WeWriWa - March 27, 2016 - Missi Wanderin' in the Woods

On last week's installment of Weekend Writing Warriors, we were in the throes of the Emergency Room excitement in Vicenza, Italy when the life of an unborn baby hung in the balance. Welcome to this eight-sentence snippet. To get back to the other Weekend Writers, click here!  

A favorite Italian restaurant, Il Fauno's -- wonderful waitstaff, great food, and
an American toilet!! 

After a quick, burning shot to stop the contractions and a tub of progesterone capsules to insert nightly, we were released. These people who didn’t even speak my language had just saved the life of my unborn child. “What did the doctor say before he left,” I asked our nurse as she walked us to the front doors of the hospital.

The view from the villa where we lived

The view from the other side of the villa

Our Texan kitchen in Italy

Her lips tilted into a half-smile. “He said Americans and their modesty . . . do they not understand that there is no modesty in life and death?”

I locked eyes with my husband and blinked back unwelcome tears 

as I remembered my nurse's words. No modesty in life and death. I 

wish I had asked her if dignity followed the same rule.

Our chilly villa where I was on bed rest for four weeks following the ER incident. 

April 14th -- the rebirth date of my debut novel, A Heart on Hold. Cover reveal time!!! 

The Sonogram - March 20, 2016 - Missi Wanderin' in the Woods - WeWriWa

Welcome back for this Weekend Writing Warriors edition of Missi Wanderin' in the Woods. 
Weekend Writing Warriors is where a wonderful group of authors, from prepublished to multipublished, share eight-to-ten sentences from one of their works. We welcome critique, observations, and any other comments from blog readers! Find them here!!
We left off in the Italian Emergency Room, where we just learned Sara's (well, my) baby was still alive -- unlike what the Army doctors said. Adrenaline still surging, let's see what happened next. 

Before the words were out of the nurse's mouth, the doctor had the internal probe inserted and located the source of the problem. He spouted off a slew of musical Italian words and, though I didn’t understand what he said, I understood the soft tones of relief that colored them.

“The placenta is detaching,” she relayed, her eyes still on the screen. A fast little heartbeat 

 pounded in perfect rhythm from the speakers. “See the blood clot there? Your body tries to fix it, to save precious bambino.” 

The doctor rattled off something else and patted my naked thigh before disappearing.

Charlie stammered from the other side of the table. “Did um -- well, our -- did we cause this?”

“No," the nurse smiled, "but no more having the sex, okay?”

Researching some pictures to go along with this excerpt, I was glad to find this article. 

That horrific "birthing center" on the American military base in Vicenza has shuttered its doors. This was the establishment that gave me the advice to "let the miscarriage happen naturally" and that it was "God's will". 

WeWriWa - 3/13/16 - The Italian Hospital

Hello one and all! It's been about six months since we visited the Italian Hospital in Vicenza, Italy. In the last six months, my family and I have moved from Texas to Oklahoma and back to Texas again. The gypsy blood keeps pumping! I was able to wean one of my sons off of his ADHD medication and another, my baby Bitty, was found (after many tests and hospital visits) to have a GLUTEN allergy! Never, ever a dull moment at my house. Let's see what happened in the wood-paneled Italian hospital room where the bleeding and cramping in a young, pregnant Army wife waited, terrified. I remember it like it was yesterday . . .

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Oh dear God . . .  

The doctor barked something in Italian, completely ignoring any shred of modesty I’d retained and any sense of privacy I might have desired.

“He said get on the bed, now,” the nurse translated, grabbing my arm and helping me roughly onto the bed. I held my hand out for the sheet, but she snatched it away. “No time,” she said.

Someone had pulled a tiny sonogram machine into the room. The doctor squirted the cold jelly onto my still-flat belly and dug the probe into my flesh as the nurse manipulated my legs over the candy cane stirrups just as I’d feared. Before I could get embarrassed, a strong, thudding beat pounded out of the speakers apparently attached to this particular machine.

“The baby is alive,” the nurse relayed, relief evident in her strained English. “The doctor must use the internal probe now.”

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I hope you enjoyed this ten-sentence snippet from my forthcoming memoir, Missi Wanderin' in the Woods. If you'd like to switch gears a bit, check out the rest of the weekend writers at the Weekend Writing Warriors blog. I have featured debut author Madeline McCandless and her contemporary western (spicy) romance, Silver Sky at Dawn (Silver Sky Ranch series #1) on my Everlasting Heart blog. Feel free to stop by and show her some love!