Loose Diamonds by Amy Ephron Read Free Book Online Page B

laconic, laid-back nature was really a heroin addiction.
    I think a rite of passage is, certainly, the first time you experience the death of a friend. But when the first person I was in love with died of an overdose six years later, I refused to believe he was dead. For years, I was certain I would see him, just there standing on that street corner; over there across the street in front of that bakery; just there in front of us, walking down to the subway. But every time I got close, he was gone.
    I’m not even sure marriage counts as a rite of passage because who knows if that’s a permanent state.
    But having a child is a rite of passage, a defining moment that puts you in a forever altered state—motherhood and all the responsibilities that come along with it.
    It had been blissful in the beginning—no morning sickness, no tiredness, no mood swings. This was aided by the fact that my first three pregnancy tests had been negative. The gynecologist didn’t believe me when I said that I had never wanted breakfast before in my life, therefore, I was certain I was pregnant. So, by the time it was definitely determined (after I’d run into my sister Delia at a luncheon and she took one look at me, and at the beach ball where my stomach used to be, and pronounced, “Oh my God, you’re pregnant”), and I twisted the doctor’s arm to do a blood test, please, instead of a urine test, I was already three months pregnant. In other words, the whole horrible period of tiredness and morning sickness usually present in the first trimester had not only not appeared but I could not psychosomatically manifest it, since I was already out of the first trimester. Except for the fact that I wanted creamed spinach for breakfast (or at least a spinach and Swiss cheese omelette and could recite every eating establishment in L.A. that had one); chili dogs for lunch (preferably Pink’s); and pancakes at midnight (Dupars is open all night), all of which I indulged in, I was perfectly fine. And so was she.
    Until Labor Day weekend when there was record-breaking heat in Los Angeles, and even though I was seven and a half months or eight and a quarter months pregnant (depending on when you thought I got pregnant, which was difficult to determine), I still didn’t feel the least bit physically impaired . . . Note to anyone else who’s pregnant, beach volleyball is probably not a good thing to play, even for five minutes. But I have a really good serve and it’s really hard for me not to jump in, even though I jumped out after a two-minute stint. It had been so hot that we all felt like Mexican food was a good idea. Whether it was or not, I have no idea, but I woke up at five in the morning and could feel her doing a cartwheel in my stomach and kicking like a ballerina once she was done . . . and my water broke, six or three weeks early, depending on which reading of the ultrasound you believed.
    She was hooked up to more machines than I was. There was something monitoring her heart. I’m sure there was something monitoring mine, but hers was the one that got my attention.
    The next three days spent in the ICU were a tiny preparation for how I would feel years later every time she or one of her siblings would pull out of the driveway in their cars on a Saturday night until they pulled back in, like I was holding my breath.
    Hospital wards always seem a little surreal, as if time has slowed and each moment amplified. The air is hazy as if it’s been infused with residual drugs, or illness, or fear—the sound of a scream behind a curtain, a tragedy on the other side of the room. Through it all, if you are the patient, a self-imposed heightened sense of awareness kicks in, since not paying attention in a hospital ward can be like falling asleep at the wheel. I decided I wasn’t going to sleep until she was born. Not realizing, of course, when I made that decision that I was in for a 72-hour stint.
    On the morning of the second day, a