August 21, 1999

Walking into the hospital was a happy time. My wife was pregnant and I was going to be a father. Nothing could ruin such a feeling. The hospital was full; many expecting mothers paced back and forth packing their burdens of joy. I couldn’t wait until my wife showed, couldn’t wait until I could touch her belly and feel the life moving within her.

A nurse escorted her to a scale, weighed her in at 48 kg, and then took her blood pressure. Everything was normal. We sat back down to await our rendezvous with the doctor. I too started pacing with the other mothers as if I were expecting. I didn’t know at the time, but I felt something wonderful, or tragic, but I just couldn’t sit still.

"Kim Jeong Hwa?" a nurse called out my wife’s name. She jumped up and I quickly tagged along behind her into the doctor’s office.

We sat down in front of a young, healthy looking doctor with a serious case of five o’clock shadow. Pictures of climbing expeditions lined his wall, with thin statues of dancing ballerinas posing along the top of his computer. My first thought was that this guy was nothing but a player. He had no right to be a gynecologist. After asking a few basic questions his nurse led my wife into the back room. He sat back and looked at me through lazy eyes.

"Do you speak Korean?" he asked.

"A little," I said sheepishly. I hated talking to people, especially when I couldn’t speak Korean that well. I averted my attention back to the pictures on the wall. He continued to drill me on the basic conversation all must ask upon first meeting when the nurse interrupted us calling me into the back.

I followed the doctor into the room where my wife lay with her dressed pulled up exposing her belly. A towel covered any other questionable parts. The nurse had just finished applying some kind of jelly after which the doctor took a scanning machine and stroked it over her stomach.

"Look at the screen," he said. He spoke Korean in a simple slow manner to accommodate me, as if speaking to a child.

We both looked at the ultrasound appearing on the monitor and I felt a wave of pride as I caught the first sight of our baby. It was nothing more than a small, blurry blotch, but it was ours.

"I don’t seem to detect any heart rate," the doctor said. He then looked down at my wife. He looked back at the screen. "There could be a problem." He put the ultrasound away and the nurse pulled her dress back down and then removed the towel.

We sat back down in his office. Bringing the printed picture of our baby he sat down in front of us with the same lazy look in his eyes.

"You are eight weeks along," he said consulting a dial that showed the weeks of pregnancy according to the last menstruation. "But the ultrasound shows the baby only at five weeks." He looked up at us as if expecting a reaction. We both were silent and in shock. He continued. "There should be signs of development, but I find none. It is too early to tell but I need you to come back a week later for a comparison test. If it is truly still born then we will have to operate."

"What could have caused such a thing?" my wife asked. The doctor looked back down at the dial and fiddled with it. He shook his head. He too didn’t know.

"I took some medicine for my nose before I knew I was pregnant," my wife said, sitting strait in her chair expecting some kind of explanation. "Could that have caused it?" The doctor shook his head. "The medicine is fine," he said.

"We just finished a 32 hour trip overseas," she continued. "Could that have hurt the baby?"

Again the doctor shook his head. "That should have no negative effects on the fetus," he said. "You will have to come back next week before I have any answers for you."

He looked up at me. His lazy eyes probed mine. I was silent. I wasn’t sure I understood everything he said correctly. "Make an appointment," he went on, "and I’ll see you again next week. Good luck."

We stood up and he escorted us to the door.

"What did he say?" I asked my wife as we walked out of the hospital, hoping what I understood and the way I felt had been mistaken. "Is anything wrong?"

My wife was silent all the way to the car. A light mist of rain drizzled down on us. We both just ignored it. It had been raining all day; we just never seemed to notice it until now. Slamming the doors to the car shut, I looked over at her. She looked strait ahead at nothing with a blank look in her eyes. I reached for the ignition to start the car.

"Don’t start it," she said above a whisper. "Don’t go yet. Let’s just sit."

I sat back. The sound of rain splashing against the car added to the loneliness. Rivulets of rain streamed down the windshield. The day fit the mood. I looked over at her. She looked up at me, her almond eyes slick with tears. I raced through my brain for something to say or do to comfort her. I moved forward to hug her. I pulled her tight to me.

"Everything will be all right," I said. I didn’t want her to cry. I wanted her to know that all was safe and that next week would prove that our baby was alive.

I started to cry. I clenched my eyes shut to keep the tears back, but they pressed through and welled up in the corner of my eye. My wife ran her fingers through my hair. Tears dripped onto her brown leather purse on her lap. Dark, wet splotches formed on the leather.

"Don’t cry," she whispered. "Oh, please don’t cry."

"I’m not crying," I shuddered. "It’s just the rain."

She kissed the back of my head, as sobs wracked my body. Walking into the hospital was the happiest time, walking out was the saddest.

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