After circling every possible scenario, I decide to stay in Texas and follow the current plan. The risks of traveling in my condition—paired with the cost, the logistics, the uncertainty—tip the balance. Dr. Chen assured me that a woman's body is designed to resolve a miscarriage on it's own.
Anh doesn’t question me. He just nods, though I see the tension in his jaw. "Are you sure, em? Your health is the most important thing." (Em chắc chứ? Sức khỏe của em là điều quan trọng nhất.)
I try to mirror his steadiness, to believe in it. "Dr. Chen will monitor us closely. It'll be okay." (Bác sĩ Chen sẽ theo dõi sát sao. Sẽ ổn thôi.)
The next few days pass in fragments—slow, quiet, blurred by discomfort and the weight of waiting. I’m discharged from the hospital and told to stay in bed. Anh becomes my unofficial nurse, tracking every shift in my symptoms. He brings water, changes my sheets, watches me closer than I can stand.
A week passes, and for a while, things seem manageable. But then, one night, I wake with a start—chills racking my body, fever radiating off my skin. The pain in my lower abdomen is sharp, wrong.
"Anh," I whisper, my voice hoarse, "something's wrong. Really wrong." (có gì đó không ổn. Thức sự không ổn)
Anh doesn’t hesitate. Within minutes, we’re on the road to the emergency room. Everything moves quickly—tests, IVs, urgent voices. The doctors diagnose a severe infection. My body did not fully discharge all of the fetal tissue and the retained tissue has become septic. They start antibiotics immediately, but the bacteria spreads faster than my body can fight.
What follows is a blur—bright lights, tight pressure in my chest, voices I can’t place. I drift in and out, sometimes catching glimpses of Anh’s face, sometimes nothing at all.
When I finally wake fully, the room is dim. Quiet. Anh is slumped in the chair beside me, his face pale, eyes rimmed red. "Mai," he says, voice breaking. "I thought I was going to lose you." (Anh đã nghĩ rằng anh sẽ mất em.)
Dr. Chen comes in not long after. She sits carefully at my bedside and explains, gently, what happened. The infection had escalated. My vitals were crashing. As the reality settles in—what almost happened, on top of what we already lost—I feel hollowed out by a mix of grief, disbelief, and quiet fury. I nearly died. Our babies are gone and I nearly died. Somehow, in the middle of all of it, I’m left asking how something so biologically ordinary—so common—can become so catastrophically unsafe.
Anh holds my hand, his grip steady. "We're going to get through this," (Chúng ta sẽ vượt qua điều này.) he promises. "And we're going to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else." (Và đảm bảo rằng điều tương tự sẽ không xảy ra với một ai nữa.)
Physically, I’m healing. Slowly. But I know the harder part is still ahead. Making sense of the fear. The loss. The feeling of betrayal by my own body—and by a system that forced us to wait until it was almost too late.