Deanna Roy

“You're a survivor. Each one of you. And survivors don't have the luxury of acting like regular people. We do what we have to do to get by.”

“Molar pregnancies like Janet’s are indeed rare, but they do happen. Over the last decade, frustrated and worried women have emailed me, asking why their doctors won’t pay attention to their symptoms, telling them to just “wait it out.” I think this happens because obstetricians see so many situations, and most of the time, it works out the way they expect—the recovery may be short, medium, or long, but will not require intervention. But statistics like one in five hundred are meaningless if you are the one. I always tell women who can’t get through to their doctors to start looking for one whose office responsiveness matches her needs. Not every doctor and every patient are going to be a good fit.”

“Dot sat forward and tugged another handful of bracelets from the snarl. “Here’s something I believe.” She held up a green bracelet so that the sun shone clear through the colors on the beads. “I believe that when women like us meet, that our children in heaven also find their way to each other, on account of us all being in the same place and them watching over. So they’re all together—Stella your pair, Melinda’s, and mine. Right now, they’re up there, singing maybe, or playing Red Rover, and probably laughing at us sitting around trying to fix a mess we ourselves made.”

“I lost our babies for us,” she croaked. “My body wouldn’t hold them.”

“Yep. Some things are permanent.”

“The babies seem so very far away.”

“That we can live out our children’s lives in a way—do things on behalf of them. It gives them a chance to have an impact.”

“Yeah, the majority head out after three or four meetings. They get pregnant again, mostly, or tire of grieving and just move on. Often their partners aren’t supportive of their sadness playing out too long. They guilt them into acting like they’re better.”

“No use trying to outdo each other,” Dot said. “What’s easy for one might break somebody else.”

“Stella nodded. She was so glad Janet had found a new doctor after all that suffering. One thing that had astounded her was how the women—smart, educated, strong women—never wanted to bother their caregivers. They silently suffered, trying to be low-maintenance patients despite their horrifying experiences.”

“when your life trajectory is irreparably altered, you often find you can’t go back to the person you were.”

“Janet collapsed her head into her hands with relief. She’d never reached out for help before, certainly not with someone she knew so little. But this was her new life.”

“What horror to face, to choose the moment of your child’s death, to see the machines whir to a stop, the monitors to beep, the line of the heartbeat to go flat. No one really recovers from that. It must be easier to harden your heart, close the recesses of pain, and live life more simply and with calm deliberation.”

“But the cry of a baby the minute she yanked open the front door tightened her chest so hard she could scarcely catch her breath. Her baby was dead. Theirs weren’t.”

“He had slid out of her without incident”

“And another baby could die.”

“She knew life still had its problems. Jake still hated her dog. Sarah would still connive to set her children against her. Anna would still be a teenager and prone to outbursts. Her new job, if she took one, might not work out.”

“Jake put his phone away and clasped her hand. “I think we should lobby for a bill to make it illegal for pregnant and non-pregnant women to be in the same doctor’s office,” he said.”

“, repeatedly visiting the online baby calendar to see what stage of growth the baby would have been in.”

“Most women found that the few weeks after a miscarriage were extremely fertile, as if the body wanted to quickly rectify its mistake.”

“One part of her knew this was crazy. But most of her didn’t care.”

“Melinda settled back against the bricks. Just go in. Let me escape. Jake would interrogate her, no doubt. Maybe she should just never go home. Get a job again and be independent. Avoid the thought of having babies. Or failing at it.”