Morning Ritual

Morning Ritual

*Warning: Though a work of fiction, the following may contain triggers for some audiences, such as pregnancy issues, mental health, and gore.

            I told Mitch and he insisted on driving me down to the drugstore that morning to get another few boxes and another test. It took all of my patience to explain to him that, no, he couldn’t watch me take it and he would have to sit outside the bathroom and wait.

            When I came out he snatched the test out of my hand and tried to make sense of the pink lines in the window. “What does it say?” he asked.
             I took a steadying breath. “Yes.”

            “We’re pregnant!” The whole apartment building must have heard him. Mrs. Gallafis in 3E stuck her nose out the door before locking back up again. Mitch lifted me and twirled me around the living room before setting me down, profusely laughing and apologizing, but still sending me reeling. I shut my eyes and heard the scrape of the second deadbolt on the third floor as close as the promises sliding into my damp ear.

            He called his mother when she got home from work. They laughed, they cried; his smile was as wide as the river where we’d had our first date, the picture of it framed and dangling over the couch in our living room.

            I went to sit and rub my stomach. Somehow it felt larger, even firmer than this morning. Was this okay? I couldn’t ask my mom. I’d been an only child of an only child.

            The word was strange: child. It sounded hard and cold in my mouth, as if it didn’t describe a human at all.

            “Eva, do you need anything at the store?” Mitch stared at me. I had never really noticed how enormous his eyes were next to mine, how almost childlike.

            There was that word again. I shook my head and smiled at him. “I’m just a little tired.”

            He waited for the answer to his question, the one I hadn’t answered. I had told him a different answer than he was looking for, given him a truth he leaned over just as he was leaning over me. He propped pillows under my back and urged me to relax in rushed, nearly soothing tones. Nine months of this would drive me crazy.

            “Actually, I was a little hungry. Could you get some pickles?” That was what pregnant women were supposed to like, right?

            “Sure, anything else?” I couldn’t erase the furrows digging into the good-natured plane of his forehead, but I could give him more tasks that would keep him at the store. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Ice cream.”

            “You’ve got it, mama. What flavor?”

            I rolled my eyes. He nodded, then smiled. Rocky Road, as always:  my go-to choice since we’d been together.

            He left, and I raised a hand to wave. I was feeling really drained.

            I woke up. Six-thirty, the clock read. Mitch was not back yet – it was quiet. I laid flat on the couch.

            Well, not exactly flat. My stomach curved like a rising globe, a hot air balloon.

            It hurt my back to sit up as fast as I did, but I had to look at the mirror in the bathroom. I held my shirt tight at the sides to check the shape a lot larger across than I had thought. As it turned out, I didn’t have to pull the shirt much for it to pull taunt over the gentle swell.

            I didn’t know it would happen this fast. My mother had talked sometimes about how long she had been pregnant with me, how she was so excited to meet me. She would have been thrilled for this one, too.

            Suddenly I felt queasy and my gut twisted. A moment later I put my head in the toilet bowl and puked a rancid slime. After the coughing eased up I rinsed my mouth and patted it dry. God, in the mirror I looked just like Mom.

            The living room was dark. I decided against turning on the lamp, and flicked on the television instead. As I listened to the small drone of an anchorman’s voice, I dragged the flannel blanket to my end of the couch and folded it over my front.

            That’s when I felt the small but determined kick. It came lower down, below my stomach, below most things except for a couple female things.

            I stared there for I don’t know how long until the key turned in the door and Mitch entered, laughing.

            “Babe, why’s it so dark in here?” He flicked on the lamp. The white plastic “Thank You” bags rustled in his hands. “There’s my baby girl. Or baby boy.” He bent over to kiss my stomach through the blanket, but the carton of ice cream slipped out of one of the bags. “Oops, almost lost it!”

            He did sort of an awkward dance over to the kitchen and started dumping the ice cream into a pair of bowls. “I called the gyno, Dr. Mitnetz. We have an appointment next week.”

            I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, but I had to say something. “Mitch.”

            “Don’t worry, babe, I got the pickles.” He topped each bowl with a shrunken pickle I could smell from here. My guts twisted again and I was lumbering to the bathroom.

            “Eva?” Mitch called after me.

            I shut the door and locked it. Inside, I turned on the bulb over the sink and raised my shirt. I was even larger than before, like I was going to pop. Inside me, a drumming got longer and harder to stop. I found the toilet the only secure seat and plopped onto it.

            “Hey, babe, open up!” Mitch pounded on the door. “Are you doing okay?”

            I gave a kind of moan as everything tightened and I buckled over.

            “I’m, ah – I’m going to look for some medicine, okay?” He knew as well as I did we had a half a toothpaste tube and some bandages in the medicine cabinet. Under the sink I had the bigger items, the extra toilet rolls and box of pregnancy tests.

            I heard his footsteps run out the front door and into the hallway, screeching around the stairways and up and down the floors. He pounded on doors as a growing pounding made me a melting blob of flesh around a belly ball that was squeezing, wrenching, pushing –

            The red came next. It streamed between my legs into the toilet like a flooding river. Then I squeezed and something inside me ripped and a solid parcel splashed into the bowl. Hot, wet air caused me to rise gradually, sliding along the wall for support. I opened my drooping eyes and turned around.

            Inside the bowl, a skeletal face looked out at me from a backdrop of warm red: thin, folded, like it was resting. The eyes were closed but large, child-like.

            The last I remember was the third floor’s top lock sliding across its mount as Mitch shouted at Mrs. Gallafis. “We don’t have anybody else, my mom is across the country and hers is gone!”

            It was cool. Not soft, but meant to be comforting. I opened my eyes to a hospital bed and an empty chair to the side. Something near my head beeped.

            A doctor walked into the room. “Welcome back, Eva.”

            “What happened?” I asked.

            “How are you feeling?” he asked. The name badge was flipped around.

            I looked at my body laying out on the bed. The curve under the thin gown was slight, barely mound-like instead of a globe.

            He was looking at me still when I looked up. “I don’t know,” I said. “What happened?”

            I waited for the word: miscarriage. He shocked me with other words. “I’m sorry, but there was no fetus.”

            “There was at the apartment. In the toilet.” My hands formed into claws around an invisible bowl. They looked thin, like my mom’s that last time she went to lie down. “I saw –”

            “Eva, I’m sorry, but you had what’s called a pseudo-pregnancy. Your body responded to neurochemical signals.”

            “No, it wasn’t in my brain. But I –”

            Mitch walked in holding a Mountain Dew, and big-eyed and staring at what I didn’t see.

            “Mitch, tell him –”

            Mitch sat in the empty chair. “What, babe?” His voice matched his hollow eyes.

            My voice was small. “Tell him about what you saw in the bowl.”

             He turned his head to the doctor. “Blood. Lots of the stuff.”

            I sat up too quickly and bent over to reclaim the color in my vision. “No, tell him about what else. About the child.” I made myself say the word.

            He shook his head and looked past me, somewhere past the pillow behind me. “Lots of blood.”

            “We’re going to monitor you here for a couple days.” The doctor jotted on a clipboard before glancing up. “Then when your condition is stable we can send you home.”

            It made no sense. I couldn’t explain myself, so I could only nod. And wait.

            We came home two days later about nine in the morning. Mitch went into the kitchen to hunt for edible food. I stood staring at the dangling picture over the couch. Usually a tame river, its photographer had caught a tide blurring smooth lines into hard edges. I reached over for the frame and straightened out the river so that it ran roughly left-right instead of up-down.

            Inside of me, there was a small nudge. I held my stomach. I turned from the frame and trotted to the bathroom.

            The roll was getting low. I opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a fresh one. In my other hand I took an opened box of pregnancy tests.

            While I sat waiting, I pulled open a test. No harm to try, I thought. I felt dizzy. A couple of minutes passed. I looked at the window and saw the pink lines.

            “Mitch, Mitch!” I ran into the living room toward the kitchen, but he was slumped on the sofa staring into his bowl of Chex.

            I shoved the test at him.

            He raised his eyes to mine and spoke slowly. “Babe, I didn’t take out the trash yet. Just put it back in there. Please.”

            “This is from today. I did it, just now. Look.”

            “Eva.” He spoke to his cereal. “Aren’t you tired? Let’s just, rest.”

            I marched back to the bathroom and opened another box. I felt full, so full. Next time I would be ready to show him. Tomorrow morning he could even watch me.

~