed six ways from Sunday. Or having Josh watch the probing. But the truth is I don’t want Josh to come for a different reason.
The whole run-up to in vitro fertilization involves me talking about my medical history. While Josh knows about the miscarriage and what happened with Campbell and me all those years ago, I’d rather not revisit the topic with him present. It’s a piece of my life that belongs only to Campbell and me. And while I do believe that all things happen for a reason and that Campbell and I were better off not bringing a baby into the world when we were just kids ourselves, losing the baby left a hole in my heart that has never completely healed. To think we might’ve had a seventeen-year-old right now. To wonder whether he or she would’ve had Campbell’s eyes or my hair...well, it’s something I’ll never know.
It started with a sharp pain in my midsection, and before I knew it, a thin line of blood trickled down my leg. I think I subconsciously knew I was having a miscarriage but didn’t want to believe it. So I waited three hours before going to urgent care, where I got the official confirmation.
“There was nothing you could’ve done, sweetheart,” the kindly nurse, who reminded me of my great-aunt Beverly, told me. “It’s just nature’s way of saying chromosomally life wasn’t viable.”
I waited another ten hours to tell Campbell. We climbed up to the tree house, and I cried my eyes out in his arms.
“Are you sad?” I asked him.
“I’m a little in shock. Why didn’t you call me, Rachel? I should’ve been there for you. I should’ve gone with you to the doctor’s.”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to believe it was happening. I kept telling myself that it was a mistake. That the bleeding was normal.”
“Ah, Jesus.” Campbell pulled me against his chest and stroked my hair. “Are you in pain?”
“No, not really. I’m just very, very sad. Even though I was only seven weeks, I feel different, like sort of empty inside.” I snuggled my head against Campbell’s chest, wishing I could burrow there forever, and whispered, “At least we don’t have to tell anyone now.”
Campbell didn’t say anything, just rocked me back and forth.
“And now you can go to school.” In a few months, Campbell was supposed to leave to attend the University of California at Santa Barbara, almost six hours away by car. We hadn’t made any firm decisions in that regard, but Campbell had said he would stay and work for his father until we had the baby if that’s what I wanted.
In hindsight, I hadn’t known what I wanted. But at the time, I spent a lot of time in my head, playing house.
“You good with that? With me going away to school?” he asked.
“Of course.” But I was sort of surprised that he’d jumped on it so quickly. Even though pre-pregnancy, him going away to school had never been in question, I felt a stab of rejection. I suppose I’d wanted a space of time where we suspended reality and continued to play house. “Business as usual,” I said dryly.
He kissed the side of my neck. “I’m sorry, Rach. I’m so damned sorry.”
But was he?
I don’t know what I wanted out of him, but I knew it was more than he was giving. The truth was, from the minute we climbed into the tree house, I could feel a heaviness lift off him. He was suddenly lighter, freer. It made me resent him, even though there was a part of me who felt lighter too.
That was the only day we ever spoke of what we’d lost. And maybe that’s why we lost each other. Because from that day forward, something intrinsically changed between us. We used to be inseparable, but we began to spend less time with each other and more time with our friends. They say even the strongest relationships come unglued by tragedy or death, but for Campbell and me, I think it was more about liberation from the secret fear that a baby would have stolen our youth.
Anyway, the whole situation has got to be uncomfortable for Josh, especially because Campbell is still very much a part of the Golds. I know it would be awkward for me if the tables were turned. Why rub my husband’s nose in it?
“When you say it like that...” Josh moves away from me, and I feel the distance like a sharp edge.
“It’s just an exam. Just an exam to make sure I don’t have fibroids or anything else. No different than a Pap smear. You don’t come with me for those.”
“Not the same, Rach. Not the same and you know it. But if you don’t want me to come, I won’t come.”
Now I feel guilty, like I’m being a bad wife. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come. It’s just that I don’t want to make a huge deal out of it. When I go for the ovarian reserve testing, I’ll want you there. But this is just routine stuff.”
