Ask Me Why I Hurt (19 page)

“Some ginger ale?” I asked. We were trying everything for the nausea: wristbands with acupressure points, dry toast, frequent
meals, and all sorts of liquids. Nothing quelled the vomiting. She shook her head. “You know, sweetie, we’re going to have to get you on nausea meds soon, if this doesn’t stop,” I said. “You’re losing weight, and that isn’t good for the babies.” It was still hard for me to believe that under my wife’s still-flat tummy lay two tiny babies, growing minutely each day.

“I know I can’t go on like this,” she said.

Mercifully, at sixteen weeks the vomiting finally stopped, thanks to a daily healthy dose of an antinausea medication. Amy felt strong enough in June to drive up to spend a day with me at the diabetes camp at the Friendly Pines campground in Prescott, Arizona. The work was exhausting. Thinking it had to be good preparation for parenting, I spent twenty-four hours a day with my young charges, testing blood sugar early in the morning and waking kids up for midnight blood sugar tests. It was around-the-clock work. The kids had quickly given me the camp name of Bill Gates. I told Amy it had to be because of my computer savvy and leadership abilities. Then Amy said the kids had told her the real reason. It was that I wore “nerdy-looking glasses.” This just killed Amy. She vowed that as soon as camp was over, she would take me shopping for new glasses.

She and I sat on a fence and watched kids ride ponies. One of the teenage counselors rode her horse next to a boy who was suddenly looking faint. She talked to him, he nodded, and they got off their horses to test blood sugar. Amy patted her tummy and turned to me. “Can we bring our babies here too?”

“I don’t see why not,” I answered. “Smooth sailing from now on out,” I told her.

Another ultrasound had shown us we not only had twins but had a boy and a girl. I thought of the names Amy and I had decided when we had found out we would have both: Jane Marie and Reed Coleman. I sat next to my wife on my break in the summer sun and felt happy.

“Let’s go to California for the Fourth of July,” she said. Her face was shadowed under the brim of her straw hat. “We can stay in my dad’s cabin at Lake Arrowhead.” It was a great idea.

“Bill Gates says yes,” I said.

“That reminds me.” She laughed. “We’re buying you new glasses first.”

Amy and I spent the Fourth of July weekend at her father’s cabin in California. We had taken my best friend, Ron. It was his father who was one of the Old Timers who had helped us so much. After two wonderful, relaxing days on the lake we drove back. I was thinking how nice it was to escape all the stresses of our lives, even for just a short time. It was on the long drive home that Amy began looking pale. Ron was driving, and Amy was sitting in the backseat behind him. I turned around and noticed the sick sweat above her upper lip.

“Are you OK?” I asked her anxiously.

“It’s just car sickness.” She adjusted her belt and took a deep, shuddery breath. Amy often got carsick, but I suspected we were dealing with something else.

“Let’s trade seats,” I said, and Ron pulled over. Sitting in the front didn’t help her at all. Oh no, I thought, the nausea is back. “Have you been taking your meds?” I asked Amy. She nodded, wiping her mouth with a tissue. By the time we drove into Phoenix she was leaning against the window, breathing hoarsely. Her face was actually a pale shade of green.

“What is it?” Ron asked.

“Stomach cramps. Must be something I ate.” I remembered the weeks of vomiting and felt a chill.

After we had dropped Ron off and pulled into our driveway, there was panic in her voice. “Randy, I’m having contractions.”

My heart went cold. It was early July, and the twins weren’t due until November. Not again, I thought, remembering the miscarriage. We spent a long, anguished night in the emergency room. “You’re having premature contractions,” the doctors told her. They were finally able to get them under some control with medication. Amy kept hold of the babies, as if through the power of her own will. I pictured them as small as slips of paper, little paper cranes, tucked inside her, feeding gently on her spirit. After exhausting hours she slept, her face still in a circle of light.

After Amy was asleep, I walked to the window and studied the lights of Phoenix. I knew that Amy might be staying here for most of the remainder of her pregnancy—for however long that might be. Let it last, I asked God. Let her keep these babies long enough for them to be born.

Surprisingly, the next morning the doctors released Amy. With bed rest, they said, they hoped she would be fine. But we were back within hours. The contractions had returned with force. I couldn’t understand why my wife, a woman who was always strong and healthy, reacted this way to pregnancies. It was as if her body refused to be pregnant. The doctors put her on a heavy-duty med to relax the muscles of the uterus. It was administered through a pump into her arm. Amy was stoic. The medication made her feel jumpy, and I watched her eyelids twitch as she lay on the hospital bed, watching television. Still, the contractions continued. They broke right through the muscle relaxant. The doctors increased the dose. The contractions continued even more.

“If we don’t get the contractions stopped, she will miscarry soon,” one of the doctors said forcefully. I counted the weeks. If the twins were born now, they would die.

I knew Amy was nowhere near the weight she needed to be. I was overwhelmed with anxiety. My wife was in premature labor and might miscarry at any moment, and there was nothing I could do. It was a sense of helplessness that made me want to wring my hands and pace.

“What do we try next?” Amy asked, her eyes twitching.

“A high dose of magnesium,” the doctor said. “It may stop the contractions.” She explained the risks. “But such high doses can also lead to many other muscles of the body relaxing. This means the facial muscles may droop, and weakness can set in. And it means Amy stays here. If she is on the magnesium, we need to monitor her.”

Amy waved her hand in consent. Whatever works, her hand said.

“Randy, can you spend the night?”

“Of course.”

The nurse wheeled in a chair that unfolded into an uncomfortable bed. I reclined next to Amy and held her hand. The magnesium carried her into sleep. When she was deeply asleep, I took my hand back. I was up most of the night, thinking about Amy. It didn’t seem fair that this would happen to a woman who wanted children so much. All the time I saw kids on the van who had parents who didn’t seem to care at all. The injustice of it stung. In the morning I rinsed my face and mouth in the sink, kissed Amy, and went to work. Luckily, I was scheduled for shifts inside the hospital.

I returned to find Amy looking comatose. Her wrists lay limply across the crumpled white sheet. Her head was turned toward the television. I wiped drool from her chin. Half of her face didn’t seem to be working anymore. I called the doctor, telling her she needed to come right away.

“Is this normal?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Amy’s contractions are unusually strong. We had to up the dose. We’ve reduced the contractions somewhat, but I don’t think we’ll be able to eradicate them entirely.” She sounded apologetic.

I sat with Amy. “Can you eat?” I asked. She shook her head no. I felt strained with turmoil. The anxiety was only getting worse. I knew Amy could be in this hospital for the next few months, and each day would be high risk. I was glad the hospital had a lot of experience in multiple births. The doctors would know about retaining a pregnancy. But even under that assurance I still felt insecure. I didn’t know how to help my wife. As a doctor I wanted to fix her, make it all better. I had the irrational feeling that I was failing by not fixing it.

“Stay here again tonight,” she whispered.

While I was in the hospital, I checked on her throughout the day. But I had a responsibility to the van too. I tended to seemingly endless lines of needy kids. For the first time I saw them and later couldn’t recall their faces. I felt as if I were splintering into a thousand pieces. It was not the physical exhaustion but the stress that made my body hurt. I drove home only to feed and walk Ginger.
The house smelled empty and lonely. I packed an overnight bag. Then I drove directly to the hospital, where I changed my clothes. I sat with Amy until she fell asleep, and then I unfolded the cot.

One week of this seemed excruciating. The next seemed impossible. Still, it went on until I could taste the exhaustion in my mouth and feel it in my skin.

After over a month of hospitalization Amy was back home. The doctors said it was a trial run. If she could stay in bed, she might finish the pregnancy at home. She lay in our bedroom, buried in a sea of craft projects and magazines, bored out of her mind. I was gone all day, and she had nothing but the walls and television to look at. Amy hated bed rest.

I was coming in from working all day. So far we had made it to day two of the home bed rest. I was starting to hope it might work.

“Randy?” Amy called. “I’m hungry.”

“What would you like?”

“Pancakes and bacon.”

“I’m not so good at bacon. It always burns. How about just the pancakes?”

“I really want bacon,” she said, looking up from her pillow while I stood in the doorway. I hadn’t even unloaded the codebooks from my pockets yet or walked Ginger.

“Honey, I just got home from work. It’s been a long day. I’m tired. And seriously, you
know
I always burn bacon.”

She gave me an even sadder look with her big brown eyes. I started to argue but quickly gave up. She wants bacon, I thought. Fine. I went into the kitchen, got the pancake mix out, and started heating the griddle. I put the bacon on and then started making pancakes—very ineptly. They were too dark, too big, and too messy. When I turned around, the grease from the bacon was smoking. She knows I’m not good at this, I thought. I was looking for the tongs. Where were the tongs? Not in the drawer. Not in the
cabinets. Were they outside by the barbecue? I went to check. No tongs.

I came back in to see a jet of bright yellow and red flame shooting from the bacon pan. The smoke alarm went off with a screech.

“Randy, what’s wrong?” Amy yelled from the bedroom.

“Nothing!” I grabbed the smoking pan and threw it out back, onto the patio. Instead of being extinguished, the grease fire simply spread across the tiles. I ran and turned the hose on it. The water only seemed to spread the flames until they were lapping at the edges of the patio. Eventually I got it under control.

“Randy!” Amy was screaming.

The doorbell rang. The firefighters were here.

“I got it under control,” I told them.

The young man in the helmet looked disbelievingly at my disheveled shirt and smoke-stained face. “Can we come in and check?”

“Sure.” I opened the door. “I’m making pancakes.”

He sniffed. “I think they’re burning too.”

“Shoot!” I remembered the griddle.

He smiled at something behind me. “Howdy, miss.”

I turned around, and there was Amy. She was completely dressed. She had her overnight bag in one hand.

“What are you doing up?” I sputtered.

“We need to go to the hospital. I’m having contractions again.” Just like that, we were out the door once again. I felt guilty. I couldn’t even make bacon, and after less than two days at home my wife was back in the hospital.

The summer dragged on, and Amy was just barely holding on to the twins. She spent weeks in the hospital, and every effort to go home failed. The contractions simply never stopped, not even with high doses of medications. I knew that sooner or later the contractions would lead to dilation, and when that happened, birth was imminent. The key was to try to hold on as long as she could. Each day more increased the chance the babies might live.

On the van the homeless kids continued to come by, day after day, an unrelenting stream of broken bones and infections and stories of abuse that tore at my heart. The world seemed full of
stress and sadness and despair. Yet in the middle of this sadness there was the miracle of life growing inside my wife and the miracle of kids finally getting help. I prayed quietly next to Amy’s bed while she slept. My sense of purpose and faith remained. I felt sure all would be well. At the same time I had a pressing sense of worry. Maybe all would not be well.

The morning of September 11 I had gone home to shower and change. My phone rang. It was Amy. “Turn on the news,” she said quietly. That day I sat silently by Amy’s bed, watching the news with her. Nine-eleven, people were already calling it, as if we could pick up the phone and say, “Stop, we have an emergency.” We held hands.

The next day at the office, Jan was uncharacteristically quiet. We spoke softly about what had happened. “A lot of teenagers are talking about enlisting,” Jan said. There was strain in her eyes. It hit me that Jan had teenagers. Maybe she was worried they would enlist.

“I think about my babies being born in such a sad time,” I said.

“You have no idea what love really is until you have children,” she said.

I took the van out alone to downtown Phoenix. The kids I treated looked as distraught as everyone else. One of them was carrying a large roll of paper he’d gotten from an art store. He crouched down and unrolled it. Other kids helped him.