The Waiting Room

           The silence was like quicksand; I was scared that if I moved, or even breathed too deeply, it would drag me to my grave. Looking around the room that was the approximate size and shape of a large prison cell, I couldn’t help but stiffen. The space was bathed in a cheap, yellow lighting that made the tacky, wannabe cheerful, sunny wallpaper seem even more nauseating. There were three brown, polyester armchairs surrounding a small, rickety coffee table. On it stood what looked like a Mother’s Day gift a three-year-old might come home with from pre-school trying to pass for a decorative plant. It was all a flimsy façade, attempting to deny the real purpose for this room, to mask the devastation that hides behind the big, steel doors. The real reason anyone would willingly choose to be sitting here.  

They called it The Waiting Room. Simple and to the point. The room where the sweating, pacing boy waits to be told he is a father. The room where the older couple waits to be told they are going to have to bury their only child. The room where the little girl waits to be explained why her daddy won’t be able to read her bed time story anymore. And the room where I wait to be told that my life as I know it is about to change forever.

              After four grueling hours of listening to the deafening sound of the clock’s second hand, the big, steel doors swung open. A tall, middle-aged, Ukrainian man with a blond, receding hairline and a facemask pulled over his chin approached me and Jackson. There was a moment of weakness in the doctor’s eyes, but as soon as it appeared, it was gone. He quickly regained his composure, tucking his true feelings neatly behind a professional mask of stoicism. But not before I understood his look; it was a look I was quite familiar with, a look that made me want to crawl into bed, go to sleep and never wake up. The look of pity.

              “Mrs. and Mr. Ray, – ”

I didn’t give him the chance to say the words that would forever haunt my nightmares. Instead, I chose not to hear them at all. I calmly stood up and walked out, leaving my poor husband to take the hit.

              Although I’m not proud of walking out when I probably should have stayed, it wasn’t because of weakness that I left. It was because of pragmaticism. If I allowed myself to hear those two pitiful words, I don’t know if I would have been able to keep from bursting through those mocking metal doors and beating the arrogance out of the incompetent phonies who think they have a right to play God, deciding who will live and who will die; who will have the joy of raising children and who will never experience the feeling of a life inside them or hear the sound of little feet running around the house.

              I saw the words “I’m sorry” practically forming on the doctor’s lips and I just bolted. All my life, people have been pelting me with pathetic apologies, handling me with bubble-wrap because they thought I would shatter at any given moment. What else would anyone expect of a child whose mom died of a drug overdose? What they didn’t know is that my dad had to work two jobs to feed and clothe me and my little sister. What they didn’t know is that Natalie became my responsibility, and the center of my world. Most nine-year-olds’ biggest problem is making friends in school. Many of them aren’t worrying about cooking dinner and doing laundry for themselves and their families. What they didn’t know is that my childhood wasn’t typical, and neither was I. As I grew older, I also grew to understand my mother’s addiction; however, it wasn’t enough to clean my tainted memories of her. It still hurts to remember watching all her responsibilities as a mom taken over by a child. But after her death, I had a lot of time to convert all my built-up resentment into passion for my future.

              After high school, I attended UCLA for four years and graduated with a degree in journalism and a boyfriend with whom I had a promising future. Jackson Ray was the kind of guy that every father would be proud to have as a son-in-law. He inherited his dad’s marketing company as well as graduating with honors. Now he was on his way to becoming the youngest CEO of his company. Jackson and I got married straight after college. It’s five years later and our story led us here. A hospital room.

I leaned against a wall in the hallway, waiting for the doctor to finish speaking with Jackson. I knew. Just as every woman knows when she is pregnant. A woman knows when her belly is bare. I started to feel every emotion from the past three years, anger, shame, grief, disappointment, fall down my face. I quickly wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand, irritated.

A few minutes later, Jackson came through the door. He looked tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from missing a night of sleep, but from years of trying to comfort a wife while being in pain yourself. His grey eyes were deep and dark like the ocean’s surface, appearing to be serene and peaceful, but carrying secrets and tragedy in their depths. They made him look much older than his twenty-seven years.

“Let’s go home, Devon,” he said, his voice sounding horse and drained.

He called me Devon. He always calls me Dev for short. The nickname always brought me a certain level of comfort. It felt like home. But now, hearing him call me by my full name put an unsettling feeling in my stomach that made me uncomfortable. I know it’s unfair for me to assume that I’m suffering more than he is, but before I met him I always had to rely on myself. Jackson was more than the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with; he was the person who came to relieve me of a burden that I became so accustomed to carrying on my own. I may have been taking him for granted, having him bear more than his share.

“Jack,” I treaded carefully, not sure about where he was currently holding emotionally. “The doctors have been saying that I’m the problem.”

After trying to have a child for three years, we consulted with over fifteen doctors, trying to get a medical opinion that we would be satisfied with. Of those doctors, the majority of their tests showed that Jackson was very capable of having a child. I was the trouble. We hung the last of our hope on Dr. Kendal who we came to see today.

“What are you trying to say, Dev?” he snapped.

I felt his words hit me in the chest. Jackson was clearly frustrated. The tone was so foreign coming from the gentle man I knew so well, who I knew to pick up spiders that he found in the apartment with a paper and let them go through the window instead of squashing them on the spot.

“I’m trying to say,” I choked. My voice dropping so low, I barely could get the words out. “That you have a decision to make.”

I looked my husband directly in the eyes as I gave him full permission to carve my heart out.

“And I cannot make it for you,” I finished with a single tear falling down my face, like a drop of rain that trickles down the side of a window on a stormy morning.

Jackson reached out and took both of my hands in his own.

“Dev, we can make this work,” he said, his aggravation easing up. “We’re not backed into a corner here. This is the 21^st Century. We have options. We can adopt, or we can hire a surrogate, or we can volunteer at an orphanage, or – ”

I can hear his desperation rolling off him in waves, as quickly as the words that were pouring out of his mouth.

“Shh. Stop,” I said. “You can’t decide this now. I’ll never be able to live with your decision if it’s going to be something you’ll wind up regretting. I need you to be completely sure because once you tell me your answer, it’s going to be the rest of your life.

I watched as he stopped trying to talk over me and started to absorb my words and the enormity of the situation. I felt a thread of disappointment curling up inside me and settling in the back of my throat, making it hurt when I swallowed. I wanted him to block me out, to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about and that everything is going to be okay.

He squeezed my hand and it felt like fisting daggers. “You’re right,” he whispered.

No. No, no, no. No. NO. Tell me I’m crazy. I’m wrong. I’M WRONG.

              “There’s no way I’m going to be able to make this decision while seeing your face every day,” he continued.

“Wait. What are you saying, Jack?” my voice sounding a little too high.

“I need to get away, Dev. I need to think about this. I think it’s what’s best.”

He turned and started down the stairwell. My head was spinning in a thousand different directions. I felt like I was going to be sick. As soon as I caught my bearings, I started to run.

“Jackson!” I screamed after him. “Stop!”

I caught him at the hospital parking lot as he was climbing into the back of an orange taxi. I ran up to the rear door that he was about to close.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked breathlessly.

“Don’t make this harder than it is, Devon. I’m doing this for us and our possible future. Let me go.”

Possible? Did he say possible future?

I let my fingers slide off the open window of the car as I watched its two tail lights fade away into the distance. I stood in the empty parking lot for a few minutes looking after the shrinking car in shock and confusion.

And then, I turned around and walked away.