I nodded, then winced. The police had already told me the truck’s alignment had been off, the tires were old, and one of them blew out. The truck had flown off the road, through the guardrail and into Blackfish Creek Marsh in Wellfleet. The tide was halfway out, the truck rolled, and when it stopped, my side had been partially underwater. Ben had pulled me out, possibly saving my life, possibly making the abdominal damage worse. A passerby called 911.
All I remembered was the smell of his truck, feeling safe.
Ben sat in the chair next to my bed and said nothing. As my mother had said, he hadn’t broken a single bone. But she had been wrong about no scratch. There was a cut on his palm that had warranted some stitches.
The nurse came in and put some pain meds and antibiotics into my IV. I fell asleep. Ben was gone when I woke up, but the daffodils were in the jar on my windowsill.
Ben and I never spoke of it again. He only visited me that once, said that one sentence and never followed up again. My father didn’t fire him, whereas my mother thought he should be serving time.
I didn’t blame Ben Hallowell upon learning that my body would have a harder time fighting off viruses without my spleen there to help. I didn’t blame him when I limped for a year thanks to my broken femur, or when the physical therapy made my leg burn and ache so fiercely that tears streamed down my face. I didn’t blame him for the twenty pounds I lost with a jaw wired shut. When, a year after the accident, a hysterogram showed significant scarring in my uterus that would “likely” affect my ability to have children, I still didn’t blame him.
But, oh, I blamed him when I lost my unborn daughter, when I held her and keened and felt my heart rip apart. My body could not hold her, and that was because of a stupid accident caused by a man who drove too fast and didn’t take care of his truck. If not for that accident, I would have had a daughter. I knew that in my heart, and my doctor confirmed it. My uterus was just too battered to hold her.
The miscarriage changed me. In most other ways, it made me more tender, more loving, more sentimental.
Getting pregnant at age twenty-two . . . it was a miracle. Sure, it pushed the time frame of my life forward faster than I had planned, but I was pregnant. It sealed the deal between Brad and me, and his parents were over the moon, not even minding that we were having a shotgun wedding, more or less. Dylan seemed like God’s compensation for that car accident and the year of pain that followed. Giving birth didn’t hurt nearly as much as had been direly promised—I was in awe of what my body could do. Clearly, I was a champion with these childbearing hips and juicy ovaries. And because Brad and I were utterly smitten with our baby, we wanted more. Dylan would be such a good big brother. By the age of two, he was so kind and adorable already.
Brad, an only child himself, wanted our son to have siblings. We’d have two girls, we fantasized, then another boy who’d worship Dylan as a demigod and be suitably adored by his sisters. Maybe the girls would be twins. Catia and Aline, with little Rafael a few years later.
When I got pregnant the second time, Dylan was three. Easiest thing in the world, right? But it was a very different pregnancy—with Dylan, I’d had only a little bit of heartburn toward the end, and my belly stuck out in front of me like the prow of a ship. From behind, you couldn’t tell I was pregnant.
With this second pregnancy, I knew it was a girl, because I spread. I looked pregnant from my ankles to my eyes. “Looks like you sat on an air hose,” my dad said fondly.
“Thanks, Pop,” I said, rolling my eyes and depositing Dylan on his lap.
And yet I was nervous. Call it maternal instinct, but there was a strong foreboding in my heart. Something was wrong, I kept thinking. I was getting my master’s to become a CNM at that time, learning about every aberration and chromosomal abnormality there was, wondering if my child would have cerebral palsy or Down syndrome or microcephaly.
The ultrasound showed a perfect baby girl. Every lab test told me I was fine. No diabetes, no high blood pressure, no anemia. Placenta in its rightful place, weight gain perfect, no signs of anything but clear blue skies ahead.
I pushed my fear aside, knowing it was normal to worry （though I hadn’t with Dylan, so stunned and overjoyed at my good luck）。 I was exhausted （normal, again, showing that all my energy was going to the baby）。 I could see it in Brad’s eyes—he was so happy at the thought of a daughter. When Dylan asked why my tummy was so round, we told him.
“I be a big brudder!” he crowed, and Brad and I were so happy with his reaction, so delighted. Our perfect little family would grow.