Visions & Revisions: An anthology of new writing by Junior Cycle Teachers [selected extracts]

Elizabeth O’Dea
‘Clare?’
‘Yup.’ She gathered her jacket and handbag awkwardly.
‘Sorry, sorry, everything is getting away on me.’
She followed the nurse through the Alice in Wonderland
door to find a consultation room where Dr Carey was stationed
at an ultrasound screen.
‘Well, this has been a bit shit, hasn’t it?’ Dr Carey said.
Clare hesitated, taken aback that a doctor would say ‘shit.’
But mostly impressed that Dr Carey had the gumption to say it
and that she had read Clare as the kind of woman who would
appreciate this. Because it was. Shit. And that was as much or as
little as could be said about it. Beyond that, it was important to
be, and sound, grateful.
Clare had driven herself to the hospital the morning the
bleeding started. It was 6am on a Sunday. Shane had to stay at
home to mind Maeve. But even if she’d had anyone nearby to
call, she’s not sure that she would have. She came alone to this
second appointment by choice. Shane argued with her, insisting
he didn’t mind taking a day’s leave, but she wouldn’t give in.
There was a limit to how much of this road they could travel
together. Ultimately, she was the one who had to go through it.
What was the point of pretending otherwise? She knew this was
stubborn and deeply unfair to Shane; she knew it was borne of a
kind of buried rage. But she also took pride in this impulse and if
it helped her through, then so be it. Her perverse pride at driving
herself to the hospital, these two acts of defiant independence,
reached its peak when Dr Carey used that word. Shit.
The doctor that morning six weeks ago would never have
said something so direct, more’s the pity. In his feeble attempts
to reassure her that there was no right way to react he had only
revealed that he thought her reaction was odd. Of course she
cried when the midwife said, ‘no heartbeat there.’ It was a cry like
a vomit; it came from her whole body, instantaneous and ugly.
She was only two days shy of the twelve week milestone. But
now, ‘no heartbeat there.’ So, of course she bloody cried, at that
moment and many moments after. But by the time the midwife
WAITING ROOM B
brought the doctor in, there was business to be done, decisions
to be made. She was getting on with it. That’s what you do. Dr
Carey would have understood her pragmatism, would have met
it head on with useful facts. She would have warned Clare about
the bleeding, saved her ruining three sets of bedsheets before
finally resorting to old towels on the bathroom tiles.
‘Alright, let’s get you up here, see how we’re doing.’ Dr Carey
gestured to the bed beside her.
Clare positioned herself on the bed, tearing the impossibly
thin tissue roll covering it and then making it worse by wriggling
around to re-position the tear, before giving up.
Dr Carey went through the motions of the ultrasound before
declaring, ‘everything’s gone.’
There is nothing more.
‘Back to normal, physically speaking. But you and I both
know that’s only a fraction of it. Give yourself some time, cut
yourself some slack,’ Dr Carey said.
Clare swung her legs over the bed and put herself back
together.
‘Thanks, I will,’ she said, heading for the door she had come
in before the nurse blocked her path.
‘I’ll bring you out this way,’ he said.
Another bloody door? And then Clare got it. She had
fallen down the rabbit hole of ‘sad case.’ She was being led
through a third door so this sad case didn’t have to parade its
disappointment back through Waiting Room B, and certainly
not anywhere near the bumps in Waiting Room A. It was a
miscarriage quarantine. No awkward encounters between the
opposing worlds of pregnant and ‘no heartbeat there.’
That night putting Maeve to bed she lay down with her, in
no rush to go back downstairs. She was partly allowing herself
this time, partly avoiding talking to Shane. She twirled Maeve’s
hair around her index finger and let her eyes rest on the pink, the
unicorns and the glitter of her little girl’s world. They could gift
this childhood to her. This is what they could give.
When she finally slid her arm out from under Maeve, she
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