The art of losing isn't hard to master

Cold gel squirted onto warm white flesh. A fuzzy black and white image on the screen. Anxious and cautious excitement from first time parents at what they thought would be the first of many ob visits.

A mother’s heartbeat, even and strong. But no other. No reassuring, echoing thumpTHUMP thumpTHUMP from the baby inside. So not even a mother’s heartbeat, just a woman’s. (Does a baby that stopped growing after eight weeks still make you a mother? A bundle of cells half an inch long, but complete with fingers, wrists that bend, eyelids, a heart, though a heart that stopped beating.)

Calls were made a few weeks before. Too excited to hold in the news. A baby! The first baby! Ring the bells and fly the flags! More calls had to be made now. Oops. Just kidding. We take it back. No baby will be coming.

The aching impossibility and implausibility of life. How is it that any heart keeps beating? Why would one stop and not another?