And if it didn’t, she said, I would likely spend most of the pregnancy in a hospital bed, separated from the three children I already had.
My previous pregnancy had already come dangerously close to ending badly.
There had been blood-pressure problems, bleeding, emergency monitoring, and a delivery that became chaotic very quickly.
The doctor didn’t dramatize any of it.
Somehow, that made it worse.
I asked whether there was any version of another pregnancy that could be considered safe.
She said no.
I asked again.
I used different words.
She gave me the same answer.
No.
I asked twice more over the following two years.
The answer never changed.
No.
Eventually, James stopped coming to those appointments because there was nothing new to hear.
We had already chosen a name.
Or rather, I had.
I’d had it since I was 19.
Clara.
James pretended he wasn’t attached to it.
But once, years earlier, I found him writing the name on the back of a grocery receipt beside a list of possible middle names.
He claimed he was testing pens.
