“I’m sorry, Sis. I’ve been sitting here boring you with my drama and you need to go rest. You really do look awful. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
I reach to help her from her stool, but she pauses, a strange look on her face.
“Ow,” she mumbles, her hand falling to her abdomen, pressing tightly. I’m startled as I stare at her stricken face.
“What is it?” I ask anxiously.
“I don’t know,” she answers quietly. “I’m crampy.”
She’s crampy? I sit still, frozen, as she rubs her belly. Then, as she slides from her stool, she’s the one who stands frozen, her eyes wide.
“What?” I ask nervously.
And then I see it. Blood drips in a crimson stream down one of her bare legs and onto the floor. I gasp and grab her, pulling her into a chair, making her sit.
“Are you OK? Are you in pain?”
I flutter around like a crazy person, not sure what to do. Mila is calmer than I am as she sits hunched over in the chair.
“I’m going to get some clothes on, then can you drive me to the doctor?”
I nod, then run up the stairs to her room, taking them two at a time.
“I’ll grab your clothes,” I call over my shoulder. “You stay right there. Maybe you should call your doctor.”
I can hear her speaking on the phone as I rifle through her drawers and find a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt. When I come running back down the stairs, she is hanging up the phone. Her face is grim and pale.
“What did they say?” I ask anxiously as I hand her the clothing.
“They said to come straight in.”
Mila inhales sharply and I grab her. “Are you OK?”
“I don’t know,” she murmurs as she pulls the clothes on. “The cramps just got worse. All of a sudden.”
Even I know that this shouldn’t be happening. Pregnant women shouldn’t be crampy. And there definitely shouldn’t be blood involved.
I’m beyond panicked now and I don’t know what to do. Now I know how Pax feels, because if I could carry Mila out to the car, I so would.
Pax.
“I should call Pax,” I tell her quickly, in relief. Pax will know what to do.
But Mila immediately shakes her head.
“It might be nothing,” she says quickly. “Let’s just wait until we know. I don’t want to worry him.”
But her face gives her away.
She’s terrified and she thinks something is really wrong. I gulp as I get her settled into the front seat of my car and then I practically break land-speed records getting her to the doctor. I gulp again when I help her out of the car and see the blood smeared on the seat.
Fuck.
To the doctor’s credit, she gets Mila right in without a wait at all. I help Mila change into the horrible paper gown, then hold her hand as the doctor does a sonogram.
“Mmmhmmm,” Dr. Hall muses as she runs the ball of the sonogram wand over my sister’s belly, to and fro. “Mmmhmm.”
“What is it?” Mila asks anxiously, her green eyes wide and scared. “Do you see anything? Is there a heartbeat?”
The doctor looks up at her. “Yes, there’s a heartbeat,” she assures her. “And it’s strong. What I am seeing, though, is cause for concern.”
“Oh, God,” Mila breathes. “What is it?” Her fingers clutch mine a little tighter.
The doctor stares at the computer screen and then points to a round, dark mass just to the side of the fetus. “See that area right there? That black area?” Mila and I both nod.
“That is what’s called a subchorionic hemorrhage. In plain English, it’s a blood pool that is forming between the placenta and your uterine wall. Sometimes it’s a result of a serious injury, but more often than not it just happens. We don’t know the cause.”
“What does it mean?” Mila whispers. “Is the baby going to be all right?”
The doctor’s face is serious. “It means that if the blood pool continues to grow, it could cause your placenta to break away from the uterus, in what is called placental abruption. That could be fatal for your baby and life-threatening for you.”
“Oh my God,” I can’t help but gasp. It comes out before I even think about it. Mila swallows hard.
“What can we do about it?”
“Well, if it were a small pool of blood, I wouldn’t be so worried, but it’s fairly substantial already. We need to keep it stabilized and prevent it from growing. The best way we can do that is to keep you off your feet. You’re going to require complete bed rest. You can only get up to go to the bathroom. No sex, no walking, limited movement.”
The doctor pauses, allowing that to sink in.
“What’s the prognosis?” I manage to ask.
“Good question. I’d say from the size of this bleed that Mila has a fifty to sixty percent chance of preterm labor. The real risk with this situation, though, is hemorrhage. It happens so suddenly that it’s hard to control, which makes it dangerous. So, Mila, I’m going to put you in the hospital overnight, so that I can give you some fluids. You’re dehydrated. And then after that, complete bed rest at home and we’ll hope for the best.”
Mila nods, the shock apparent on her pale face.
I feel her hand get even colder as I clutch it within mine.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “It’s going to be all right, Mila. Everything is going to be fine.”
I glare at the doctor, all but daring her to say otherwise. It’s irrational, I know. It’s not Dr. Hall’s fault at all, but I’m annoyed at her matter-of-fact manner. This is my sister we’re talking about, and she needs reassurance.
After the doctor leaves, with instructions for us to go straight to the hospital, I help Mila to her feet and then help her get her clothes on. I look into her face.
“I mean it, Mila. Everything will be fine. I’m going to call Pax as soon as we get you settled into the hospital and I know he’ll be here soon.”
She nods now, not arguing. Her limp acceptance of this situation rips my heart out. My little sister has been my responsibility for years now and knowing that I can’t protect her from this is too terrible to bear.
“It will be fine,” I insist once again as I bundle her into my car. She leans her face on the car window and doesn’t reply. I swallow a lump in my throat as I start the car and head for the hospital. This can’t be happening. Mila and Pax almost lost each other a couple of times this past year. They can’t lose their baby too.
When we arrive at the hospital, a nurse brings out a wheelchair and they wheel Mila on up while I fill out her paperwork and call Pax. He answers on the second ring, probably concerned when he sees my number. I never call him when he’s out of town.
“Madison?”
“Hi, Pax. There’s a problem. You need to come home.”
I quickly fill him in and he practically hangs up on me in his haste to make arrangements to fly home. He texts me ten minutes later.
I’m taking the company jet. I’ll be there in three hours. Tell Mila I’m coming.
The lump forms in my throat again, but I swallow it as I head upstairs to Mila’s room. When I arrive I find her attached to all kinds of wires and monitors, and she has an IV stuck in her arm. She seems so small amid all the tubes.
“Hey,” I tell her softly as I walk in. Her big green eyes stare at me.
“Hey. Thanks for calling Pax,” she tells me quietly. “He texted that he’s on his way.”
“Of course he is,” I tell her. “He wouldn’t be anywhere other than here, I can tell you that.”
“I know,” Mila answers, closing her eyes. “I’m so sleepy. I’m going to take a nap while I wait, OK?”
I nod. “OK. I’ll sit right here until Pax arrives.”
Mila nods without opening her eyes and I pick up her hand. It’s freezing cold, so I pull her blankets up a little tighter and then settle into the chair next to her.
I watch her sleep for a while, holding her hand tight. Her breathing is rhythmic, her chest moving slowly up and down as she takes little peaceful breaths. She seems calm in sleep and I’m glad. She deserves a break from reality right now.
After a while, when I feel pretty sure that she isn’t going to wake up anytime soon, I rush down to the gift shop and grab some magazines. On my way back, while I wait for the elevator, I glance to the side and notice a tiny family huddled together in the ER waiting room. A dad, a mom, a son.
They are sitting hunched together like they are facing the world together, each face streaked with tears. I stare at them for a minute, unable to look away, until the mom looks up at me and meets my gaze. There is such utter pain in her eyes that it makes my heart hurt. Something horrible has happened to them and I know that feeling.
Unbidden, memories from the day my parents died come back to me, flooding through me as I stand limply in front of the steel doors of the elevator.
Mila’s phone call, her sobbing voice.
Me, standing in New York City as my world crashed down.
Flying home.
Picking out caskets.
Choosing flowers.
Hymns.
Verses.
The overwhelming grief that made it so hard to function, so hard to even swallow or breathe.
The guilt.
The guilt.
The guilt.
Knowing that I hated my father for hurting my mother, but still loving him anyway.
Feeling like I was abandoning my mother for loving him, but then remembering that she loved him too. Passionately and completely.
Which is why she stayed.
That day, that one day, changed me forever. It taught me that everything you love, everyone you love, even if you love them and hate them at the same time, can be taken away in a moment and there isn’t anything you can do to change it.
It made me helpless. Powerless. And I hate that feeling with every ounce of my being.
“Miss?”
A hesitant voice breaks into my thoughts and I look up, startled, to find a woman holding the elevator for me.
“Do you need to go up?” she asks, her kind eyes flitting over my face. I nod, unable to speak because somehow that fucking lump is back in my throat. The same lump that was there when we buried my parents.
I step quickly into the elevator, leaning against the back wall as I try to breathe deep, to swallow.
Mila’s not going to die. I’m completely overreacting. Yet I can’t stop my feet from practically flying down the hall to get to her, to make sure she’s all right, to make sure something catastrophic didn’t happen to her while I was gone.
Because I left her. I left her back then when I moved to New York and I left her now.
But when I throw open the door, she’s still sleeping peacefully, curled on her side, her hand cupped to her face.
My stomach tightens. I can’t lose Mila. She’s been through too much not to have a happy ending. And if I lost her now, I don’t know what it would do to me.
I know that much is true.
I collapse into the chair next to her and drop the magazines onto the floor. I’m content to sit here and stew in my worry.
Minutes turn into hours and before I know it, Pax bursts into the room.