Going to the hospital.

At the hospital, we were first met by a care coordinator. After deftly answering a barrage of questions that would really have been better suited for the doctors we were to see soon, she laughed and asked me what my profession was, as if it wasn't clear from the trial I was preparing … against myself.

Between her brisk responses to my queries, she was kind and empathetic and thus brought back the tears I thought I’d buried under my need for information, explanations, and analyses. “Although you’re not losing a child, you are losing the dreams, the stories you told yourself, the films you saw in your head.” I couldn't speak. Gilles and I couldn't look at each other.

She took us to the doctors, who took very detailed ultrasounds and found nothing in the sac. Like the previous doctor, they could not definitively confirm that it was in the uterus. My beta hCG was tested again and we found that it had continued to rise since the day before, although, still, not at the rate it should.

Putting together all the factors, they thought there was a chance, the slightest of chances, that perhaps there was something that might be still living and might live in the future despite what could or could not be seen on the ultrasound, despite the spotting that had recently started, despite the low beta hCG levels, despite the lack of clarity as to the sac's location, despite all the other negative signs. Accordingly, we were asked to return to the hospital two days later, on Saturday, for more tests.

After a very bad few days believing the pregnancy to be completely non-viable, we were expecting to be able to put end to the ordeal as soon as possible to move into the future as soon as possible – but removing the ‘products of conception’ in the face of even the smallest of chances those products were actually alive was impossible.

Until the discussion with the hospital doctors on Thursday, we hadn't had any hope, as the message we’d taken away from the first doctor on Monday was that there couldn't be. But news like this, that there is just the slightest of chances that what we dreamed of could come true, bred hope in us: hope that the beta hCG levels would rise, hope that the sac would grow, hope that the sound of a beating heart would implausibly and incredibly fill the examination room at the next visit.

But hope can’t grow a baby.