Spelling It Like It Is (13 page)

Months later, while I was in the hospital, Dean dropped Hank off at the Dempseys’ too. When he told me, he said, “I did it for him. It wasn’t fair for him to live here.” I hate to admit it, but I was kind of relieved to see Hank go. He wasn’t the pig of my dreams. All he cared about was food. If you didn’t have food he wasn’t interested. In the yard he’d charge us to see if we had food. I was scared of my own pig.

Westlake Village was an answer, but in my heart of hearts I knew from the start that it wasn’t the end of my wanderlust. It was a stopgap.

Complications

C
raft Wars
was filming in downtown L.A., over an hour away from our new place. My call time was six in the morning, so we left my house at five. We frequently worked until nine
P.M
., and I spent most of the day on my feet, in high heels, pregnant. Sometimes, after a particularly long or grueling day, the production company would put me up in the Ritz-Carlton downtown so I wouldn’t have to drive all the way back home just to turn around and head straight back. (NB: It wasn’t a fancy Ritz—just one of those business-y ones that might as well be a Marriott. There might have been a pillow menu, but that was the only Ritz of it.) Halfway through, when they found out I was pregnant, they gave me a chair to sit down in between takes.

One night, at the end of April, I stayed at the Ritz after a super-long day. My makeup artist, Brandy, kept me company. The next morning, I woke up, went to the bathroom, and sat down to pee. It was like a horror movie. The toilet filled with blood. I had the same terror response as last time: my heart dropped into my toes, and my fingers went numb. I yelled for Brandy: “I’m bleeding!”

Ever since the incident on the massage table at eight weeks pregnant, everything had been fine. Now I asked Brandy, “Do you think I’m having a miscarriage? Is the baby going to be okay?” Brandy is always very nurturing and maternal, but all she could say was, “It’s a lot of blood. I honestly don’t know.”

I took a photo of the blood and sent it to Dr. J. Then I got into bed and put a pillow under my feet. While I waited to hear from him, I kept my hand on my wootle, as if I could stop the blood or hold in the baby.

There were two obligations I had that day. The first was a photo shoot for
Craft Wars
. Then there were these little webisodes called
What Would Tori Do?
that we were filming to promote the show. Whatever craft the contestants were racing to do on the show, I would make my version. Both commitments had crews on hand—with both combined, nearly fifty people were probably standing by. I had to find out right away if I could work today or whether they should call it an insurance day, which meant, with a doctor’s excuse, everything would be canceled and covered by the production’s insurance company.

When Dr. J called back, he was about to go into surgery. He said, “A bleed is a bleed, it doesn’t make a difference if you lie down or go to work today.”

I said, “Okay, but I just want to be clear. It’s a fifteen-hour day, and I’ll spend most of it standing in high heels.” He said that if I felt more comfortable I could meet with a doctor in his office, Dr. Mandel, before I did.

I decided to go ahead with the photo shoot that morning. I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Mandel for afterward and told the
Craft Wars
people that if the doctor said it was okay, I’d be back to film the webisode afterward.

For the photo shoot I wore a turquoise tulle prom dress with a voluminous skirt. My necklace was a crafty confection of colored pencils. We took a bunch of shots of me in various hammy poses: holding a bedazzled glue gun as if I were in a Western; throwing confetti up in the air. I plastered a showman smile on my face, all the while thinking,
Oh my God, am I having a miscarriage?
As soon as we were done, I got in the car and went straight to the doctor.

Dean met me at the doctor’s office. Dr. Mandel diagnosed me on the spot with placenta previa, which explained the bleeding. My placenta had formed over my cervix. Trust me, it’s not ideal. Then he told me that I wasn’t going back to work—he wanted me on bed rest for the next four days. The tear in the placenta would heal itself if I stayed off my feet.

I didn’t know exactly what bed rest was, but it sounded nice. Dr. Mandel explained that he wanted me to spend most of the next few days lying down. I could move from the bed to the couch and turn on the TV, but I should stay flat on my back while I watched. Frankly, it was a relief. I’d gone from doing a very physical movie straight to
Craft Wars
. I’d done an HSN segment in the middle of
Craft Wars
, then gone to New York to promote my party-planning book, then back to
Craft Wars
. All while pregnant. My body was done. But I would never have canceled work. It was nice to have a doctor tell me that I had no choice.

Dropping the webisodes wasn’t a disaster, but I still had to shoot the final episode of
Craft Wars
the next day. I hoped we could do it the next week, but the show came back to me saying that they had all the contestants, the judges, and the sets, and the show had to wrap on time in order to make room for another show that was taping in the same space. They ended up taping the final episode with one of the on-set experts, a guy named Steve. I never went back—I never even got to say good-bye to the crew. I’d left my unfinished Mod Podge doily tray on set. I’m sure it’s gathering dust in some TLC prop room.

When the show aired, nobody knew about my illness. The viewers saw me hosting every week, and then the final week I just wasn’t there. There was no explanation or fanfare for the finale. They aired it back-to-back with another episode. It was a sad whimper of an ending.

THAT WEEKEND BROOKE Burke filled in for me at a My Little Pony kids’ event. She tweeted, “hi @torianddean I hope you feel better. In the spirit of friendship, I was happy to b there 4 u today & we all missed you!”

Brooke and I both have busy mommy lives and usually catch up with each other via personal e-mail. When we moved to Malibu, where her family lived, we thought we’d have playdates but it never happened. It was weird to me that she had expressed her sympathy through Twitter. She couldn’t possibly have known what I was really going through. Or maybe people are starting to think that Twitter is a normal way to reach out. It just made me kind of sad.

I was supposed to take it easy at home all weekend, but on Sunday Dean was out working all day. I was home with the housekeeper and the three kids. All day I was picking up Hattie, moving her from the bouncy chair, to the high chair, to the floor. To top it off, I was determined to be the first person to take Hattie swimming in the pool. I shouldn’t have done it. It was too much. By that night I had cramps and a little bleeding, and on Monday morning I had a big bleed, my third. I went to the hospital, Cedars. The high-risk doctor who saw me there thought that I might have placenta accreta, an even more serious complication. They decided to keep an eye on me for a week.

While I was at Cedars under observation, an amazing thing happened. One of my best friends, Amy, had her baby. I was already at the hospital waiting for her! Our mutual doctor, Dr. J, wheeled me to Amy’s room, where she was in labor.

Amy’s family is big and very close, and they were all there for the big event: her parents, her two brothers, her sister-in-law, her teenage niece, her in-laws, and another friend. Mehran and I squeezed into her room. When Amy’s family saw me in my wheelchair, everyone gasped.

Amy said, “She’s fine. Don’t ask a million questions.” That was Amy, managing people even while in labor.

Everyone (except me) sat on the floor with pillows and blankets, telling stories and taking turns napping. A nurse brought in a box of Popsicles. We didn’t sing “Kumbaya,” but the idea came up. Part of me was like,
Oh my God, I would never want this.
But at the same time I thought,
Wow, it’s so nice that they all want to be here.
In the early-morning hours we were all punch-drunk, trying to stay awake. Amy’s father was telling bad jokes, trying to keep spirits up, and someone was busting out old vacation photos. At some point I said, “Hey, guys. Want to see a funny shit my son took?” I passed around my phone, on which I had a picture of said shit. Liam had pooped a cock and balls. Nobody was shocked or horrified. What a great family. I sat there, in my wheelchair, all night long. When Amy was ready to push, everyone filed into the waiting room and I went back to my room.

A COUPLE HOURS later Amy’s sister-in-law came into my room looking worried.

“Amy’s not in her delivery room anymore. We went to check on her, but she’s just gone. We don’t know where she is.” The family was freaking out.

I figured she’d been taken away for a Cesarean. As a C-section veteran, I asked them to wheel me down the hall to reassure her family. I didn’t want the people in the waiting area to see me, so we were all huddled at the end of a long hallway. Some of Amy’s family members were crying. I was telling them that C-sections are actually really safe. Then we looked up. Dr. J, in his scrubs, was coming down the hall. It was like a slo-mo scene from
Grey’s Anatomy
. He gave us a double thumbs-up, and everyone started cheering and hugging.

I got to go into the recovery room to visit with Amy and meet the baby for the first time. Her name was Anika. And I didn’t have to drive all the way from Westlake Village to see her. It was perfect timing.

The next night, around three in the morning, I startled awake. Someone was standing next to me. It was Amy, in her robe, crying.

“Something’s happened,” she said. “Anika had a seizure.”

I sat straight up.

“She was in the nursery. I didn’t see it,” she said. Anika recovered, but she would have to stay in the hospital for weeks.

They released me on a Monday. Amy was staying for one more day, so on my way out a cute and fabulous male nurse, Adam, wheeled me to her room. Amy’s whole family was in the room, and I said good-bye to all of them.

Adam wheeled me to the parking lot, where Dean was waiting with the car. As we pulled away, I started unexpectedly weeping. I’d had no idea how sad I would be to leave Amy’s family. For the three days they’d been around the hospital, I felt like they were my family too. They’d taken turns coming to my room, bringing me food. Even Amy’s mother-in-law, whom I didn’t know well, would come and sit with me for an hour at a time. She cared about me. She wanted to keep me occupied. I loved her family for that. And now it was ending. I cried all the way home.

Later, I told Amy how sad I’d been. “I really have to reconnect with your family. When Liam and Stella were babies we used to spend Christmases together. I miss them. I was sad to leave them.”

Amy said, “You can have them! You can see them whenever you want. I don’t know why you’d want to, but you can.”

I WAS FINE for that week in the hospital, but the fact was that I was having more and more bleeds. This time, Cedars only agreed to release me on the condition that I move ten to fifteen minutes from the hospital. Dr. Silverman, the high-risk doctor who was overseeing my case, kept referring to our house in Westlake Village as Woodland Hills. He’d say, “You really can’t live as far away as Woodland Hills.” Woodland Hills, which he saw as impossibly far, was half an hour closer than our house.

I was thinking,
Fuck, I wish I lived that close
.

They said I had to be near the hospital for the rest of the pregnancy. As soon as we got home I started trolling the web, looking for a temporary place to live. We were moving . . . again. My mother agreed to help us out with the rent, but we needn’t have bothered. I would be back in the hospital in less than a week.

Dean and Liam were having a boys’ night, sleeping together in Liam’s room, and Stella and I were having a girls’ night in the master bedroom. This was normal for us—we have very fluid sleeping arrangements. The kids are always in and out of our bedroom.

Stella was already asleep, but I stayed up late that night. The next day, May 7, was Dean’s and my sixth anniversary. I wanted to write a love poem for Dean, and I decided to tackle it at midnight. My first draft was in the notes section of my iPhone—I’d have to write it out the next morning—and I was really going for it, rhyming and everything.

The next morning I woke at six
A.M
. in a pool of blood. When I stood up blood ran down my legs. I’d never seen so much blood. It was like a massacre had occurred. I got myself to the toilet, hoping it would stop, but it didn’t. I thought I was going to bleed to death. Dean was all the way at the other end of the house. There was no way he’d hear me if I called. I needed to wake up Stella for help. I took a moment to think about this. Stella was only almost four. I didn’t want her to see me in this condition—and there was blood all over the bathroom—but what else could I do? I didn’t feel like I had a choice.

“Stella!” I called out. “Stella!”

“Yes, Mommy?” I heard. She came to the doorway, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

There was a chance this wouldn’t work. Children are so stoned sometimes. Stella could get the munchies or decide to do a jigsaw puzzle en route to Liam’s room. On the other hand, I didn’t want to terrify her. “Go get Daddy and tell him I’m bleeding,” I said. I tried to convey urgency, but a confident, maternal urgency, if there is such a thing.

My girl did her job. When Dean came in and saw the bloody scene, he was calm as always.

“Should I take a picture for Dr. J?” I said.

“No,” he said. “We’re going to head to the hospital.” He helped clean me up and got me dressed. By the time we got in the car, the bleeding seemed to have stopped. We called Dr. J, who said that if it started again we would have to get off the freeway and go to the closest hospital, but we made it to Cedars.

Then, after I’d been in my room for less than an hour, I started bleeding again. Dr. J was still en route, so a resident was taking care of me. He told the nurses to prep the operating room for me. If the bleeding didn’t stop they would remove the fetus and the placenta so I didn’t lose too much blood and die. I was beside myself with fear and sadness.