“I woke up twenty weeks pregnant, despite the fact that my husband had been unable to conceive for eight years.” That realization hit me before I could even recall the details of my own name.
I opened my eyes to the clinical white walls of Portland Memorial Hospital, my throat feeling like sandpaper while IV marks scarred my arms. The lead physician, Dr. Sarah Jennings, explained that I had survived a horrific pileup on the I-5 highway involving a semi-truck.
She told me I had been drifting in a deep coma for nearly two months while the world moved on without me. My husband, Trevor, was sitting by the window with a heavy beard and eyes that looked hollowed out by grief.
Seeing him there made me want to sob with relief, but then a strange sensation stirred within my body. It was a delicate flutter deep inside my belly that I recognized instantly from my previous pregnancies.
I looked down to see a distinct curve beneath the hospital sheet that was not caused by any medication or swelling. “I am pregnant,” I whispered while looking at Trevor in total confusion.
Trevor stood up so abruptly that his chair nearly tipped over onto the cold tile floor. “Please do not say that, Madeline,” he replied with a voice that sounded like it was breaking.
“I felt it move, Trevor, and I know exactly what that feeling means,” I said as I pressed my hand against my stomach. The doctor called for calm but her expression turned grave as she ordered an immediate ultrasound to investigate my claim.
A nurse brought in the portable machine and spread the cold gel over my skin before sliding the transducer across my abdomen. A small, living baby appeared on the black and white screen, moving its tiny hands in the rhythmic way of a developing life.
The nurse stopped smiling and looked at the measurements with a sense of growing dread. “You are approximately twenty weeks along,” she said in a quiet voice that barely carried across the room.
Trevor took a staggering step back toward the wall as if he had been physically struck by the news. “That is simply impossible,” he muttered while shaking his head in disbelief.
