I call my husband at 6:45, my sister at 6:50. The first says, "I'll cancel my eye appointment, I'll be home as soon as I can," and, rather inexplicably, "You're going to have to tell them everything that happened." The second doesn't answer the phone. I wait some more, lying in bed, reading an annoying novel, about a 20something guy who doesn't shower and lies to his girlfriend. I have been awake since 3:30 AM when I got up to go to the bathroom and a gush of fluid fell from my womb. At three months pregnant, this is not something that you just fall back to sleep after.

My sister calls back just before my husband gets home, which means that I am crying when he walks in, even though I have felt fairly emotionless until this moment. Not unusual, I am always stoical under stress. And I also believe what the books say, the books that I read at four AM; if a miscarriage happens, there is a reason, and little can be done to stop the process.

Karl gathers my coat, purse, waits anxiously by the open door as I move slowly that way. I am already exhausted, and it's only 8 AM. On the drive to the hospital, Karl mentions the idea of refinancing our house. Rates are low, we could put some money into a remodel. If I thought less of him, I'd think he was trying to use this stressful moment to slip in a deal he's the spender, I am not. But the fact that he would choose this particular moment to talk home re-fi is just nerves, just his need to fill the air with something. He stops abruptly; "We certainly don't have to talk about this now." We park, and he leads me by the arm into the Family Birthing Center, where we were told to go when we called my OB's office, because my doctor will be unavailable
for awhile. "Not the time that I wanted to be rushing to the Family Birthing Center," I had remarked in the car, and he had nodded, quietly. Even at this early hour there are perhaps a dozen people in the waiting room. Babies are born at any old time. The nurses politely tell us that they don t deal with patients whose pregnancies are under 18 weeks, and they send us to the ER. Karl quickly leads me down the hallway, knowing the way as he knows this whole hospital, and most of the staff, as I
protest. "This is exactly where I didn t want to end up," I say. "If I was going to end up in the ER I'd have gone at 4 AM. I don't want to be in the ER. I don't want to be there, I don't want to be where you know everybody. I wanted to see my doctor." It is 8:15, surely he'd be available soon. But Karl doesn't hesitate in his step, and though he says he's sorry that we have to go, he is not to be deterred, and we go to the ER.

He places me in a seat at check-in. There have been times before and will likely be times again when this care-taking of me, this directing me like a puppet through the world, especially segments of the world that he is particularly familiar with and I am not, has felt comforting, reassuring, a relief. It has felt nice to have someone to navigate, to know exactly what to do in stressful foreign situations. But right now I am feeling a bit annoyed. I am also amused somewhat by his characteristic determined direction, and feeling tender towards his half-comfortable and assured, half-worried and anxious demeanor. And I am grateful that he is with me, and respectful of his personal feelings in this matter, this matter that, though it is about my body, is not just about me. But I am annoyed all the same. As we approach the nurse's desk, Karl says, "Take off your coat." I
ignore him. We sit. "Take off your coat," he says again from behind me, his voice low but insistent. I know he means that the nurse will be taking my blood pressure, and that I will have to remove my coat for that to happen, but the nurse is asking me questions at the moment and I am certain that he will ask me to remove my coat when it is necessary to do so, and with some obstinence I refuse to remove my coat until I must. I glance back at Karl, who says again, "Your jacket take off your jacket," while pantomiming the action of removing sleeves. I give him a look that could probably singe paper, look back at the nurse who is regarding us with tipped head, and then Karl says to the nurse with frustrated but confident explanation, "I go through this ten times a day. I am a paramedic with Bend Fire."

In the waiting room we watch CNN anchors on TV discuss war and we make small talk. The others who are waiting smell of
cigarette smoke and wear worn out denim jackets and greasy ball caps. The women are overweight. The windows are covered in oily fingerprints. We are led at last into a room in the ER -- a private room, something I've never rated on my previous visits here. A different nurse tells me to undress completely and points to a gown on the bed. Also, to pee in a cup in the
adjacent bathroom. I do so. Absurdly, there is a man on a hydraulic lift outside of the window of the room, cutting through concrete as some remodel effort, and I cower in the corner of the room behind the door to undress. Still, I am pretty sure that he can see me. Karl and I laugh about this; it is a ridiculous thing to have to deal with, but we are just happy for something to laugh at.

The doctor, a woman who is in fact my parent's neighbor and greets us with a friendly hello, comes into the room and tells me that they nurse will be starting an IV. An IV, I think, why? She explains that they'll do a blood draw to check the hCG levels, and I think, I must have misheard -- an IV isn't necessary to do a blood draw. But Tom the nurse indeed begins to
unwrap the materials needed to start an IV on me, another pleasure that I've previously not had. I am not terribly afraid of needles or quick to hurt, usually, but I grab for Karl's hand anyway. As Tom starts to work, I look away, but Karl is watching and says something about the needle, is it one of those that spring back into a receptacle after use? Tom reaches for another needle to show Karl, and they have a lively discussion about the difference between the needles the ER uses and the needles that the Fire Department uses. Tom has momentarily forgotten what he's doing, and when I look down at the half-completed IV contraption dangling from my arm I become instantly queasy. How could I have forgotten, I am queasy these days, easily. Pregnancy does that. Tom completes his work and leaves.

I lay in this worn and holey gown, look through the window at the cement cutter guy, and then around the room. "Everything is going to be okay," I say to Karl, "Because there are flowers on the wallpaper and bunnies and plastic flowers on that shelf." "Yeah, bolted down," Karl says and I notice that the plastic flower basket flanked by ceramic rabbits is indeed bolted through the cheap pine shelf. What ER patient would be inclined to make off with it? Anything is possible, I suppose. "You know what sucks," I say. "If the pregnancy doesn t make it, I ll have" "have a D&C," Karl finishes and when I look at him he has teared up. This is the other Karl, the non-paramedic Karl, the Karl I've been waiting for all morning. This is the Karl who wants a baby more than anything in the world. This Karl cries, finally, at the thought of the worst case scenario, or perhaps at the thought of me in pain. I am still feeling matter-of-fact, practical, removed, suspended -- but suddenly, I want to comfort him.

We are left alone for awhile. We talk about our friend Sara who we ve just learned is pregnant with her third. We talk about the time our friend Wendi was here in this ER, with a split in her head, and drunk. I drove her here that night, and was standing by her bed when she said to the doctor who was stitching her up, "So how much is your ER gonna cost me?" It's an often-told story. I say to Karl, "That was part of the drinking binge she and Rob went on after her miscarriage," though of course he knows this part of the story too. "I don t think that's what we ll do," he says quietly. "No thanks," I reply with false cheer. "I don't need a drinking binge." In fact even the thought of alcohol makes me sick, as it has these last months. The doctor returns, does a pelvic exam, tells us the cervix is closed, good news, and we wait some more.

The ER was a ridiculous choice, we both know now. Why don't they just check for a heartbeat? Isn't it that easy? Instead we wait some more. Finally they come to get us and take us to ultrasound, and when I move to get up, the nurse, a different one again, says, "No, I m going to wheel your bed." Fabulous. I am totally fine, I don't even have the tiniest cramp, and now I am pushed through the halls of the hospital in a wheeled bed wearing a thin gown open all down the back and with slits cut at the nipples. Miraculously, we see no one that either of us know during this journey. "I am a real invalid," I say, feeling rather macabre about this whole affair. I wonder, how would a different woman feel? A woman who was more worried at this moment? More sensitive? The nurse parks me in the hallway and strikes up a conversation with the ultrasound tech about her horse that blew out a tendon or something. I am grateful for Karl's presence merely as distraction from myself. I have garnered not a few second glances. I must be really sick, to be wheeled around like this in a dingy gown, people are thinking.
Another tech, this time one who knows Karl, walks by and says, "Given your outfit, I don't think you came in through the front door." Right.

I was never sure that I wanted to be pregnant. I was never certain, and still am not certain, that I was made out to be a mother. I have not felt overjoyed, or thrilled, or wildly anticipatory about this pregnancy. I have felt ready in some ways for a change, a challenge, a life-altering event. I do feel like having a child, this child, is the right thing to do. I do believe that at some point, I will be thrilled. I do feel pleased for my husband, who did always want it, and is thrilled, and overjoyed, and wildly anticipatory. I do want this pregnancy to continue. I have invested a lot in it, physically and mentally. I have been nauseous, tired, irritable, uncomfortable. I don't want for all of it to have been without reason. I want, suddenly, to just know that everything is okay.

Tammy the nurse and Dee Dee the technician return. There are no rooms, Dee Dee explains. I wait some more, parked. Finally she and Karl wrestle my rolling bed into a room and she begins the ultrasound. The clock on her machine reads 10:02 AM. I feel, finally, as if we are where we should be. She presses the small lubed tool into my abdomen and immediately the baby
springs into view on the monitor, and right away we see the small but persistent heartbeat. Karl takes my hand. There is amniotic fluid around the fetus. This is all that we needed to know. The IV, still in my arm, aches. The heart beats. Dee Dee measures and prods and notes and says things but I feel suddenly restless. Our mission is over. There is a heartbeat. Can we go home now? My life has been decided, again, and again and again these last months. I am hungry, I have yoga class. I want to move on. I am going to be a mother. I am going to raise a child with this man at my side. My fate, which has been once more tossed up for inspection, is settled, confirmed by this heartbeat.

Even the next day, when I finally see my doctor, and he apologizes for our experience and sympathizes for the swelling and bruising in my arm from the IV, and when he learns what no one the day before could, that the reason for this scare is that I have a amniotic leak, and that I must take three antibiotics and be put on bed rest, even then I am composed, and sure deep down inside that my fate, and Karl s fate, and this baby's fate, won't change. There is a heartbeat, and my life is completely different.