The Path Less Taken

Kayla: December 16, 2014- 8:19PM

        Beep….beep….beep…

I don’t understand why they have to have this stupid monitor on me all the time. I mean, I’m

obviously alive.

         Beep….beep….

How am I supposed to get any sleep with this thing beeping in my ear all night?

        Beep….beep….beep….

I wonder why Brad hasn’t come to see me yet… I miss my mom…

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        It’s been about a month since I took the pregnancy test. An entire month of worrying and planning and arguing with Brad. Now all of that was for nothing. I started bleeding about two nights ago and it wouldn’t stop. There was just an overwhelming amount of blood and stabbing pain in my stomach. I knew I was losing my baby.

        Part of me felt relieved that I didn’t have to bring a child into this life that I’m barely surviving myself. I know I’m in no place to raise a child. But another part of me feels hopelessly lost. There was a human inside of me. A little tiny human with fingers and toes, and even a heartbeat. And now, it was gone. Nothing but a dead fetus.

        The doctor had to induce labor because I was too far along to expel the fetus on my own. It’s been almost three days and Bradley still hasn’t come to see me. I keep holding out some hope that he’s just busy with work and he’ll come see me when he can, but for the first time in our relationship, I’m beginning to doubt whether or not he has my best interests at heart.

        A doctor--one that I haven’t seen before--walks through the door of my hospital room. She looks much too young to be a doctor. She has her perfectly straight auburn hair pulled back into a tight ponytail so tight that it almost pulls her eyes back. She also has a bright pink stethoscope around her neck that’s adorned with rhinestones. Underneath her wrinkle free doctor’s lab coat, she wears a pale blue buttoned up blouse tucked into a tight, black pencil skirt, and a pair of at least four inch stilettos. Around her neck I see that her name is Dr. Ann Porcelli.

        “Hello, I’m going to be your physician for the remainder of your stay here.” She doesn’t look at me, but keeps her deep brown eyes focused on whatever is on the clipboard in front of her.

        “Hi,” I begin to introduce myself, “I’m Ka--”

        “Kayla Michelle Delgato, eighteen years old, history of low blood pressure, allergic to penicillin, here for a miscarriage. That sound about right?”

        I’m speechless. How does some twenty-something year old doctor think she can just come in here and act like she knows my life story?

        “Um, yeah that’s correct.” I manage to say. Dr. Porcelli pulls the lounge chair sitting by the window closer to my bed and sits down.

        “Look,” she says, staring right into my eyes as if she could see inside my soul, “you and I both know why this baby didn’t make it. You’re on drugs. I don’t know what the hell made you decide all of a sudden to just up and start shooting dope and frankly, I couldn’t care less. But you need to get your shit together, or you are going to die.”

        I look back at her, without saying a word. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife as we silently stared at each other. I sit up and lean close to her.

        “You know nothing about me,” I whisper, “you’re some spoiled little rich girl that probably bought her way into medical school with daddy’s trust fund. You probably had the perfect childhood, owned four Shetland ponies, had sleepovers and pool parties at your beach house upstate, but some of us don’t have it that easy. Before you judge me, take a walk in my shoes. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

        This time when she looks at me, I can’t read her. I can’t tell if she is angry, amused, disgusted, or all of the above. She then stands up and starts toward the door, but stops right before she opens it.

        “You just proved to me that you are the one who knows nothing.”

        Neither of us speak another word. I don’t even watch her leave. I just hear the faint clicking of her heels as she saunters down the hall.

        Shortly after Dr. Bitchface leaves, another knock on the door wakes me from the first sleep I’ve managed to get in almost three days. I groggily open my eyes as Brad walks through the door, the same perfect grin on his face that I’ve now been beginning to despise. He sits down at the foot of my bed and rubs my leg.

        “Hey, what’s up, buttercup?” he says as he tries to move in for a kiss. I swat him away.

        “Don’t you ‘buttercup’ me Bradley Wise. I’ve been here for almost three days. Three days and you haven’t even called once. Where have you been? What have you been doing while I’ve been here writhing in pain and delivering our dead child?”

        Brad looks at me, in total shock. I don’t usually say things like that to him, so I was equally as shocked when I watched him pull his fist back and hit me, dead center in the face. I cry out in immense pain as my nose begins to gush with blood, flowing out of my nose like someone just turned on the water faucet.

        “How dare you think you can talk to me like that, you stupid bitch! Who do you think you are?!”

        Immediately after he finished his sentence, three nurses rush into the room and gasp at my bloodied face. One calls for backup while Brad continues to berate me. Just as soon as a huge man with bulging muscles storms in the room to escort Brad out of the room--and probably wait for his arrest--he spits on me. In a way, that was worse than being hit in the face.

        And finally--as if I was hit in the face with a brick--I was hit with a realization. The man that I was irrevocably in love with was a manipulative, deceiving, abusive sociopath.