I calm down, and things slow down in my pelvis, and I get back on the couch and cue up OITNB again. I text Akshay and ask him if he wouldn’t mind going to Target to buy me some new underwear — I own mostly thongs, and thongs are not pad-friendly, so I need briefs. He gets home with my undies, and we research what you’re supposed to eat after significant blood loss. Meat, it seems, and leafy greens. We order pork schnitzel and a spinach salad from the nearby German restaurant.I wake up, go to the bathroom, and see that the bleeding has slowed down significantly. I decide to take it a bit easy and see how I feel, so I sleep for another hour, watch some crappy morning TV, and at about 10:00 decide I’ll just feel shittier if I stay home again. I get myself together and go into work, but when I arrive I again get the feeling that this might not have been the best idea. I can barely make eye contact with anyone — I feel like a shell of a person. It’s just too weird to be there, to try to act like everything’s normal. I make it through the rest of the day, and then head to Naturopathica , where I’d scheduled a massage a few weeks ago that our Ob/Gyn cousin told me it would be safe to have post-miscarriage. The massage therapist starts to touch my back, and I’m suddenly in tears, from relief at feeling cared for and comforted.The bleeding is about the same. I go to work on time and feel slightly more human. I even manage to crack a smile at someone’s joke. I realise tomorrow is the birthday of two editors on my team, and one of them will be on vacation, so I throw together some plans for a last-minute celebration.After lunch, I go to the bathroom and wipe, and a blueberry-sized, odd-looking reddish object appears on the toilet paper. I look closer and realise it’s the foetus — it looks just like those 3D illustrations from the pregnancy-tracking apps that tell you what fruit your baby is the size of this week. I am shell-shocked. I can’t believe I’m seeing this right in front of me. I’d thought this was over. And what the fuck do you do with a foetus that comes out of you in your office bathroom? I burst into silent tears, then try to breathe deeply and think more clearly. My doctor’s office is just downstairs, and they’ll know what to do. I unroll a clean piece of toilet paper, carefully transfer the foetus onto it, wrap it up gently, and put it in my pocket. I exit the stall, wash my hands, and get on the elevator.At the doctor’s office, a kind nurse tells me that I don’t need to do anything with the foetus — they don’t test these things unless you’ve had three in a row or you’re over 35. Then she asks me how I’m staying so calm and positive. “I’m just barely keeping it together, I can assure you,” I say. I go back upstairs and back into the bathroom. I look at the foetus one last time, spend half a second wondering if I should take a photo or something, and flush it. I later learn via Google that this kind of odd-sounding instinct (to hold or touch or photograph the foetus) is extremely normal, which actually makes me feel a little better. I sob silently in the bathroom for a few more minutes — this time, tears of trauma and exhaustion — and then splash water on my face and head back to my desk. I text Akshay to tell him what just happened, and he comes running — his office is maybe a 15-minute walk away, but he’s here in six. We walk through lower Tribeca and the upper Financial District, and I tell him about the whole thing. I’m upset, but it’s hard to sustain, so we also look at cute dogs and make jokes, which also feels weird. I feel better and go back to the office. I’m 15 minutes late for the birthday surprise. I walk in, and my team hands me a card and a little bag of cookies as a congratulations for my recent promotion. I almost cry again, from gratitude.I go in for a follow-up at my Ob/Gyn’s office. We’d scheduled a second ultrasound after the first one didn’t look promising, just in case there were any positive changes. Even though I obviously knew there wouldn’t be, I kept the appointment so we could do an ultrasound to see if there was any tissue left in my uterus — a suggestion from Akshay’s Ob/Gyn cousin. My Ob/Gyn is businesslike but gentle, reminding me that if this pregnancy didn’t work out, it’s because there was likely something very wrong with the foetus, and it wouldn’t have been a healthy baby. The ultrasound is clear — my uterus is completely empty. It’s over. Physically, at least.