“Is this a surprise?” Dr. Liddell asked.
“A little,” Maddy said. “I went off the pill in August. And we went on vacation and—we weren’t careful enough.”
“Based on the estimated last menstrual you gave me,” said the doctor, “you’re about seven weeks along.”
“When would you expect me to start showing?”
“With first pregnancies, it can be as long as five or six months. It’s different for every woman. I’d like to do an ultrasound today. We should be able to hear the heartbeat by now.”
Maddy went to the exam room and waited, and then Dr. Liddell came in. As she put the wand on Maddy’s belly, they looked at the screen. There was a little peanut. And she could hear the lub-dub of the heart. “Oh my God,” she said. There was a living being inside of her that she had made with Steven, that had come out of their love. If only they had timed their love a little better.
Afterward Maddy asked what she should do about the vomiting, and Dr. Liddell said, “Eat small meals. Crackers. Ginger helps. Eat as soon as you wake up. Keep some food by your bed. If it continues, call me.”
As Maddy walked out of the office, she told herself to stay positive. The pregnancy would inform the work; it would make her performance better. She could imagine the excitement on Walter’s face when she told him—the vibrancy of an expectant lead. Audiences would see her glow, and costuming would be no problem since it was so early, and the shoot was short.
She called Steven in Rhode Island from the Dorchester. When she told him, he said, “Oh my God. How did this happen?”
“I told you I was off the pill.”
“But we were careful, we’ve used condoms.”
“In Venice, the first night, I think. Do you remember?”
“I was so tired,” he said. “The jet lag.”
“I should have made you use protection,” she said. “It was my responsibility.” She was quiet and then said, “So are you happy?”
“Of course I am. This is what I’ve been wanting. I was ready to start as soon as we got married. We’re going to have a family. Are you happy?”
“I will be when I feel better,” she said. “Right now it seems like everything’s going wrong.” She told him she was worried about the vomiting, had thrown up again as soon as she got back from the doctor.
“It’ll resolve,” he said. “You’ll be fine. You’re young. I’m going to figure out how to get a break so I can see you. I want to look at you, look at your belly.”
Over the next week, the nausea and vomiting resolved somewhat as she sneaked small meals to the set, nibbled crackers, and bought ginger pills. She was certain that was the worst of it and decided not to tell the costume designer or Walter. It was early, anything could happen.
But about a week after her visit to Dr. Liddell, they were shooting a scene where Betty goes to a poetry slam. It was an important scene, just after her discovery of the affair. They had taken over an old Swinging London café and decorated it to look authentic. There were a hundred extras, all in period clothing. They were shooting day for night, and as soon as Maddy entered the room in full makeup and costume, she threw up all over her minidress. That was when she knew it was the end.
Dr. Liddell weighed her, ran a few tests, and went with her to the ER. She had lost weight since the last visit. In the ER, they put her on an electrolyte drip and moved her to a private room.
Dr. Liddell said Maddy would need to be hospitalized for at least a week, possibly more. She was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum: vomiting so severe it was dangerous to the fetus. She would be put on a drip indefinitely and monitored until she began to gain weight.
As soon as the doctor left the room, Maddy began to weep. On the phone, Steven said he would get there as soon as he could. “I don’t want to lose it,” she said.
“You’re not going to. You’re in good hands. I’ll be there soon.”
She called Zack because she couldn’t bear to call Walter herself. He said he would let Walter know. “What about the bonding company?” she asked.
“Let’s take it one step at a time, okay? Let’s just wait to hear what Lloyd’s has to say.”
When Steven arrived at the hospital two days later, she embraced him and broke into tears again. Since her pregnancy had been diagnosed, she had barely been sleeping, not taking any lorazepam for fear it might harm the fetus. For the past year or so, she had been taking it three or four nights a week.
With no respite, her mind had been alternating between worries about the baby, the film, and her inability to sleep, all of which were tied together. If she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t gain weight, and if she couldn’t gain weight, she couldn’t get discharged, and if she couldn’t get discharged, she couldn’t work.
In the hospital that morning, she had complained to Dr. Liddell, who had confirmed that it could cause birth defects, and had sent a doctor to see her, a psychiatrist, a woman, who specialized in reproductive issues. The psychiatrist told her that lorazepam was the safest of all benzodiazepines for pregnancy, and that she could take it for a few weeks along with Zoloft, until the Zoloft started to kick in. Then she could go off the anti-anxiety medication.
“What if I can’t do the movie?” she asked, burying her face in Steven’s shoulder.
“We’ll get it worked out. For now you have to focus on getting rest.”
“But I want to work. I want to be Betty.”
“We have to keep the baby safe,” he said. “Maybe Walter can stop the production until you get better. He’s very committed to you.”
“This has been the strangest couple of days,” she said. “I went from not knowing I was pregnant to knowing to worrying about the baby nonstop.”
“That’s what it means to be a mother,” he said. He said it like it was good, but she wasn’t sure she agreed.
“I wish we’d been more careful in Venice,” she said.
“You can’t blame yourself. There’s no perfect time for a pregnancy.”
“I just wanted to do this film. And now everything’s ruined.”
“Don’t you want to be a mother?”
“I want to be a mother, but I also want to be an actress,” she said.
“You’re going to get better,” he said.
“I’ve been taking pills at night,” she said. She told him she had been relying on them since Husbandry, whenever things were bad between them or she had an early call, and then she told him about the psychiatrist and the antidepressant.
“You can’t take those when you’re pregnant,” he said. “They’re not good for the baby.”
“Are you kidding? Millions of women do and the babies are fine. And I know they’ll work. I did well on them after my father . . .”
“I don’t want my baby to be born with medicine in his body,” Steven said.
My baby. His body. How did he know it was a boy? As far as she knew, it wasn’t either gender yet. “Do you want your pregnant wife to be a basket case?” Maddy said. “There’s a reason they torture people with sleep deprivation. I’m telling you this because it’s your baby, too, but I’m not asking your permission. I have to help myself. And if you care about me, you’ll want me to.”
“I’m going to do some research on it.”
That night, on the lorazepam, she slept. Her relief in the morning outweighed her concerns. She told herself to trust the reproductive psychiatrist about the drugs. She told herself the woman probably treated pregnant patients far more unstable than Maddy.
Steven stayed in London; after a week, she was still in the hospital room, hooked up to an IV. The vomiting had continued, and she was on the drip all day and night.