This excerpt has been adapted from Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir by Aileen Weintraub.
At 18 weeks pregnant I had been walking around New York City with my new husband Chris when felt an unusual pain in my lower belly. We quickly cancelled our plans and headed back upstate to our rickety old farmhouse. An emergency doctor’s appointment revealed that I had three huge fibroids growing in my uterus and I was in danger of delivering prematurely. My doctor sentence me to bed for the next five months. This was not the type of bed rest I’d had in mind for our final pre-baby days.
It wasn’t long before Chris and I began to grow apart from all the stress we were experiencing. So one evening, I decided it was time to rev up the romance. I came up with the perfect plan to seduce my husband.
I slipped on my stiletto bedroom heels with the black feathers. I could no longer take two steps in them, but they looked damn good in bed. When Chris walked through the door with Chinese food, I asked him to break out the Tiffany champagne glasses we had gotten for our wedding and fill them with seltzer and a spritz of juice.
“Nice shoes,” he said. I patted the mattress and gave him an inviting look as he handed me a glass.
“I get so bogged down with work. It’s a relief to come home.” He pulled back the sheets and collapsed next to me.
“I’ve been thinking,” Chris said softly. “When things calm down, we should plan another trip to Costa Rica.”
“If only we could teleport to those hot springs in Arenal.”
“Remember the midnight hike through the jungle, and the turtles?” He snuggled closer.
“Life changes so fast,” I mused.
“That’s how it goes,” he said as he rubbed his head lightly against mine. “Those leatherbacks were massive. And their eggs were like dinosaur eggs.” His voice was getting sleepy.
“And that water bug!” I shuddered, hiding my head in the nape of his neck.
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was a beast.”
After a late-night trek to watch giant leatherback turtles lay their eggs in the sand, we headed back to our boutique hotel in Tamarindo, a seaside town on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Just as we got into bed, I spied a water bug the size of my hand crawling up into the corner of the room. I jumped, my high-pitched squeal frightening even the sleeping howler monkeys in the trees outside.
“That was one of the first times you got to see me in full panic mode.”
“Well, I always had an inkling it was just under the surface.” He nudged me.
I had demanded the water bug’s immediate extermination, but by the time I shoved Chris out of bed and explained that he absolutely must annihilate the creature, it was gone. After that I tried to sleep, making a deal with myself that I would open my eyes one last time for a quick look around. Directly above my head was a spotted green gecko scurrying across the ceiling.
“The gecko pushed me over the edge,” I added.
“I thought it was cute.” Chris slurped his tongue in and out like a lizard, leaning in to lick my face.
Upon seeing the gecko, I’d catapulted out of bed and ran in circles around the small hotel room until I felt something hard crunch beneath my bare foot. It was a crab.
“You know, I’d never flattened a crustacean before,” I said.
“Well, luckily the guy with the pistol showed up.” Chris grabbed my hand and kissed it.
Moments after I had called the front desk about the zoo in our room, a short man knocked on the door. He had a gun and a broom. I hesitated. He didn’t speak English, and I spoke even less Spanish. I explained as best I could that I’d take my chances with the water bug and the gecko.
The hotel owner came by after the guy with the Glock left and offered us the suite next door. We packed our suitcases then stepped outside our hotel room, door locking behind us. At that exact moment the power for the entire hotel shut down. I completely lost any semblance of sanity.
“I thought you were going to divorce me as soon as we got stateside,” I said.
“I wasn’t planning to wait that long.”
It was pitch black, we were in the jungle, we couldn’t find our new room, and I was pretty sure something was slithering up my leg. I spent the rest of the trip with a bottle of DEET on the nightstand.
“I don’t know why we don’t use DEET here. I bet it would take care of our wolf spiders,” I said.
Chris laughed. It was a sound I hadn’t heard in a while, and it felt good. His laughter was contagious, and soon I couldn’t catch my breath. It wasn’t even that funny. We were just looking for an excuse to be happy. He grabbed my face and turned to kiss me full on the mouth as I slipped off my shoes.
