Spiderwebs

She sat across my counter and I began the routine.  Something about her hair or her voice was familiar – I’d checked her in before.

This fact is not significant.  Between working in the biggest emergency room in the area and sometimes helping out at one of the most popular urgent care centers, I begin to recognize faces.  Sometimes while out grocery shopping or gassing up, I’ll see a face and scramble for their name while trying to recall if I know them from church or theater or wilderness trips… only to realize they were a patient last week or last month or several times over the last few years.

I checked her in for shortness of breath. She was sitting in a wheelchair, which meant I needed to go all the way around our desks so that I could wristband her.  As I leaned over her, I finally smelled the thick fog of cigarette smoke that hung over her.

Instantly, my mind is drawn away from where I am and what I’m doing.  Though I wheel this woman to the waiting room, get her settled, and explain the next steps to her, I don’t remember doing any of it.

Instead I’m thinking of you.

You were so excited.  Or at least, I thought you were.

We were due two weeks apart, each of us expecting our first, and somehow this forged in us a stronger bond than the one we shared before.  It did for me anyways.  I found myself looking for you when at work, we shared secret and expectant smiles as we treasured our separate joys together.

Yes, we are vastly different people.  We always have been.  I knew this from the start.

But isn’t everyone different, after all?  The ties that draw people together are varying and mysterious, and rarely based on common ground alone.

You got your photos first – I was a little bit jealous, in a good-natured way.  You brought them to me and glowed over the little life that was beginning.  And I glowed with you.

That was what I knew before: you were excited, glowing, and tied to me with an invisible string.

Did you know that quantitatively, spider silk is five times stronger than steel?  It's near in strength to Kevlar. 

But those facts don’t really change the simple truth that a person can blunder into a spider’s web and ruin it without expending any effort at all.

All it takes is a little carelessness.

Now I know more. I know you didn’t slow down your smoking habit at all – in fact for whatever reason, you upped your dose to a pack and a half a day instead of just a pack a day ("just a pack a day?").

You didn’t manage your diabetes either.  I understand that this disease is difficult to control, but lots of people do it.  And you didn’t even try, stating that pregnancy is the time you’re allowed to eat as much as you want whenever you want.  And by doing this, you let your disease run rampant on your body and everything inside you.

And all I can feel is angry.

Because you were excited.

Weren’t you excited?

Why didn’t you try harder?

Why didn’t you try at all?

You showed me pictures, you had prenatal care, even if somehow you had gone your whole life without knowing how dangerous you were acting – they told you then.

I know they told you.

I know you knew.

And I’m angry.

A mutual acquaintance was talking about this whole thing while you weren’t around.  Was she talking to me? I don’t remember, it’s hard to say.  Gossip is just as rampant in the ER as the television shows would have you believe.  Maybe worse.

She said in a low voice that it was just as well.  That of all the people she knew, you were probably the least equipped to have a child.  That you were still trying to determine between three baby-daddy’s and let’s be honest, what kind of a life would that baby have had?

I’m not a violent person.  I’m not an angry person, not usually. 

But I had to walk away then.

Because all I could feel was angry – so very angry at her for saying this, at you, at everything.

And.

            And I am so ashamed of myself.

So ashamed.

Because I don’t know you.  Not really.  I don’t know the first thing about how you’re feeling.

Maybe you recognize that you were careless and threw away a life – and maybe you regret this.

Maybe you’re relieved.

Maybe you actually got an abortion.  Maybe you figured that if everyone is agreeing behind your back that it’s better this way, maybe they’re right.

Maybe you feel guilt or shame.

Maybe you never cared as much as you seemed to.

I’m ashamed of the hardness of my heart, of my unforgiveness.  I’m ashamed of the way I’m assuming so much about the situation. And of all my anger.  There’s a reason God hates anger so much.  

The ambiguous, uncertain, and unknown have never been my forte. I’ve always thrived on black and white – this is anything but that. But we both know that the last thing you need from your Christian friend is judgment and anger, even if I never speak any of it aloud to you or to anyone.

When I saw you last, you smiled at me – a big, normal, happy smile.  We never spoke about the miscarriage, we haven’t spoken since.  I smiled back, but did you feel my hesitation?  As greatly as I feel that you’ve failed, I feel my own failure.

But I don’t know how to be.  I pray for you, which seems smaller than I know it is. We don’t talk anymore though.  I don’t know if you even want to talk, as my little life continues to grow and yours was lost.  I don’t know how to do right by you. Maybe I’ll learn, given time.  Maybe we’ll ease back into old conversations. Maybe we’ll both pretend to forget or somehow find a way to talk about it.

Or, maybe the invisible strings connecting us to others are just as intangible and unpredictable as the ways they are severed.