I walked into the room after Emily. I don't think there was a single mouth in the room that wasn't hanging open at the sight of Emily's face. She turned and faced the room and signed. An interpreter was provided for this class so she vocalized what Emily said. "I fell and hit my face." It wasn't exactly a lie just not the whole truth. She had fallen but only after Jack had slammed his hand into her face. I am sure the interpreter knew that Emily was not being completely truthful. I am also sure that the deaf members of the class who know sign and know body language like they know back of their hand realized that she was not saying all but for the rest of the class it would and did suffice.
It was probably a good thing that Emily isn't oral that day… Since speaking might have been difficult at best the way her cheek swelled up.
The class itself that day was boring. It was primarily going over the syllabus, discussing those dratted videos we seemed to always have to watch. I don't think others hated those videos like I did. The problem with them was not their content. I'm sure the information given is good. The problem lies in the fact that 90% of the darn things are not in Closed Caption. And at the point I was in learning ASL, at that time, I wasn't able to interpret what was being said via the signs. I always had to find someone who could hear to tell me the cultural notes so I could write up my lab reports. You'd have thought that a school that was teaching sign language run by deaf people would have videos that everyone could understand and follow. Nope. This was one of my greatest frustrations following the darn closed-door problem.
I read through the syllabus faster than Emily was discussing it and was looking around the room, observing people before the first hour was up. As a deaf person growing up in the hearing world I learned to entertain myself. I did this since I more than likely couldn't follow the spoken conversation around me. What I did with my time was sit and watch people. I would try and place myself in their shoes and think what they might be feeling. My shrink, I think, said this is called a "Seeing Heart". This happens when you are able to understand emphatically what others might be feeling in a given situation. Given that I had spent many hours of my life just observing people and their body language I had become very empathetic. Sometimes I have done this to the extent that I have forgotten myself and immersed myself into the life of the other person. Basically I sometimes can feel too much.
It is this ability to sometimes see beyond what is being said that is helping to write this story. An example of what I am talking about would be, one time I had been talking to Emily. It was one of our normal conversations. There shouldn't have been any language cues that there was anything wrong. She didn't tell me there was anything wrong. But as the day wore on a nagging feeling came over me. I couldn't tell you what it was or why I felt it but I knew that something was wrong with Emily. When I got up my nerve to ask her if anything was the matter (I had just started trying to sign to her and was a bit shy of her yet.) she informed me she had a cold. Did she sneeze, blow her nose or cough prior to telling me this? No, she didn't but somehow I knew that there was something wrong. That is why her passing out was really a shock to me because I hadn't sensed anything coming. But as I told you that day I had been trying to think how to convert my thoughts on my Grandmother's farm into sign and my eyes where shut. If they had been open and I hadn't been concentrating so intently on the signs I'd have probably caught the cues. So observing the world around me was what I was doing while the interpreter droned on… I couldn't hear her anyway.
I got tired of watching my classmates quickly. Most of them weren't giving cues about their thoughts besides boredom. I believe that some were trying to figure out Emily's face but they were hiding their stares somewhat efficiently. Me, on the other hand, I didn't try to mask my gaze. As I have said before eye contact means a lot to the Deaf so I fixed my eyes on Emily and only when she herself looked down at the syllabus or turned to write on the eraser board did I shift my gaze away. It was because of this intense visual input that I became aware that Emily was in pain.
The more I watched her the more I came to realize it wasn't just her face that was bothering her. She would grimace at making some of the grammatical expression that are done on the face in sign language, the cues for distance are done with an open mouth for far, lips closed tightly for medium distance and well what could be considered if you are a dog a snarling, teeth bared smile for distances really close. Distance is just one of many cues found on the face in ASL and she was having a real rough time with some of them. But it was when she wasn't using her face for grammar that concerned me. It was the drawing of her shoulders forward, the rubbing of her hand on her pant leg as if trying to rub away a spot. It was the tilting of her head down when she was not signing and the short quick breathes that she seemed to be taking that caught my eye. I remember noticing a few of my classmates, the deaf ones like me exchanging looks. They also knew something was wrong besides her face.
Colleges especially small colleges that schedule classes that last over 2 hours a day require a ten-minute break every hour. So if the class last from 2 until 4, technically there would be a ten-minute break from 2:50-3:00 PM. Unfortunately, we'd already had our 1st break when these tattletale signs of trouble had manifested. Jane had come in and talked to Emily and the interpreter during the first break. She told them she was going home. Home is an easily recognizable sign and one I understood. Of course it helped that she had her briefcase that was bigger than she is with her to give me a clue.
With Jane gone it meant that when Emily started showing signs of distress that she was in fact the only faculty in the building. Sally had left earlier while I was playing on the computer. There was no one for Emily to turn to. No one to take over the class so she was fighting through pain and losing the battle with every minute that passed.
As time went on the visual cues grew stronger. Even the class members who weren't attuned to body language began to notice that there was something very wrong. The whispers and note passing increased in volume as the pain that Emily appeared to be enduring also increased in its intensity. My gazed shifted from the clock at the back of the room to Emily every few minutes. I think I willed time to move faster. Not for my sake but for hers. The more I watched the more I was certain about what was happening and I hoped feverishly that I was wrong.
Finally the 2nd hour passed for the class. When Emily had run out of things that she had to discuss she called the class to a close. No one approached her to ask questions. Everyone quickly dispersed from the room. It was as if they thought that by leaving as quickly as they could that she too would be able to leave faster and possibly get the help and relief she needed. Since the class was entirely female and 99.9% younger than 20 years of age, I think most of them chalked the pain Emily was having up to menstrual cramps and no one in their right mind was going to bring up that sort of thing in a conversation.
I stayed behind. But there was a problem with that, Nancy the interpreter also recognized Emily being in pain and stayed as well. As far as Nancy was concerned I was interference. She glared at me for even daring to approach Emily then. I didn't know what to say. Nancy, as far as I knew, didn't know Emily was pregnant. She didn't know that Emily's former lover had knocked her flying. She didn't know that I was scared to death that Emily was having a miscarriage.
I approached Emily anyway daring Nancy to say something. She did, "Can't you talk to her some other time. I don't think now is a good time."
"I'm sorry Nancy, now is the perfect time," I replied as Nancy scowled at me.
"Can't you see she's not feeling well?" Nancy asked moving to come between Emily and me. Emily was trying to gather up the class material but her hands were shaking. She'd not looked directly at me since she started having pain. I think she feared what my eyes would possibly tell her. She'd grown accustom to the idea of having the baby. Grown to accept that what she had thought would never happen to her, could never happen to her was in fact happening. From the moment she'd seen a beating heart that was all it took to make her want the baby and she was now afraid that it was being taken from her. She knew my eyes would say what she didn't want them to say so she refused to look at me.
"Yes, I can and I want to help her. Ask her if you want if it's okay that I stay." I replied not wanting to tell her what I knew.
Nancy did just that and got told promptly that it was fine and that she was not needed. Ouch… I think Nancy was surprised at Emily's response more so than I was at least I knew why she was moody as all get out. Nancy looked downright hurt and I would have been too. Nancy had probably been interpreting for Emily for 5 maybe 6 years so the fact that Emily had replied in such away as she did had to be really a shock to Nancy. "Nancy it's not your fault. I know what is going on. I wish I could tell you and make things better but it's not my place," I said feeling sorry for Nancy. Then I signed to Emily, "She needs to be told."
Emily looked at me for the first time. She was petrified. Her eyes said much more than any words could ever say or describe. "I need…" I didn't let her finish before I said, "Yes you do but a few minutes more won't change anything."
"You tell her. I need to go to the restroom."
Nancy watched our exchange and shook her head. "Okay tell me what?" she asked after Emily departed the room.
"Let's sit." I said before I continued. "Emily's eleven weeks pregnant. She fell and maybe is in the midst of a miscarriage."
"She's what?" Nancy exclaimed. "Oh Jesus… How do you know? Why do you know?"
"That's a long story. The easiest answer is she passed out while we were at lunch together a couple weeks back and I found out then."
Emily came back into the room white as a sheet. I knew what that meant. Nancy did too. "Do you want me to go with you?" Nancy asked.
"No," Emily replied. Nancy said no more and left the room.
I had a lot of emotional problems about knowing how to help Emily. I really didn't feel like I knew her. Yes, we'd talked for hours on end over the course of the last school year but she really never told me her wants and desires or how she felt about life in general. Until the pregnancy happened and I accidentally stumbled upon the knowledge there of she'd never once had confided in me anything of a personal nature. I have long since come to realize that I had considered Emily my friend but I was by no means hers. Knowing this and knowing that she trusted me more than she'd ever trusted me before; left me very scared. I didn't know what to say to help her. I had no clue what would be the right thing for her. I wasn't sure if the deaf world and the hearing world viewed most of life and life experiences the same way. I was scared that anything I said would be wrong in the deaf world. I had to hope and pray that besides just basic moralistic differences about deafness verses hearing that the thoughts and ideas of both worlds were comparable. I also had to hope that when I discussed my knowledge of life and what she was going through that it wasn't some sort of taboo subject not discussed even among friends in the deaf world.
Part of the reason I worried about what could be said and couldn't be said came from a conversation I had with Emily regarding secrets…long before I knew she had a major one. She explained euphemisms to me and gave examples such as slips showing and then the one for menstruation that I discussed earlier. She said that deaf women don't discuss that openly they use the euphemism instead. Whereas in the hearing world among friends talking about the darn Aunt Flo or period can occur in almost any conversation, well at least among women friends. But then there is also a conflict because I had gone to a chat for deaf people on occasion before I started taking ASL and they had talked about anything and everything in that chat with perfect strangers, male and female mix. Because of the conflict of not knowing what is the norm in the deaf world, I felt confused and guarded in some of what I said.
It is with these fears and thoughts in my head that I approached her. "I'm sorry." I signed.
"What do I do now?" she asked with tears in her eyes. I'd never seen her cry.
"Contact your doctor. Tell him what happen. Tell him you are having pain and bleeding. He will want you to come in for an ultrasound and possibly blood work. It's just a matter of when he can get you in. After you call him he will probably tell you to go home, stay off your feet as much as possible and wait. This doesn't have to mean it's the end. A lot of babies are born after episodes like this," I responded touching her shoulder.
"How do you know I'm bleeding?" she asked quizzically
"You came back from the restroom looking snow white and scared."
"I'll go call my doctor. Will you wait?"
"Do you think you should call Jane?" I asked knowing Jane might want to know what was going on.
"Two of Jane's kids are sick. I don't want to bother her."
"Okay, go make your call. I'll wait."
I remember after she left the room again, I said a prayer. I hated feeling as if there was no hope but I knew the statistics for older women too well. All I knew to do was pray for a miracle.