The Choices We Make (15 page)

30

HANNAH

I could tell Kate was ill the second I saw her, and my guilt kicked into overdrive.

“She looks
green
,” I whispered, nudging Ben but smiling wide for Kate and David as they made their way to where we sat in the waiting room.

“Yeah, she does not look good,” Ben whispered back; then his voice went louder when he stood up to give Kate and Ben hugs. “Hey, you two, long time no see.”

I stood in front of Kate and held on to her arms, cringing when I asked, “How bad is it?”

She opened her purse. “I brought six plastic bags with me, and have one, two, three...four left. So, two bags in twenty minutes kind of bad.” I must have looked horrified, because she pulled me close and hugged me tight. “It's fine. I'm fine. I'm hardly the first person to have morning sickness, and I'm actually feeling a bit better now.”

I moved over a chair so she could sit between Ben and me. “I'm sorry if I smell like puke,” she said, looking between us, a half smile on her face.

“You smell great,” I replied.

“Only the tiniest bit like puke,” Ben added. Kate and I each took turns punching him on his upper arms. “Hey, hey!” he said, laughing. David shook his head, keeping his eyes on the
National Geographic
magazine open in his hands.

“Ah, grasshopper Ben,” he said. “One day you'll learn.”

While Gerda, our ultrasound technician, got set up, a nest of nerves wriggled through my stomach. I took a deep breath, and Ben put a hand on my back. “You good?” he whispered. I nodded.

“What a fantastic story this is going to make,” Gerda said, rolling her stool a little closer to the bed Kate lay on. “You have some best friend.”

“I know,” Kate and I replied at the same time, causing everyone to laugh.

“Let's see what we've got going on in here, okay?” Gerda said, turning the screen toward us. David, Ben and I simultaneously leaned toward the monitor, watching the strange and wonderful images flash across the screen.

“Looks like Dr. H was right,” Gerda said. “You've got two babies in there.”

“Holy. Shit.” Ben put his hand to his mouth and exhaled loudly. David clapped him on the back. Kate turned her head toward me, and I tore my eyes away from the screen to look at her face, which was illuminated only by the monitor's glow, the rest of the room dark. She smiled, then did a fist pump with a “Yes!” I threw myself at her, and closed my eyes, hugging her tightly.

“Hannah, I love you, sweetie, but you're making it hard to breathe.”

“Sorry, sorry.” I released her. Even though I had been sure I would cry, my jeans back pocket packed full of folded tissues, I felt nothing but joy. This was the happiest moment of my life, and turning to Ben, I could see we were having a parallel experience. It was as if all the horrible moments we'd experienced trying to get to this point compressed into one tiny black dot, now too small to do any more damage. We grinned at each other, then started laughing, then held hands and jumped around the small room like children on a playground.

“Okay, see this first sac here? This is baby A, because she's closest to the cervix.” Gerda pointed to a spot on the monitor. “And baby A is measuring...six weeks, one day, so right on track.”

“Way to go, baby A,” Kate said, gently patting her belly.

“And here's the second sac...okay, this is baby B. How big are you, baby B?” Gerda moved the ultrasound wand around under the sheet, and Kate sucked in her breath. “Sorry, sweetheart. You okay there?”

“Fine,” Kate said. “Just a bit uncomfortable. How's baby B doing?”

“Baby B is measuring...five weeks, five days. Also, right on track.”

“Is it okay if one is bigger than the other?” Ben asked, beating me to the question. I suddenly felt as though I were in the middle of an incredibly important exam I hadn't done a bit of studying for.

Gerda nodded, pressing a few buttons every now and then to take pictures. “Totally normal at this stage, especially in twin pregnancies. Okay, I think I'm done here but just going to check with Dr. H to see if he wants any other pictures. Hang tight.”

As soon as Gerda shut the door behind her, the room filled with cheering, high fives and congratulations. “We did it!” Kate's voice was muffled, as we were all practically lying on top of her in one giant group hug.

“You did it,” I said, pulling back to look her in the eyes.

“Hey, what about me?” Ben winked, and I kissed him—holding my lips to his longer than was perhaps appropriate given we had company.

“You both did it!”

“Without actually doing it.” David smirked. We exploded with laughter, and if I'd known at that moment what the future had in store for us, I would have locked the door and never left.

31

HANNAH

May

“What else could I have said to her?” I turned to look at Ben. I felt sick to my stomach, but there were no tears. I was too worried about Kate to feel anything for myself. “She needs to know I don't blame her. That we don't blame her, not a bit.”

“She knows, Hannah. She's just upset.” Ben's jaw twitched as he tried to keep himself in check. “We're all upset.”

“I know.” I looked back at my hands, tightly clenched on my lap. We had been sitting on the front steps of our place for thirty minutes, barely speaking. “I was only trying to help. To somehow make it better for her.”

“You can't. I can't. David can't. So just...just stop trying, okay?” And with that Ben stood up and went inside, and I stayed where I was, unsure if he wanted me to follow him or not.

Needless to say, things had not gone well earlier at our twelve-week ultrasound.

It started out fine, the four of us back in the same room as our earlier ultrasound, Gerda the technician doing her thing. But she took longer to turn the monitor toward us, and while the others joked about Ben having to break his no-minivan rule for sure now, I kept quiet—my eyes on Gerda who seemed focused on the screen and not at all on us.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, which shut everyone up pretty fast.

She squinted at the screen and moved the ultrasound paddle around on Kate's abdomen. “Here's baby A,” she said. “Heart rate looks good and measuring...twelve weeks and one day. Perfect.”

“That's great,” Kate said. “Right? Hannah?” I looked at her, and her smile faltered, probably because of the look on my face.

I knew something was wrong. Had felt it when I woke up that morning, actually. I had tried to explain it to Ben, the shift I'd felt from when I went to bed—excited and confident about the ultrasound—to this morning, when halfway through my cup of coffee my stomach soured and a wave of anxiety moved through me. It had been the strangest thing.

“Just nerves,” Ben had said when I told him what happened, kissing me atop the head and pouring my coffee into a travel mug so we wouldn't be late.

But I knew. Something wasn't right, which Gerda confirmed when she politely yet tersely excused herself to get Dr. Horwarth.

Foolishly, I had allowed myself to be lulled into the belief that because I wasn't the one trying to grow the baby, all would be fine. That I was the problem, and Kate being our surrogate fixed everything.

Kate was sitting up now and looked nervous, clutching my hands. “What's happening?”

Ben stared at the floor—because he knew, too—and David rubbed Kate's shoulders, his eyes on mine.

“I think Baby B may be hiding,” I said, keeping my tone light. Kate squeezed my fingers, as if she were trying to pump them full of air, and nodded repeatedly at my words. “I'm sure Dr. H will figure it out.”

But soon we all knew. Baby B was gone.

“Vanishing twin syndrome,” Dr. Horwarth said, reassuring Kate especially it was nearly always related to an abnormality with the fetus. Kate had lain there so still, eyes on the ceiling and hands clasped over her slightly protruding belly, her mouth partially open as if she was on the verge of saying something but had lost the energy or inclination to do so.

“Kate, please look at me.” She didn't. “Kate, look at me.” My tone was harsher than I'd intended, but it did the trick. She turned toward me, her eyes glassy, vacant.

“I'm sorry, Hannah.” Her bottom lip quivered and tears streamed down her pale cheeks.

And then we all started speaking at once. Well, at least me, David and Ben—Kate stayed disturbingly still and silent.

“There is nothing to be sorry for.”

“You heard Dr. H. This was an abnormality with the fetus.”

“There was nothing you could or should have done differently.”

She turned away from us and looked back to the ceiling. “David, I'd like to go home.”

When she sat up I stood in front of her, my hands firm on her knees. She still had the paper sheet covering her bottom half, and it crinkled under my fingers. “Kate, please. Tell me you're okay.”

“I'm okay. Now can I get dressed?”

I opened my mouth to push her to tell me what was going through her head, but I caught David's look. I let go of her knees and backed up. “Sure, we'll just wait outside.”

Ten minutes later we were heading to the bank of elevators outside the clinic, faces somber and no one speaking. Because I was the last one out the door, holding it open for the others, Gerda caught me before we left. “Hannah,” she said, running up to me and handing me an envelope. “Here's a great picture of Baby A. I thought you might want it.” After I quietly thanked her, I quickly shoved the envelope into my purse so the others—Kate especially—didn't see it. Down in the parking garage I hugged Kate before we went our separate ways, and she felt like a wet noodle in my arms. It terrified me, not only because I'd only seen her this desolate once before—when her mom died—but also because there was still a baby inside her. A perfectly healthy, twelve-week, one-day fetus that needed her to believe in it so one day I could hold it in my arms and tell it just how hard we fought to have it.

Now, sitting alone on our front steps, I pulled out the envelope and looked at the ultrasound picture. Baby A looked like a large kidney bean with tiny arms, nestled inside its black sac. And beside it was a second black sac—but this one was empty.

I folded the paper so the empty sac was tucked underneath the rest of the picture, using my nails to make the fold as permanent as possible. Later I would use scissors to cut the folded line so I didn't have to look at that empty sac ever again.

32

KATE

I felt terrible for how I'd left things after the ultrasound, for the look on Hannah's face when I walked away to get into the car, but I was in shock. Stupid, naive me—it never occurred to me that both babies wouldn't be fine, delivered naturally, on time, and the picture of health. That's what happened with Ava and Josie. I got pregnant the first time we tried with Ava, on our honeymoon, and after only three months with Josie, which at the time I had thought was torturous. Three whole months. Both pregnancies had been easy—my only complaint frequent migraines that were just slightly worse than my prepregnancy headaches—and over before I even had a chance to start hating anything, like my semiswollen ankles or inability to sleep because both girls liked to somersault in my belly at night.

Stupid, naive me.

When Dr. Horwarth said the twin had vanished—
how can a baby just disappear?
—things went into slow motion. And then the guilt came. Swift. Thick. Suffocating. Even though they all said it wasn't my fault, I had been tasked with protecting those babies, nurturing them with my body, and I had failed. That was on me.

So lying in that room, trying to absorb the terrible news, it occurred to me I had no business carrying a baby for anyone. I had been too cavalier, too confident, too certain of success. Mina, the social worker whom I'd basically written off as meddlesome and out of line, had been right—I was not prepared for bad news. And perhaps worst of all, I realized in the moments following the vanishing twin news how little I understood about what Hannah had been through. So facing her with this loss felt impossible, and I couldn't even look at her in that ultrasound room. I was supposed to be her salvation, her umbrella for the storm cloud she'd been under for years.

David had tried his best to pull me out of the fog. Reminding me there was another baby and not all was lost. The girls had been understandably sad, and Josie had cried when we told them. Ava sat very still, picking at a rough cuticle on her thumb and not looking at David or me, and my heart broke a little more. David and I had agreed we'd be honest with them in the event something went wrong, but it had all been hypothetical and I hadn't considered what it would be like to tell them such a thing.

Stupid, naive me.

Hannah had been calling and texting incessantly in the past forty-eight hours, and I knew I had to let her come over soon. To see that I hadn't completely lost the plot, and without a doubt to be reassured I was pulling it together for Baby A.

But I wasn't ready.

So I sat at the table with my full glass of green juice, which now after two hours had separated into distinct layers—the bottom murky green like swamp water, the top a pale green foam—and pushed my phone in circles, the text messages filling my screen. The house was quiet, the girls at school and David at work. I hadn't even turned the television on—I wanted no distractions for my guilt, planning to bathe in it a little longer.

When the doorbell chimed my fingers halted on making circles with my phone—stopping it upside down. I didn't get up, even when it chimed three more times. Then my phone buzzed, and I turned the phone to read the text message that flashed across the screen.

I'm outside. Open up.

When another couple of minutes went by without me answering the door, or the message, my screen flashed again.

I'm using my key.

A moment later I heard the front door unlock. I pushed my phone to the side and took a huge gulp of the juice, the now-warm, gritty liquid coating my tongue, and waited.