I take Emily’s limp hand in my own; it is small and warm and so terribly lifeless. I can’t let them do this. I can’t let them give up on her. If they stop looking for a diagnosis, they’ll never find a cure. If they write her off as someone who is only going to get worse, there’s no way she’ll ever get better. I’m not willing to consign my only child to being dismissed and then dying. I’m not ready, and surely, surely, neither is she.
Gently I squeeze Emily’s fingers. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes I feel something back, a light pressure, a barely-there squeeze. I thought I was imagining it at first, wishful thinking, but then Dr. Brown told me that patients like Emily can exhibit natural reflexes. He was quick to tell me it was nothing more than that, gently warning me that it didn’t mean anything.
But if it was just a reflex, why doesn’t it happen every time? Despite his well-intentioned warnings, I chose not to believe him. It’s more than a reflex to me.
And so, I squeeze her fingers again, gently, like a question. Are you there, baby girl? Is some part of you still with me, still holding on? I hold my breath and wait, pray, hope, and like the tiny miracle I know it is, after a few endless seconds she squeezes back.
2
Eva
One line. One da
mn, damning line. I push my high-heeled foot down on the pedal to lift the lid of the bin, wrap the test in toilet paper and throw it away. Then I leave the toilet stall at work and wash my hands, gazing firmly at my reflection—highlighted hair, blue eyes, determined smile that drops as soon as I look away. Yes, this is me.
A woman I know vaguely from another department comes into the bathroom, giving me a friendly smile, and I force my lips upwards again, an act of sheer will. I am fine.
Briskly I dry my hands and turn away from the sink. My heels click on the tile floor, a pleasing sound. I straighten my shoulders, lift my chin. I am fine.
This is the fifth pregnancy test I’ve taken. The fifth time I’ve let myself hope just a little, because my period is a day late and that twinge in my midsection might be a symptom. Or it could just be a menstrual cramp, which invariably it is.
Every cycle I tell myself I won’t take the test early this time. Why waste the money? Even when you buy the cheap strips on Amazon instead of the top-drawer digital tests from CVS, month after month it still adds up. Pregnancy tests are expensive, and negative ones suck. So why put yourself through the pain? Hope followed by disappointment. Much better, much easier, not to hope at all. Except hope, I’ve found, doesn’t work that way, no matter how hard I try.
Back at my desk, I pull my laptop towards me and do my best to immerse myself in work. Try not to think about how maybe I did take the test too early. If I swing by CVS on my way home from work, I could get one of those more expensive tests, the ones that promise they are accurate just ten days after ovulation. Then I’d really know.
See how it goes? Hope. Disappointment. Hope.
I focus on my computer screen, and the latest results of the digital ad campaign we ran for our new line of vegan, ethically-sourced lipsticks. I work for Maemae, a boutique company that specialises in organic, cruelty-free, high-end beauty products, the current ‘crème de la crème’ of the natural beauty world. For this campaign, I decided to focus on how the lipsticks’ ingredients were ethically sourced in challenged areas of the world. People are meant to care about that sort of thing nowadays, but judging from the results of the ad, they don’t. Mara, my boss, isn’t going to be pleased with the lacklustre results.
I’ve been with Maemae almost since they started seven years ago, founded by Rio Adachi, a Hawaiian-Japanese businesswoman with an amazing drive and focus. She’s moved onto an organic sports clothing line in LA, but she comes to our office once a year to check how things are going and give us all a boost, fills the open-plan office with her crackling energy. From the way she talks, you’d think we were all working on the cure for cancer rather than overpriced, if decently made, cosmetics, and for a long time I felt as if we were.
I felt like an intrepid explorer, fearlessly on the forefront of a brave new world. Now, six and a half years later, I can’t help but think I flog makeup online.
I feel a twinge in my belly. Was that a symptom? Or is my period coming? Why am I still hoping? Not that I’d admit that I was, to anyone, not even to my husband, who has taken each month’s disappointment in his stride.
He doesn’t share my urgency for a baby, and why should he? He already has a child, has already experienced the love, the joy, and, sadly, the terrible grief of parenthood. I understand why he’s wary. Anyone in his situation would be. But I tell myself it will be different this time round… for both of us.
Now with my fingers still resting on the keyboard as I gaze unseeingly into the distance, the noise fading away around me, I focus on the present—my work, my marriage, my pregnancy, because one day it’s going to happen. I will see those two pink lines. I will get to be a mother, after all these years, and press a petal-soft kiss against that perfect, round cheek.
A phone rings next to me, startling me out of my thoughts. Maemae—Pure in Hawaiian—has an egalitarian, open plan office, with all of us working and thinking together. All Rio Adachi’s offices are open plan to ‘maximise synergy’—whatever that means—and while I can appreciate the all-white aesthetic, the big windows and streamlined desks, the clean purity of it all, sometimes I crave a little space. A little privacy.
Like right now, when my belly twinges again and I am battling both hope and disappointment, unsure which one would feel better.
“Eva?” Mara sticks her coiffed head out the door of her glass-walled office. As open plan as this place is, she still gets her own space. “A moment?”
I snap my laptop shut and take it into Mara’s office, knowing she’s going to take me to task over the low figures. Except she won’t actually get angry, which I think I’d prefer; she’ll sigh and shake her head and seem disappointed. Kind of like my mother, who has been bewildered by my life choices since I was seventeen.
Inevitably, that’s exactly what happens. Mara acts as if she’s disappointed in our customer base who didn’t respond to the National Geographic-type images of refugees and war sites that we paired with the single, slim-line lipstick. I acknowledged it was a rather jarring fit, but I thought that it would make an impact.
“I think,” Mara pronounces, as if she is making a deep statement about the meaning of life, “People don’t want to combine their politics with their cosmetics.”
I nod sagely even though inwardly I am rolling my eyes. These days, it seems as if people want to combine their politics with everything, and yet they don’t want to be made uncomfortable. God forbid I bring a little reality into their lives. Heaven help us if I try to make this about anything more than makeup.
“We’ll adjust the images and try again,” I say briskly. “I still believe our customers care about our products being ethically sourced. The Beeautiful eyeshadow is one of our more popular products.” Made with sustainable beeswax, it has a creamy finish and a subtle palette of neutral shades.
“Perhaps that’s because it’s a good eyeshadow?” Mara returns, and I shrug my agreement. I’m not the one who decided on ethically-sourced cosmetics. I’m just trying to sell them.
I used to loved working for Maemae. Seven, five, even two years ago I was an ambassador for the company, an evangelist for organic, cruelty-free makeup, for making a difference in the beauty world, for doing something that mattered.