"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…."