Ordinary

There's a smudge on the grainy black and white screen. It shifts in and out of focus as we feel our way around it.

"It's shaped like a cat," I say. The doctor laughs and agrees as she traces its outlines. She tells me how big it is, which half familiar-looking and which part new. One part that's hung around harmlessly, the other inching out fingers for food.

She isn't as talkative as she usually is. I feel more pain than usual from this now-routine procedure. We both fall silent as the sound waves bounce around within, pinging off organs as she marks them off for size, weight, shape. We don't know any more than this, for now: This is not usual. How unusual, she's not sure.

We won't do anything just yet, she says, but wait and watch. Nothing's wrong enough to warrant more invasive measures. But it's not quite fine either. For now, we pick the lesser of two evils.

For a while we talk of what might happen with surgery, and what comes next. She mentions the risks and it's my turn to probe. It is easier to be in journalist mode here, ask what might happen. What does it look like, when a shell designed to bear life rips apart in the process? At what stage is it a problem, how much blood spills over, does it harm mother or child and when?

I want to know how much blood a "2-5% risk" can spill. How far it can seep into my life, how permanently it can scar.

We've had these conversations before, she and I. She's one of the brightest doctors I know, and we talk, often, of her PhD and mine, of my science writing and her conferences. So it's normal for her to begin to draw charts and tell me what happens to such children. Until she stops herself short: This isn't a side of things you should be thinking about right now. Why were you reading about second-trimester miscarriages anyway? For work, I answer. I was reading feature stories and personal essays as I try to write my own assignments.

But we cut this short, and agree we will wait and watch. Another month, perhaps two. These things die on their own sometimes. They choke when they can't feed, then twist and blacken on their stalks until they're small enough to lurk once more.

I'm not good with odds, though. I'm the kid who reacted to fluorescent dye. The girl who was sick for two days after tooth surgery. The woman who over-reacted to the less harmless drug, that fewer than 5% of women react to. So I really would like to know what 2-5% means for me and any future child, even if it is a small risk.

A month, perhaps two, which I will fill with proving, over and over again, that I am extraordinary. I will attend networking events, meet deadlines through sleepless nights, establish my fine command of journalism and science. Over and over again, in thousands of words and smiles, I will proclaim I am not their usual candidate. I'm one of the top candidates they'll have, as my program director (and tireless mentor) will remind me and them. I take edits seriously, and can bring abstract concepts to life with vivid language, he says.

The growth is shaped like a small black cat, its ears perked high, mouth puckered as it sips blood.

All my life, I wanted to be in that top 5%. I tried to excel, ride the rare wave that's always ahead of the curve, stand out from the rest. Except now, when I want nothing more than to be ordinary. Just another woman who has a child, like people have always had them. For this grainy, black and white smudge to dissolve into snipped off tissue and clot, as such things are supposed to do. Be gone the next time we look, little cat.


(This isn't cause for worry. I'm not having a child, or seriously ill, or even in physical pain. It's just something in my life that's been on my mind, and in my body, for a while. I'm figuring out how to deal with it, as I usually am when I write here.)