I’m coming, sweetheart.
I knew he would come running the second I needed him. That was how he was. Even a research project that would probably earn him a second Nobel Prize wasn’t more important than me or my brothers.
The doors opened behind me. “I’m here. Everything alright?”
I got to my feet and faced him, surprised that my mother could keep a secret like this for so long. But she was the best secret-keeper I knew.
His dark eyes shifted back and forth as he looked into mine, his arms rigid at his sides, his chest still because he didn’t seem to need a breath. “You’re scaring me. Don’t scare me—”
“I’m pregnant.” Dad was impatient because he didn’t understand pauses, even though all he did was make pauses. When it came to me, he needed information as quickly as possible. Otherwise, he jumped to the wrong conclusions, his worst nightmares.
He finally took a breath, like he was actually relieved by that news. “Sweetheart…you scared the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry…but I need help.”
He studied me longer, catching up to my thoughts quickly, knowing exactly what I was afraid of. “I know a really good obstetrician in the city. I’ll get you in today. I’ll also reach out to the hematologist again. We’ll do everything we can, Daisy.”
I gave a nod, my hand absentmindedly moving to my stomach.
Dad stared, like he didn’t know what to say.
“I haven’t told him yet.”
“I assumed.”
“He’s going to be so angry…” I lowered myself into the armchair in front of his desk, feeling weak, scared, not myself at all.
Dad kneeled on the rug in front of me, keeping us at eye level.
“We’re really happy right now, and I just don’t want to ruin that.”
He gave a slight nod in understanding.
“He’s just going to tell me this isn’t going to work, and he’ll be so upset. I didn’t feel pregnant until I took a test, and all of a sudden, I feel this person inside me. And now I understand…why it’s so hard to lose them. I just don’t want to go through that…don’t want to make him go through that again.”
He released a sigh and dropped his gaze.
I stared at my dad, my eyes watering, waiting for him to do something to make me feel better. “Dad…?”
He took another breath. “This is hard for me…because I can’t help you. I’m helpless. My mind, my degrees, my experience…can’t fix this for you.”
I guess a part of me expected to come here and he’d find the solution in an hour, to uncover something that everyone missed, within the snap of his fingers. That was how it’d been my entire life. I’d get stuck, and he’d have the answers.
He finally lifted his head and looked at me again, this time taking my hand in his. “We’ll talk to the doctors and see if there’s anything that can be done. But if not…that doesn’t mean this can’t happen. There could be a million reasons why it didn’t work in the past, but only one reason for it to work this time.”
I nodded, feeling his hand in mine.
“Come on.” He got to his feet. “I’ll take you to the doctor now.”
“You haven’t called—”
“I don’t need to call.”
Like he said, he got me in right away.
The two of us met with Dr. Jamil, someone else my dad had gone to medical school with. They talked like old friends, like no time had passed, and he was eager to assist my father in whatever way he could.
“The reason we’re here today is because my daughter’s partner has a rare blood disorder. He believes it’s the reason he and his previous partner had every pregnancy result in a miscarriage.” My dad sat across from him, speaking to him like they were colleagues trying to help a patient who wasn’t in the room.
But I sat there, my ring on my finger, my heart heavy.
Dad continued. “Is there anything that we can do to ensure that doesn’t happen?”
Dr. Jamil considered it. “This is a complicated case.”
“I know,” Dad said. “I can bring a hematologist into this.”
“So, it’s been confirmed that the reason for the miscarriages is because of the blood disorder?” Dr. Jamil looked at me.
I was on the spot, a deer in the headlights. I was always the doctor, never the patient, and it sucked to be the patient.
Dad looked at me.
“I’m not entirely sure,” I said. “But he did tell me that every time they tried, he had a chromosomal abnormality…so the fetus would never develop.”
Dr. Jamil gave a nod. “So, it might be the blood disorder. There could be another explanation for it, a simple genetic anomaly.”
There was nothing simple about this.
“The best way we can figure out exactly what’s going on is to draw from the fetus and test what we see. We can see the progression of the stages, see everything that’s going on, but that has risks. Every time we do that, it could cause serious harm to the fetus…and a possible miscarriage.”