The Products of Conception

A Photo of a Pathology Sample, taken in the Vancouver Police Museum

It was a year of peeing on sticks, of spreadsheets tracking hormone levels, of scheduled sex in confined spaces.  It was a year we spent contemplating the viscosity of her cervical mucous, like some diviner pouring over a fractured ox scapula.

And when we finally did have a positive test we measured ourselves — we both knew how these things can go.  We didn’t paint the room or buy clothes or pick up the crib that was collecting dust in a basement, waiting for us. 

And we didn’t think about names.

We didn’t want to give it a name; we didn’t want to get too attached to it during those early days, when the risk of miscarriage is so high.  We spoke in clinical terms.  Morula, blastocyst, zygote.  Finally, though, we did end up giving it a name.  Without intention, against our best judgement.  With repetition the word “zygote” became “Ziggy”.  And so there is was: Ziggy the zygote.

It was obvious to me how this would all end already at the ultrasound.  I could see it in the way the small talk dissipated as the technician studied the screen, in the way her eyes narrowed, in the way she excused herself from the room.

Incompatible with life.

This is the language they use.  And I couldn’t decide if it sounded clinical or euphemistic or poetic.  To this day, I still can’t.

The procedure was booked within a week.  It was a quick recovery after some fifteen minutes of discomfort that hardly seemed worthy of the cultural baggage.

We went to the pub.  I cooked something iron-rich—lentils and spinach, I think.  And we buried that ultrasound scan in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.  A shadowy image of a strange-looking thing, misshapen and headless, buried beneath receipts and bills and expired coupons.