c5

"Trust me, I put in so much time that if I want a day, no one asks any questions. But, hey, I'm not trying to corner you. Only if you feel like it. I was thinking of driving up Highway 1, north of San Francisco along the coast. Maybe along some beach."
"Really? God, that sounds nice. It's been so hot lately."
"Nice and cool along the ocean. A lot of great fish places to stop and eat."
"I'd love to do that," she said. "But I don't want you in trouble with work."
"I wouldn't worry about that," he laughed. "I'm in charge of my own schedule."
"You are?"
"Everyone there knows I come in whenever I'm needed. If Thursday isn't a special day at the store, I'll be with you. Riding up the coast."
  Julie sat on the exam table in her paper gown, swinging her bare feet. It seemed as if she waited forever for Beth to open the door. "Hey," she said brightly. "I didn't know I'd be seeing you today. How are you?"
"Pregnant," Julie said, looking down at her knees for a moment. She smiled emotionally, fighting tears. "What else is new, huh?"
"Uh-oh. You don't look thrilled."
Instantly the tears ran over. "Beth, this couldn't come at a worse time…."
Beth immediately went into doctor mode. She sat on the little stool and balanced the chart on her knee. "What's the matter, Jules?"
"Another accident. My fourth accident. No one gets pregnant as easily as me. I'm a broodmare. I should breed for a living. We've used everything. This time it's an IUD!"
"Are you sure you're pregnant?"
"Oh, I'm sure," she said. "I spent all morning going through the checkbook, looking for an error in my favor. We're completely strapped. Billy works on all his days off. We fight. I throw up every morning. We have a house full of kids, money is nonexistent—we'll never get ahead, we're so far behind already…. I was just thinking that when Clint gets in kindergarten next year I could put Stephie in day care and go back to work and maybe we'd have a fighting chance." She sniffed. "Beth, I'm at the end of my rope."
"You do a home pregnancy test?" Beth asked.
"I don't have to. I can tell you exactly how far along I am. I'm the most regular woman in California."
"That isn't always a diagnosis," Beth said, smiling patiently. "I might want a second opinion."
"You want proof? Help yourself. I'm pregnant. Six weeks. And I'm thinking about… What if instead of having a baby, I made Billy have that vasectomy?"
Beth laughed. "That wouldn't really stop you from having the baby, Jules."
"Can we please not call in the nurse?" Julie asked, reclining on the table. Her feet found the stirrups by habit. "Can we do this, just you and me? Because I'm truly screwed up with this one."
"Sure," Beth said. "Special privileges. Now, besides money, what's the problem?"
"What is there besides money?" Julie asked. "You know when we were all at lunch? Well, Billy decided to try to impress me by helping out. He was going to fix the gutter that was breaking off from the eave. He'd only had a few hours of sleep, had been up most of the twenty-four hours before, was too tired to being doing chores like that and he fell off the ladder."
Beth stopped what she was doing and her head snapped up. "He okay?"
"He's fine—luckily he didn't hurt himself. But that really got my attention. What if he got hurt on the job? We'd be so screwed. What if something even worse happened? I wouldn't even be able to keep the house. We're barely hanging on to it now. How would I raise my kids? On welfare?"
"Are you sure things are really that bad, Jules?"
"That bad," she said. "No one knows this—I've been late on a lot of mortgage payments. I've totally missed two. I keep expecting them to come and arrest me or something." Julie put the back of her hand on her forehead. "I try not to bitch about it all the time. Cassie thinks I have the world by the balls with my sweet, good-looking husband and all these kids. Marty just wouldn't get it. She might want a little more attention out of Joe, but if I had her problems, I'd manage, believe me. I'd just hose him down and enjoy my boat."
Beth found the gloves; the speculum was laid out.
"I don't want to be pregnant right now!" Julie blurted.
"Now that I understand," Beth said. "Sooner or later, you should put a stop to this. You have a record."
"Boy, do I."
"Let's get the facts, okay? Slide down for me." Beth did what she was trained to do. She inserted the speculum, positioned her lamp and had a look at the cervix, which had the nice blue tinge common in early pregnancy. Yup, girlfriend here didn't need the test. She pulled out the hardware and measured the uterus with her hands, fingers inside and pressing down on her lower abdomen with her fingertips. "My, my—you're very good at this. Feels like you have a touch of pregnancy. Let's have a look." She flipped the switch on the ultrasound machine.
In a couple of minutes Beth was able to insert the transvaginal probe for a good view, and there in Julie's womb was a tiny mass, a beating heart and an IUD.
"There you go," she said to Julie. "Alive and pumping. You're something else, you know that?"
"I'm a machine. God," she said, silent tears sliding out of her eyes. "Is it my imagination or does she have that thing in her grip? And is she laughing at me?"
"She?"
"Billy said a girl would even us out. I think it might put me in a straitjacket."
"Billy's not upset about this?"
"I think he's strutting. I want to kill him. He just doesn't take it seriously, because he's not the one juggling the bills. He doesn't know I have to decide every payday which ones I don't pay…."
"Did you talk to him about not having it?"
She shook her head and the tears came harder. "He thinks we should just go with it. But, Beth, he's a fool. I take care of the money because he just doesn't have the time. I tell him how bad it is, but he just keeps saying it won't be a struggle forever. He has a degree, I'm sure he could do something that brings in a better living, but he wants to be a firefighter. It's his life choice, as he calls it. It's noble, and I'm proud of him, I am, but we're starving."
"You're not starving," Beth said.
"We're starving! There's nothing left over at the end of the month. We get by on tuna, mac and cheese, peanut butter and jelly and soup made out of scraps. Sometimes I have to scrounge around at my mom's and I feel like a vagrant living out of trash cans. I buy the cheapest of everything. I cut so many corners my life is a circle. I don't know how long I can do this. I feel like I lost my life."
"What life did you lose?" Beth asked.
"Don't ask me that," she said, putting the back of her hand over her eyes. "The answer is shameful. Even to me."
"What life did you lose?" she pushed.
"The one where we were supposed to be in love and happy and having fun and not scared or worried or pinching so goddamn hard we squeak! I'm okay with a little struggle, but every goddamn day is a struggle! The kids were screaming for McDonald's the other day, something they never get, and I was counting pennies out of the bottom of my purse! I let them split two Happy Meals three ways and they were all still hungry afterward. It's not supposed to be like that!"
I have so much money even with my debts, Beth thought. Even with med school loans—so much money. A swank town house, great clothes, a sharp car. Problems like these aren't even real to me! In fact, I'd give anything if these were my biggest problems. But she had to rein that in; it was her job to take care of Julie and not the other way around. "Aren't those the kind of stories you tell your kids when they're older? About how you had to manage it? About how tough it was? Billy's not irresponsible with money, is he?"
"Oh, stop it," she said with a sniff. "On our budget, he only gets one beer on a night off, which is a rare thing. That's his big splurge."
"Yeah, he's disgustingly good, isn't he? Sorry about that."
"You have no idea how hard it is…."
Beth smiled. "Well, I owe two hundred thousand dollars for school loans. I have no guy in my life, not even a really bad one."
"Oh, Beth," she said, rising up a bit. "God, I'm sorry. Sometimes I just think of myself! Why don't you seem worried? You're not at the end of your rope."
I'm close to suicidal, Beth thought. But she said, "Well, I'm lucky there—the practice is working me to death, the loan people are patient and I make a decent wage." But, she thought, I have some issues that might get me before I get them. "It's all how you see it. And you're seeing it all to the south right now. There's good stuff in your life—I've been to your house. Billy is a great guy, the kids are pretty cute for kids and they don't seem to have any idea you're broke. You're in good health and you're still as disgustingly pretty as you ever were."
"We had a get-together a couple of weeks ago at Marty and Joe's. Chelsea was there, coming on to Billy. She looks better than all of us put together."
"Chelsea? She's still got her eye on Billy?"
"That's how it looked to me…."
"Well, let's just concentrate on you right now."
Julie was quiet for a second. "I can't have another child, I just can't," she said, so softly she could barely be heard.
"Did you talk to Billy about this?"
"I told you, I—"
"No, did he tell you it was up to you? Because I know you're struggling, but he's struggling, too."
She looked away. "He said everything would be all right. That's what he always says." She propped herself up on her elbows. "Have you ever known a woman to complain because her husband is too happy-go-lucky? I don't understand him. It's not like he lives in some la-la land. He scoops people off the freeway, pulls them out of mangled cars, pumps on their chests to get their hearts going—he lives in a world more real than most of us will ever know. But when it comes to our problems, which are major, he treats them like they're just a minor inconvenience. Beth—if anything happened to Billy and I needed help, I'd have to go to my brother or my parents. And I've gone to them before. Lots."
"I take that to mean he wouldn't consider ending the pregnancy."
"He wouldn't go for that idea, no." And if she could find even a smidgen of hope in her ability to keep the house and food on the table, neither would Julie.
"Well, this might actually come as welcome news to you. Depending on where that IUD is situated, you have a better than average chance of miscarriage. Also depending, this could turn out to be a high-risk pregnancy…." She shrugged. "On the other hand, I've pulled many an IUD out right behind a perfect full-term baby."
"What if you pulled it out now?"
"We can take it out. We do that from time to time. Usually a little later, with an ultrasound to guide. But that carries a risk—it could compromise the pregnancy. Sometimes it's a tough call."
"Compromise it later? Or now?"
"Either time, I'm afraid. But we'd take every precaution."
"And if you just pulled it today? Now?" Julie asked, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.
Beth shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe some spotting and that's all. Maybe a spontaneous miscarriage."
And maybe no pressure to make a decision about keeping it or letting it go? Julie thought for a second, then said, "Do it. Get it over with."
"Jules, if you want it out, we should wait, do it with an ultrasound, when the fetus is larger."
"There'd still be a risk of losing it, but I'd be further along? No," she said, shaking her head. "This is bad enough. I don't want to make myself accept this and then lose it. I don't want to feel it move and then… Just pull the goddamn little traitor IUD out!"
Beth tugged on Julie's hand to help her sit up, then she sat on her stool and looked up at her friend. "All right, listen. It's legally your right to choose termination, but I strongly urge you to get a little quick counseling—it's free. Get Billy on board so it doesn't affect what appears to be a very loving and supportive marriage. Huh?"
"Is it my legal right to have that IUD removed?"
"Julie, think this through…."