The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“What did they say? Did everything go okay?” my mother excitedly inquires, as she intercepts my mid morning phone call to Lemoyne after only two short rings and gets straight down to business; no ‘bonjour’, no ‘comment ça va?’.

She’s been on cloud nine -despite the warnings of how horrifically wrongs thing may go and well meaning suggestions to not get too attached to the idea of becoming a grandmother for a fifth time- since I’d phoned two weeks ago to both tell my family about the possibility of Em and I having a baby. Aside from Peyton and Tanger and Flower and Vero (who’d been the one that had gotten us into her own OBGYN who apparently was renowned across the United States for dealing with extremely high risk pregnancies and multiples) my parents and siblings are the only people who know about the baby; we’ve been anxious about getting everyone’s hopes up (especially our own) and then having them viciously dashed in the blink of an eye.

I can’t stop dwelling on the possibilities of what could go wrong; I can’t steer my imagination away from conjuring up every terrible, nightmarish scenario that we might encounter. And I’d used my phone call fourteen days ago to purge my soul of some of the fear and angst that’s been eating me alive; succumbing to an emotional breakdown that had been threatening ever since my wife had broken the news to me that we were expecting. My mom’s always been the one that I ca go to with anything to do with my personal life; over the years we’ve discussed everything from a dilemma I’d gotten myself into with two sisters during my final junior A season, to my worry that I’d gotten one of my ‘flavours of the month’ pregnant while playing in Wilkes-Barre, to my eventual disgust over my ‘manwhore’ lifestyle, to how I’d been hopelessly in love with Emma-Leigh yet powerless when it came to do anything about it because she’d been with Sid.

“If it’s meant to be, it’ll be,” my mother had said at the time. “Love always finds a way, Maxime. Always.”

While mom’s always been reliable when it comes to either lending a shoulder to cry on or handing you a verbal or a physical ass kicking, my dad is impossible to deal with when it comes to anything personal. He’s perfectly content to discuss your career -and bitch and moan at you for hours on end and order you to ‘smarten the fuck up’ if he noticed even the smallest mistake during a game-, the weather, his job and his plans for early retirement and anything ‘manly’ like hunting and camping. But the second you attempt to steer him away from his comfort zone by bringing up anything even remotely personal, he’s quick to shut you down. My father is the ultimate ‘man’s man’; he’s rough and rugged and has been busting his ass in the construction business since the day after he’d graduated from high school. As far as he’s concerned, ‘real’ guys don’t talk about their feelings; they deal with their internal shit behind closed doors and grin and bear their problems in silence and they certainly don’t let a woman have any semblance of control within the relationship.

I love my old man to death -he’d worked his fingers to the bone for years to get me into (and keep me in) hockey and compared to Em’s dad, mine’s practically a candidate for father of the year- but he’s completely old school and totally set in his ways. My brothers and I had long ago learned to always go to mom when it came to girl trouble or issues at school; she’s patient and understanding while our father only ridicules us for ‘acting like pussies’ and questions -in his own words- ‘when I blinked and found out my sons had turned into daughters’.

“Well? What did they say?” my mom presses, as I lean back against the wall across from the public washroom located just outside of UPMC’s radiology department.

Our first ultrasound had not only been bittersweet, but somewhat startling and even more anxiety inducing; it had been an incredibly emotional, exciting and phenomenally beautiful experience as the we watched and listened in awe as the technician not only allowed us to hear the heartbeat, but had rattled off various extremities, internal organs and the placenta and umbilical cord. Only to suddenly fall silent half way through -a brief thirty seconds that had felt like an eternity as her eyes narrowed and she leaned closer to the screen to get a better look- and than announce, just as we were beginning to panic and fear the worse, that she was spotting two of everything. We’ve been trying so hard not go get too attached to the life -apparently lives, according to the sonogram- that we’d created together. With all the uncertainty surrounding Em’s internal issues and the nagging fears that something will go wrong, we’ve been avoiding forming any sort of bond with our unborn baby in order to make the grief easier to bear if she does happen to lose it. It seems like an impossible feat now; a no win situation that is far beyond either our grasp or control now considering not only everything we’ve seen and heard, but the realization that there’s two innocent lives caught up in a what could be a traumatic, life altering mess.

Story of my life, I guess. When I fuck up, I do it in epic proportions.

“They said that we’re having a baby,” I reply, and try my best to ignore the black and white ultrasound picture clasped tightly in my other hand. I want to allow myself to be happy; I want to scream from the fucking roof tops that I’m going to be a dad and I want to take out a two page spread in every local newspaper and announce it to the entire city. I want to have a moment where all of the worry and the fear just disappears and I find myself able to finally breathe easy and consider the twins the best things that have ever happened to me. I can’t give myself that moment; I can’t stop worrying long enough to be ecstatic about Em being pregnant and I won’t be able to relax until the doctor tells me that there’s even the slightest hint of light at the end of the tunnel.

But it’s hard to ignore the fact she is pregnant; it’s difficult to not get emotionally attached when you’re wandering the hospital in possession of a photograph proving your children’s existence. And it’s hard to pretend that there’s not two lives growing inside of my wife when she’s experiencing all of the classic symptoms of pregnancy -extreme nausea, fatigue, excessive indigestion- and already displaying the beginnings of a baby belly that seems to have sprouted up over the course of the past fourteen days. I want nothing more than to let myself feel like a daddy; I want to be the quintessential, disgustingly proud papa-to-be that goes around showing off the ultrasound picture to anyone that he comes across. Yet at the same time I’m terrified to fully accept the fact that this is all real; I’m scared to let myself become attached to my babies because I know for a fact I’d never been able to cope if anything happened to them.

“Well I know that…” my mother heaves a sigh of exasperation. “I want to know what they said about the baby. Did you get to go in? Did you get to see? How far along is Emma-Leigh? Did you…?”

“I got to go in,” I confirm, and glancing down at the photograph clasped between my thumb and forefinger, feel my chest tighten at the words ‘E. TALBOT. BABIES A&B’ and today’s date printed on the top right corner. “But they couldn’t say much, mom. The techs aren’t supposed to really tell you anything; they’re just paid to sit there and do the ultrasound and point things out every once in a while. All she really did was show us the placenta and umbilical cord and things like the head and the feet and the spine. It’s not like there’s that much to see right now, you know?”

“But you got to see something,” she points out. “And something is better than nothing. What about the heartbeat? Did you get to hear it? Did you get to…?”

“Mom, you’re getting a little ahead of yourself here. I already told you not to get this excited; I told you not get all worked up like this in case something bad happens. The doctor could tell us that this is a huge mistake; that even trying to get past the first trimester is a waste of time and that we’re better off if…”

“Don’t even say it,” she warns menacingly. “Don’t even think it. Just because it happened once before does not mean it’s going to happen again. A lot of first time pregnancies end in miscarriage. Why are you being so fatalistic? Why…?”

“I’m being realistic,” I correct. “I’m just stating the truth. I told you not to get attached like this. I told you that…”

“Hard not to get attached to your grandchild,” she grumbles. “You’re my baby, Maxime. I don’t care how old you are or how big and tough you think you are; you’re still my baby. And my baby is having a baby of his own. This a big deal to me, you know? An even bigger deal than when your brothers started their families. Because this time last year I’d all but given up hope that you’d rein yourself in; I’d totally abandoned all thought of you ever settling down and getting married and having kids. The fact that you did? Well that’s a miracle enough on its own.”

“I just wish you wouldn’t be so damn…happy…about things,” I mutter. “Why do you have to ask so many questions and get so excited about it when you know that…?”

“Why do you have to be so negative about it?” she challenges. “Why have you already written this baby off? Just because one doctor told you one thing doesn’t mean that the second one is going to give the same diagnosis. It’s a terrible thing that happened to Emma-Leigh the first time around, but sometimes God works in mysterious ways, Maxime. Sometimes He makes things happen because they were never meant to be in the first place. That baby could have been spared from a lifetime of illness or disability or…”

“Mom…come on…that’s just a little extreme, don’t you think? To say that there could have been something wrong with it down the road and that’s why it happened? Do you have some kind of crystal ball that you’re peering into? Do you know this for sure or….?”

“Things happen for a reason,” she insists. “Maybe it happened because things weren’t meant to be between the mother and the father. If they weren’t strong enough as a couple to get through losing a baby, than maybe…”

“I didn’t call you to hear about this,” I irritably interject. “I didn’t call to hear your theories on why Emma-Leigh broke up with Sid or why bad things happen to good people. Do we really need to get into this? Do we really need to talk about him?”

“You need to let it go,” she orders. “You need to just accept what happened in the past and kept it there. What happened before you were ever in the picture has nothing to do with you and…”

“I just called you to tell you about the babies,” I blurt out the plural form of the last word before I can edit myself. I hadn’t planned on telling her about the twins; I had had every intention on keeping our conversation as brief and uncomplicated as possible and keeping the bulk of the information to myself barring the outcome of the appointment with the OB. “I just called you to tell you about the ultrasound and to…”

“Babies?” she picks up on my ‘mistake’ immediately. “What do you mean ‘babies?’”

“Slip of the tongue,” I lamely explain. “Or you heard me wrong.”

“I didn’t hear anything wrong and you didn’t say anything wrong. Babies? As in there’s more than one?”

“More than one,” I confirm, a mixture of sadness and a hint of pride tingeing my voice as I look down at the picture once again. Had this been happening under entirely different circumstances, I already would have been hunting down the nearest photo copy machine and printing up pictures for every person I knew both here and back home. I would have already been halfway to Mellon Arena to announce it to guys and afterwards I would have taped one of the photos to the inside of my locker.

“Well this is wonderful news!” my mother cries excitedly. “Blessings two fold! You realize that you’ll be the first on your father’s side in this generation that has had twins? They ran in the family for the longest time and then when it was time for your dad and all your aunts and uncles to have kids, none of them had multiples. I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened to someone. Kind of ironic that the one who always said he’d never have kids and who we’d long given up hope on when it came to giving us grandbabies would be the one it would happen to! How are you taking the news? I know it’s hard to digest because of everything else that’s happening…”

“I’m okay,” the lie rolls effortlessly off my tongue and my mom respect me and the situation enough to not call me on it.

Had I’d been in the privacy of my own home, I would have been completely open and honest about the insomnia that’s been plaguing me for the past to weeks and the tremendous stress that’s effecting my game to the point where not even Wilkes-Barre would want me dressing for them. I’ve only been back on the ice for a week and a half and Mario’s already asking if maybe I need some extra time off; worried that maybe the surgeon was wrong when he gave me the green light to return to work. It’ll definitely be a massive weight off my shoulders when I can finally come clean about what’s really going on in my life. But right now, with curious eyes following my every move and the occasional disrespectful fan that both asks for an autograph and then doesn’t take no for an answer when I politely inform them it’s neither the time nor the place to be approaching me.

“And Emma-Leigh?” my mother inquires. “How is she doing? Is she eating properly? Getting enough rest? It’s very important that she gets proper foods into her and gets enough sleep. And you’re going to have to go to the store and get her prenatal vitamins and folic acid. While you’re at it, get some cod liver oil too and make sure she takes a tablespoon before every meal and right before she goes to bed. I did that with you and your brothers because your grandmother Talbot did it with all ten of her pregnancies. It supposedly helps with eyesight and bone density and contributes to healthy hair.”

“Mom, think about what you’re saying. All three of us have shitty eyesight; we’ve been wearing glasses or contacts all our lives. Not to mention we were always breaking something when we were kids; legs, arms, noses. And don’t even get me started on the hair thing. No wonder I look like a fucking Sasquatch. I’m like the damn Yeti when I don’t shave for a couple of weeks thanks to your goddamn Cod liver oil.”

“Well you know what they say about men with a lot of body hair? They’re apparently incredibly virile.”

“Mom! Jesus!” I grimace. “I don’t want to be talking about something like that okay? I don’t want to be discussing my virility with you!”

“What’s there to be shy about? I changed your ass when you were a baby, remember? I gave birth to you; all nine pounds of you came out of my…”

“Mon fucking dieu…” I shake my head in dismay. “…this is not the reason that I called you.”

“I know,” she says, and her tone abruptly changes from playful to serious in the blink of an eye. “You’re in my thoughts, Maxime. You and Emma-Leigh and those babies. Everything’s going to work out fine. I just know it. I’m praying for all of you.”

“Thanks mom,” I blink back a flood of threatening tears and clear my throat noisily to clear away a painful lump of emotion and then glance towards the women’s washroom as the door swings over and my wife wanders out; she looks exhausted and her face is red and blotchy and her hair slightly dishevelled.

She’s been barely sleeping and hasn’t had much of an appetite from both incessant worry and unrelenting nausea. Yet regardless of how sick or tired she looks or the fact that she’s wearing no make up and a relatively drab wardrobe of a pair of black leggings, her pink Uggs and a blue, white and yellow dress shirt she’d pulled out of my side of the closet, in my eyes she’s still the most incredibly beautiful woman in the world. And I quickly bid my mother farewell and accept more of her prayers and well wishes before disconnecting the call, turning the phone off entirely and tucking it into the pocket of my hoodie.

“What happened?” I inquire teasingly. “Did you fall in? Couldn’t find a stool to get yourself up onto the toilet?”

Rolling her eyes at my good natured ribbing, she steps between my legs, leans against my chest and reaches up to tug at the drawstrings hanging from the hood on my sweater. It’s on of her least favourite items in my wardrobe -although I have to admit, there’s no much she actually does approve of- a rather hideous white Ed Hardy number with scarlet red roses on the shoulders that always makes her cringe and gag the second she catches sight of it.

“I seriously need to start dressing you,” she declares. “I can’t believe I allow myself to be seen with you when you’re wearing this God awful, shitty creation.”

“I could have easily worn the green, red and yellow striped cardigan,” I chide, and smoothing a hand over the top of her head, gently tug on the elastic holding her pony tail in place and then comb my fingers through her hair as it tumbles free.

“You’d never torture me that badly,” she says, nose wrinkling in sheer disgust.

“I know what kind of torture you like,” I tease, and then gather her hair in both of my hands, slip the elastic around it and create a neat and tidy ponytail. “Are you okay?” I ask, as I skim the pads of my thumbs along the outer edges of her ears before cradling my face in her hands. “I know this is a lot to take, Em. Just one more appointment to go, baby. Just one more.”

“I don’t know if I want to hear what she’s going to say,” she whispers, as tears glitter in her eyes and her chin and lower lip trembles.

“It’ll be okay,” I assure her, and pressing a tender kiss to her lips, wrap both of my arms around her petite, seemingly fragile body and pull her tightly into me. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I promise, as she clings desperately to the front of my sweater.

Barely eleven in the morning and it’s already been the longest day of my life.

******

“Fourteen weeks,” Doctor Abrams announces, as she sits behind her cluttered desk in her equally as cluttered office located in UPMC’s maternal/foetal health clinic, the ultrasound images displayed on the screen of her desk top computer and the technician’s report open in front of her.

She’s clearly a Woodstock reject; flowing, wrinkled peasant skirt that reaches her ankles, heavy wool socks, a pair of Birkenstock sandals and her waist length greying hair flowing over her shoulders and down to the small of her back. Despite her quirky appearance, the woman is apparently brilliant; Flower and Vero can’t seem to stop praising her, she’s written numerous articles for various medical journals and the diplomas from Ivy League schools and a wall full of photos of babies she’s delivered speaks volumes of her experience.

I’m not sure what surprises me more; the way she looks or the number she’s just given us regarding the date of Em’s pregnancy.

“That far?” my wife inquires. “Are you sure?”

“Both uterine size and foetal measurements confirm it,” the doctor replies. “I mean, there’s a possibility I’m off by maybe a week or two, but I’ve been doing this job a long time and I haven’t screwed up once. So that means…” she consults the calendar that serves as the top of her desk. “….you conceived around the thirteenth of November.”

“Weekend we played against the Canadiens,” I observe, and then hold my hands up in surrender when my wife gives me a look that clearly says ‘I told you so’.

“You’re officially out of what would normally be the danger zone,” Doctor Abrams says. “The majority of typical miscarriages occur in the first trimester. So as far as that threat goes, we’ve clearly neutralized it and we can move on to the not so typical aspects of this pregnancy.”

“The OB that examined me and did my D and C in September told me that it would be a modern miracle if I ever conceived,” Em pipes up. “He told me that it was one that I’d even gotten pregnant the first time around.”

“Well then the men you’re picking to father your children certainly do have superhuman sperm,” the OB teases. “Because you managed to conceive twice by two different men.”

I can’t help but shift uncomfortably in my seat at the mere mention of Sid. Even if it isn’t exactly by name, it’s a hard memory to shed totally from my mind.

“He also told me that I’d never carry past the first trimester and that I’d be insane to try,” my wife continues, valiantly holding back tears as she tightly clutches my hand. “He told me that without the operation I’m having in March I’d never have babies. And that even then it would be difficult. Maybe even impossible.”

“Nothing’s ever impossible with the miracles of modern medicine,” Doctor Abrams assures us. “I’ve seen women through pregnancies that have had a lot worse problems than you and I’ll see you through this one. Even if it’s just getting the babies to a gestational age where we can safely induce labour and they’ll be more than capable of surviving outside of the womb. There’s a great thing about this profession called ‘second opinions’. And sometimes second chances come along with them.”

“But what about all the issues she’s got going on?” I speak up. “All of these fibroids and cysts that the doctors were so worried about. That’s what caused the first miscarriage. So if they’re still there, how is she going to be able to carry a baby? Especially two? How….?”

“There’s really only one cyst that we’re terribly worried about,” the older woman explains, and then turns her computer screen around for us to see. “Right here…” she taps a fingernail against the monitor. “…now that’s the right side of your uterus; you can see the ping pong ball sized growth quite clearly. The first baby that you had was growing on the same side; the pressure of the cyst against the foetus caused you to miscarry.”

“It had nothing to do with…” Em struggles to both contain her emotions and search for the right word. “…outside forces? Because I had a fall and the bleeding started right after and…”

“One really had nothing to do with the other,” the doctor says. “A coincidence if anything. The miscarriage would have happened. Regardless of what you had or hadn’t been doing at the time. It was inevitable. It could have taken place at that instant, an hour later, a couple days afterwards. Nothing caused it to happen except for the growth.”

My wife heaves a huge sigh of relief; the last remains of guilt immediately dissipating and the tears finally flowing down her pale cheeks.

“It’s okay…” I release my hold on her hand and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, press a kiss to her temple before drawing her into my side.

“Mothers always blame themselves,” the OB sympathizes. “They always find a way to project guilt onto themselves regardless of how the loss happened. It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart. It just happened.”

“All I’ve been doing for months is blaming myself for it,” Em sniffles, as she rests her head on my shoulder. “For months I’ve been making myself sick over it; I’ve been thinking that everyone blames me and everyone hates me because of it. Especially…” she sighs and uses the back of her hand to wipe at her tears. “…especially the father.”

“Well now you can go back and tell him that it wasn’t your fault,” Doctor Abrams encourages. “Even if he doesn’t blame you or hate you. At least you can tell him and give yourself some closure.”

My wife nods in agreement.

“But the right here and the right now is what we’re most concerned about,” the specialist pushes a box of Kleenex on her desk towards us. “And I’ve got an option. It’s a little risky, but…”

“What kind of option?” Em inquires, as I snag a tissue and dab at the corners of her moist eyes before handing it to her.

“I can perform a laparoscopic procedure to remove the cyst that’s in question. It poses a small risk to the babies, but…”

“What kind of risk?” I ask.

“There’s always the chance of miscarriage. In this case, with this procedure, it’s one in one hundred,”

My stomach immediately clenches in sheer dread.

“It’s a certainty if we don’t do it,” the doctor quickly -and grimly- adds. “If we don’t perform it, foetal growth will be severely restricted and you will lose both babies. No ifs, ands or buts.”

“We’ll have to talk about,” I say. “We’ll have to go home and talk about it and…”

“I want the operation,” Em speaks up. “As soon as possible. I want to have it. I have to have it. I’m not losing these babies that way.”

Doctor Abrams looks to me for consent.

“We have to do it Max,” my wife insists. “We have to. Wouldn’t you rather lose them trying to save them? Wouldn’t you rather it happen because we tried to give them a fighting chance? Or would you rather lose the babies and have it on your conscience for the rest of your life that it happened because we did nothing to help them?”

She doesn’t need to say anything else.

“How soon can we have it done?” I inquire.

“How does…” the OB consults her calendar once more. “…three weeks from today sound?”

Both Emma-Leigh and I nod in approval and a heavy, terrified silence falls on the room as the doctor books the appointment and fetches both paperwork regarding consent and a package of pre-op information.

I just hope to God we know what the hell we’re doing.