Page 71 of Counting Backwards

Gram stood and collected her things, retrieving the plate of sandwiches from the dresser and moving it to the nightstand beside me. She left the notebook for me as well, telling me to call if I wanted to talk over what Carrie had written.

Once I was alone again, I ran a hand over my eyes as if to clear them. I stared down at the journal in my lap. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to read it. I related to my grandmother in that moment.

I traced my fingers along the edges of the closed journal, the aged cardboard delicate and pulpy against my skin. Slowly, I opened the front cover and looked down at the page, where I found tight, slanted letters waiting.

It was one of them blindingly bright Virginia summer days. That’s what I remember most about the morning the ladies came to take me away. I was home watching after the babies like usual because Mama was downtown again, looking to find herself a day’s work. Doris was crawling across the dusty floor, stopping now and again to stare at her toes, and I felt a little sorry at the way the milk-white skin of her knees had gone gray from the dirt of the planks. Baby Roy was asleep in the old bassinet we’d got from Miss Jenny, who lived with her brother’s family on the second floor of the house. Our family had two rooms on the first floor, right below them. I was just six years old at the time, you understand, but I loved to look after my own brother and sister, to be the one taking charge. Even if they was only half-related to me, that one-half was enough.

My cell phone rang, interrupting me. I fished through the rumpled bedcovers until my hand connected with the phone. It was my doctor’s office.

“Hello?” I asked, bracing for whatever bad news they might deliver.

“Hi, Jessa? It’s Kendra from Dr. LaRusso’s office. The doctor just wanted me to check in to see how you’re feeling.”

“Oh, um...” I wanted to say, “I’m scared to death,”but I knew that wasn’t what the woman was really asking.

“I’m good, I think,” I said instead. “I haven’t had any more bleeding, and I’ve just been lying here in bed the whole day, like the doctor said.”

“You’re still in bed?” Kendra asked.

“Yup. I’ve been very well behaved.”

“Oh no, honey. The bed rest was just for the first twenty-four hours as a precaution. You can get yourself up and move about now. Just so long as you avoid strenuous exercise and such.”

“But the doctor said full bed rest.”

“He did, for twenty-four hours. I know, sweetie, sometimes when we’re stressed we don’t get all the facts. That’s why the doc always likes us to call patients to check in after a scare.”

“You’re sure? I’m allowed up?” I asked, nervous to follow the wrong advice.

“I’m sure.”

“But...,” I began, not sure how to politely explain that I wasn’t prepared to accept medical advice from the receptionist.

“I’ll tell you what,” Kendra said. “I’ll have Dr. LaRusso call you himself after he finishes with his patients today. Until then, there’s no harm in a hardworking pregnant mama keeping her feet up for a few extra hours, right?”

I hoped Kendra was right. Even just the two days of bed rest had me feeling like I was spiraling toward an abyss of fear and depression. But if full bed rest wasn’t necessary, then perhaps the baby wasn’t in the kind of jeopardy I had been imagining.

“That would be great. Yes, please have him call, and I’ll stay in bed until then. Thank you.”

Besides being upset with myself for confusing the doctor’s instructions, what I couldn’t stop thinking about after I hung up was the difference in care between what I was receiving from my fancy Upper East Side doctor and what the women in Hydeford had gotten from Pinelands. I had been spoken to in my own language, by a doctor of my own choosing, in a clean and comfortable medical office, andstillI had misunderstood what was happening and how to take care of myself. The contrast with what the detained women had experienced was glaring. I thought of the personal and emotional nature of gynecological care, the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, the fragility of so many moments that occurred only in exam rooms. Those women still needed my help. There was plenty I could contribute from home—even from bed, like Gram said. I needed to get back to work.

***

By 8:00 p.m. I was sitting comfortably at the dining table. Dr. LaRusso had called a couple of hours earlier, just as Kendra promised, and he’d clarified that the bed rest was, indeed, intended as only a brief precaution. As my uterus continued to grow and stretch with the pregnancy, the doctor explained, the placement of the placenta would, in all likelihood, correct itself. In the meantime, now that the bleeding had stopped, I could resume my usual routines without concern. He told me to take it easy physically—no strenuous exercise and no sex—until the placenta moved to a new position. But returning to other regular activity was no problem.

The thought of avoiding sex with Vance was a surprising relief. Ever since he abandoned me for those few days the month before, I hadn’t wanted to be intimate with him, to have him touch me in that way. If I was completely honest with myself, I still felt uneasy being around him at all. Had my feelings towardhim changed altogether? Or did I just need more time to move past what he’d done? I used to rely on him no matter what. But what had felt safe and comforting before was now making me feel small and stifled. I worried our relationship might have always rested on the building blocks of my emotional baggage. But then I reminded myself that I was chock-full of hormones, so maybe I shouldn’t entirely trust my current feelings.

For the time being, I needed to turn my attention back to the old case I’d been searching for online. When I’d finally returned Fern’s calls earlier that afternoon, I learned that one of the new Jane Does joining the complaint had experienced severe abdominal pain and a diagnosis of endometriosis. She had been told, prior to her incarceration at Hydeford, that she needed to have one of her ovaries removed. After the woman was settled in the facility, she agreed to have the surgery. Unfortunately, when she awoke, she learned that Dr. Choudry had removed the wrong ovary, taking out the healthy organ. The woman needed a second surgery to remove the faulty one, leaving her in an infertile state. Jane Doe #6 had relocated to South Carolina after her release, but she was willing to travel to New Jersey to testify if it meant someone would have to answer for what happened to her.

The case I had been looking for was one I’d read in my torts class in law school. A man had gone into surgery to have his left hand removed, and when he awoke, he found his right hand had been amputated instead. The doctor in the case had been found liable of negligence, and the hospital was held to account. As I copied down the citations from the case, I heard a key in the front door.

Vance walked in with his messenger bag draped across his body and an empty bottle of iced tea in his hand. He startled at the sight of me. “You’re out of bed,” he said, stating the obvious.

“Apparently we misunderstood Dr. LaRusso. It was only a twenty-four-hour bed rest.”

“No, you should get back in bed.” He put down his bag in a hurry and started moving toward me.

“Vance, I spoke to him. He said it’s okay, that he never meant for me to stay in bed longer.”