The Future I Almost Had

This story may be sensitive to anyone who has suffered a miscarriage.

I remember it like it was yesterday, the future I almost had. It’s nothing compared to the future that lies in front of me, but I still mourn it. I stare at myself in the mirror, a woman ready to conquer the world, and my mind flashes to the events that led me to this moment.

It was the middle of January, my senior year in high school. At home, in the bathroom, I anxiously stare at the thin, white, plastic strip, waiting to see whether or not a pink stripe will appear. A plethora of thoughts and fears race through my mind, and even with the few silver linings that come up, this is not something that I wanted or expected.  “What if I am pregnant?” I think to myself. “Sure, I’m eighteen years old, but Tony is married! He would never want or be able to raise a baby with me! Also, how will I tell my mother? She doesn’t know about my relationship with him, and she would flip out if she found out that her only daughter is sleeping with a married man and she’s having his baby.”  My mom knows Tony but doesn’t know about the depths of our relationship.

My professional relationship with him began when I was sixteen years old. I applied for a job at a new cafe that opened in town because I wanted to earn my own money. My mother is a single parent, and I have always admired all that she’s done to take care of me, but since I became old enough to work, I wanted to help ease the financial burden on her. Tony owns the cafe, and when he interviewed me, he offered me the position almost right away. I worked with him for two years, and over the last year we’ve become really close. He even offered me a way to make extra money as babysitter to his three-year-old daughter when he and his wife wanted to go out, so I took him up on it. His wife even loved me, and I’m feeling that betrayal a lot more heavily now than I ever did. One night, we were closing the cafe together, alone, and one thing led to another. That was three months ago. And now here we are, my whole future dependent on a six-dollar piece of plastic. I wait for what feels like an hour but is actually only a few minutes, and finally time is up. I stare in disbelief. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a married man’s baby. This can’t be real. You play, you pay, girlfriend. My thoughts are snarky and not very helpful, but they’re right. This is my fault, but it’s also his. How do I tell him? Do I tell him? Or do I just go at this alone and hope for the best? I suppose I can give it up for adoption, because if I have a baby at eighteen, there goes all hopes of college. Oh no, college!! I was supposed to start Ithaca College in the fall. I was going to pick my courses over the summer, and I was going to live on campus and finally do something that no one in my family has ever accomplished. And now that’s all gone, because I can’t live on campus with a newborn. Geez, what have I done? As much as I admired all that my mother has done in raising a child on her own, I never wanted her life. Yet here I am, following in her steps. The only difference: the man she had sex with wasn’t married. Good going Grace, you idiot. My thoughts really need to shut up.

Standing in the bathroom, I feel my heart rate increase, my hands start trembling, and my breathing becomes labored. “So, this is what a panic attack feels like.” I think to myself. I need to stop dwelling on this and take action, before I let the panic paralyze me. What should I do first? Tell my mom? Tell Tony? Buy another pregnancy test to confirm the results of this one? I can have another test done, but I don’t have to buy one. I’ll go to Planned Parenthood and have them check me out. Now I have a plan, I just need to put it into action. “Maybe the test was a false positive and things will actually be ok.” I pray to myself. I pick up the offending piece of plastic and the box it came in, rush downstairs, and bury them deep into the garbage can so no one will see them. Then I head out the door and walk the five blocks to my town’s Planned Parenthood. My mom won’t be home for at least an hour and a half, so I have time to do this.

Less than an hour later, I walked back into my house. According to the doctor at Planned Parenthood, I am pregnant, about six or seven weeks. My due date will be somewhere between August and September, but I have to go back in a couple weeks to have the date narrowed down. I go into the kitchen and start cooking dinner for my mother and me: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. That seems like a comforting meal, which is what I need today. While I’m preparing the food, my heart sinks and my body goes numb.  My mother is going to be livid. Tony will probably never speak to me again, or he’ll try to convince me to get rid of the baby. The life I had wanted for myself is no longer a possibility, and that thought is devastating. As I place the first pieces of chicken into the frying pan, I hear my mom walk through the door. She heads into the kitchen, greeting me with “Mmmm, something smells good.” and we chat about her day while I set the table and finish cooking. After we sit down and start eating, I decide that I’m not going to tell anyone about the baby yet. I’m barely two months pregnant, and I probably won’t show until I’m closer to five or six months, being chubby does have its perks. I take a bite of my chicken and silently pray that I don’t experience any morning sickness, otherwise everyone will know I’m pregnant.

I stare at the beautiful lavender dress I’m wearing. It hides my expanding belly with its frilly layers, and I’m thankful that I’m still able to hide my baby bump. Time has flown by so quickly; I can’t believe that tonight is prom night. I’m even more surprised at how easy this pregnancy has been on me these last twelve weeks. Other than excessive fatigue, some weight gain, and the occasional swelling, there really hasn’t been any evidence to tip anyone off that I’m almost five months pregnant. I never even dealt with morning sickness. I’ve always been chubby, so my weight gain could easily be explained away as stress from senior year. I twirl in front of the mirror and watch as the skirt of my dress floats around me. With my hair professionally done in a half-updo with springy curls, my makeup making me look like a movie star, and my perfectly poofy dress accessorized with my modest heels, I am ready for tonight. I know I’ll probably be bare foot by the end of the night, but that’s ok. I’ll keep the shoes on for my entrance, pictures, and when I leave. The rest of the night I’ll be barefoot and pregnant. The wording of that makes me giggle to myself, even though this is no laughing matter.

I hear a knock at the door, and I know it’s my date. I asked Trey, one of my best male friends, to come with me to prom. Since he’s a year younger than me, and most of his friends are seniors, I figured this would be a great way for all of us to go to prom together. I walk downstairs to open the door, being extra mindful of my heels and how easy it would be for me to trip and break my neck. I make it safely to the landing and open the door. He’s standing in front of me, extremely handsome in his tux and holding a beautiful light pink tulip corsage to go with my dress. My mother takes some pictures of us together and sends us on our way. 

Senior prom was everything I hoped it would be, with the exception of having Trey as my date instead of Tony. Since I found out I was pregnant, I reduced my communication with Tony to only work-related topics, and he didn’t seem to mind. He still doesn’t know that I’m pregnant, so I guess that’s all I need to know about how he feels about me. I shouldn’t be wishing that he was here with me at prom, so I’m not going to dwell on that tonight. It’s my prom, I’m here with a wonderful friend, and we look stunning. I’m going to forget about married men, babies, and ruined futures for one night and enjoy myself. 

The food was delicious. The music was perfect. We danced most of the night. I was right about my shoes, they came off once we started the group dances. All of our friends were there and we laughed so much during the group dances, especially the electric slide, because Trey kept turning left when he should have been going right. I couldn’t have asked for a better prom. 

When Trey and I decided we wanted to leave, I put my shoes back on, my swollen feet protesting against the straps. We stepped outside the venue into the night air and headed towards the concrete steps that lead to the parking lot. He offered me his arm, but I told him to go ahead and start the car and I’ll meet him there. I know I’m going to be slow going down the steps, so I don’t want him to have to wait. And this way, I’ll be able to jump into the car and take my shoes off again as soon as I get inside. Trey got a few steps ahead of me as I began to descend the stairs. I don’t know what triggered the next set of events. Maybe I was tired from all the dancing, or I was unaware of how unsteady I was with my swollen feet in heels, or the pregnancy made me lose my equilibrium, but my right foot twisted under me until I felt a painful pressure on my ankle. I tried to catch myself on the wall of concrete that runs up the side of the steps like a rail, but I couldn’t get a strong enough grip to keep myself from falling. I leaned too far to the right, then I tried to correct my balance but I overcorrected with my left foot and missed the step. My left foot kept going down the staircase as my right foot bent underneath me. I fell down the remaining steps, hitting what felt like every part of my body, and landed at the bottom on my left side. I couldn’t move due to the pain, but I heard Trey yelling my name, and screaming for someone to call an ambulance. The last thing I remembered thinking was “I shouldn’t have put my shoes back on.” Then everything went dark.

I woke up in a hospital bed, my mom sitting at my side, a look of relief on her face, and some other expression. Anger? Disappointment? Is she mad that I fell down some stairs and hurt myself.?

“What happened?” I asked, because it was the only thing I could think of to say that would help me determine her mood, and find out how badly I’m injured. I must be drugged up because I don’t feel a lot of pain, but my ankle is in a cast, my head feels foggy, and there’s an uncomfortable feeling in my lower abdomen.

“Well,” my mother starts off, and I know this tone. She’s about to tell me something that made her angry. That tone is usually followed by me being grounded, so I wait for the bomb to drop. “You fell down the stairs last night at your prom, you broke your ankle, you have a concussion, you broke a rib, and you lost the baby you’ve been carrying for the last five months. The baby that you never told me about. The doctors weren’t aware of it either, until it was too late. If they had known sooner, they might have been able to save it.”

Oh, shit. She knows about the baby. Wait, I lost the baby? A spectrum of emotions run through me, and I don’t know which one is dominant because they all seem to be equal in intensity. Fear, grief, pain (both internal and external), guilt, and…is that…relief? Relief that I’m not pregnant? Wow, I am a horrible person. I was looking forward to meeting my baby, but now that will never happen. The future I was planning, the innocent life I was excited to meet, all gone. I am equal parts devastated and relieved, and the part of me that feels relief has increased my self loathing exponentially. Even more so than when I found out that I was pregnant with a married man’s baby.

A lump rises in my throat as tears fill my eyes and start streaming down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry mom. I didn’t know how to tell you, or anyone, about the baby. I was planning to tell you after I graduated, because I didn’t want you to think that having this baby meant that I wouldn’t finish high school.”

“But what about college?” she asked. As an afterthought, she added “And who is the father? Is it Trey?”

“I know I wouldn’t be able to attend college in the fall, but I was planning to start community college next spring, get a job, and work on my degree while taking care of the baby. It would be hard, I know, but I was prepared to do it.” I intentionally ignored the question about who the father is, because I really did not want to get into that. “ I guess it doesn’t matter now.” I say, and let the grief wash over me as I mourn the future with the baby that I already love and will never get to meet.

Here I stand now, six years after that dreadful time, staring at the woman I’ve become. I remember how the doctor informed me that my baby was a girl, and when I fell down the stairs at prom, my stomach was hit with such force that it caused the placenta to rupture, and she died in the womb. Since no one knew about the baby when I arrived at the hospital, and since I was unconscious, the doctors didn’t know that she should have been their first priority. By the time they realized I was pregnant, it was too late. They aborted the lifeless baby while I was unconscious and they were attending to my other injuries. I decided to name her Adrianna Marie, and gave her my last name. Even though she’ll never be around to carry it, my baby will never have Tony’s last name attached to hers. He found out about my accident since I was unable to work for six weeks. Incidentally, he found out about the baby and one day he made a comment about how he’s “glad I’m not having it anymore”. That was when I decided to end our relationship, my employment with him, and my desire to ever sleep with a married man again. 

I didn’t follow my original plan to attend Ithaca College, but I did go to college. I got my four year degree, got into law school, and am finally graduating. In the mirror, I adjust my cap, zip up my gown, and head out to meet up with my fellow graduates to take our seats. During the commencement speech, I think about the future that I almost had. A future that I wasn’t expecting, but would have happily accepted. My little girl would be almost six years old now, and even though I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone to law school, I know that my life would have been full of accomplishments and love. I hear the Dean call my name, and I walk across the stage to receive my degree. As I grab the piece of paper and walk to the other side of the stage, I think to myself “Adrianna, this is for you baby girl. I hope you’re proud of your mama.” and I look out into the crowd, catching a glimpse of my mother’s smiling face…pride glimmering in her eyes.