Miscarriage

Miscarriage



I sat still in the waiting room, watching the blood stains spread on my jeans, as the pain spread through my very heart. I was numb with grief, understanding that the spreading blood was death, powerless to do anything to stop it, powerless to do anything but sit and wait.



Hours passed, my jeans now stained beyond respectability; movement from this chair would stir curious eyes. I steeled myself against their reactions even as I waited. Eyes down, I watched the blood and tried not to think of what it meant.



Finally, someone came, startled to see my jeans and that ever-spreading blood stain, they quickly moved me to another room filled with beds, and ushered me onto one. I deliberately watched the floor, unwilling to raise my eyes to see if others watched me, unwilling to subject myself to any stranger’s expression lest it break through the careful fragile shell I had built while I waited. Instead I worried about staining the white sheets and wondered how long I would wait now until a doctor came.



In the end nothing sheltered me from the words I would hear from him, no fragile constructs of attention-diverters were proof against the pain. My body flinched at the words as tears poured down my face. I could not speak. I did not want to hear. I closed my eyes so I could no longer see.



At that moment the cramping pains low in my body intensified, echoing the cramping pains in my heart, as my baby found a way to leave my body, leave this world, leave this life.