If she could, she would, too. Except she couldn’t.
Because she was the mommy.
Puke. Hurl. Blargh.
Pregnant. She was pregnant. Mommy. Someone would call her Mommy soon. At twenty-nine, she felt old enough. Inside, she felt seventeen sometimes, though. Could she really do this? How would the whole single mother thing work? Planner-brain kicked in. Look over maternity leave plan. Learn about onsite child care center. Call home and let them know she was—
Pregnant by two men? Oh, that would go over soooo well with her devout Catholic mom. And if Dad were still alive, he’d have loved to have played with his grandchild. So many details, and she—
Blargh.
Hot and sweaty, her face inches from discolored toilet water, her stomach wouldn’t settle down.
Tap tap tap. “Laura? You need anything?”
“A time machine,” she answered weakly. “I have something to undo.”
A soft laugh. “I’ll leave some fresh water for you to drink right here. I hate to say this, but I have to get to work.” Pause. “Call me later?”
“Sure.” Pressing her cheek against the underside of the toilet bowl brought conflicting relief. Who prayed to the porcelain gods without having gotten drunk the night before? Pregnancy debased her already.
“I’ll come back after my shift and bring some ginger beer and stuff to help your stomach.” Click click click went Josie’s shoes, then the soft sound of the front door closing. Alone. When did life get so complicated? The cold toilet felt like a mother’s loving touch, which made Laura laugh at how this was all unfolding.
It’s always complicated.
And she was utterly alone.
A hand fluttered to her belly.
No.
Not quite.
Chapter Six
Three months later
“I can’t believe you still haven’t told them!” Josie hissed from the corner of her mouth as she sat next to Laura in the waiting room of the nurse-midwife’s office. Half the pregnant women seemed to be called to the midwife side, and half to the obstetrician side. Josie was so out of place there, like a toothpick in a sea of Teletubbies.
Laura compared her growing belly to those she saw. At nineteen weeks, she was almost halfway there. That first trip to the doctor three months ago had yielded a complete shocker: she was seven weeks along. One missed period and bam! She was nearly one-sixth through the pregnancy without knowing it. All the prenatal vitamins and pregnancy yoga and morning sickness remedies helped her to get here, but Josie was harping on the one, pesky little detail she couldn’t deny her way out of for much longer.
The past twelve weeks had been a blur, and now she was about to meet her baby via ultrasound, go home with a picture of an alien baby that people would pretend was beautiful, and here she sat after drinking a liter of fluid, her panties moist from a bladder that gave up control right around the time her shoes stopped fitting. A light breeze could make her pee at this point. A sneeze would unleash a tsunami.
“Am I as big as her?” she whispered quietly, surreptitiously pointing to a woman who looked ready to drop any day. The shirt she wore looked like something a tent rental company made for her. She violated the laws of physics when she stood.
“Close,” Josie guessed. Her face reddened and she tsked. “Quit changing the subject! When are you telling Dylan and Mike?”
“Soon. After this,” she replied, pointing vaguely toward the midwife’s office. Today she would have her first ultrasound and, she hoped, learn the baby’s sex. She squirmed horribly, and not from Josie’s nagging. Her bladder was rapidly in need of its own, separate bladder. A kegel would help, but damn if she could isolate and squeeze anything down there right now.
“You’ve been putting it off for three months, Laura! And you always say ’soon’ but it’s never ’soon.’”
“It’s complicated.” Laura threw her a glare to stop a truck. If she said it...
“So we’re inducing next week, when I hit thirty-eight weeks,” she heard the enormously pregnant woman say. A creeping dread seeped through her skin. Or was it a hot flash? She honestly couldn’t tell the difference any more. Holy shit! That woman was twice as far along as Laura? How could they be close to—
“Laura Michaels?” A medical assistant appeared, chart in hand. The drill was simple for her normal appointments; go on in to the bathroom, pee, dip the sticks in, and if anything came back irregular, report it to the midwife. Then sit in the waiting area again until called.
For an ultrasound, though, she went back through the maze of medical equipment and desks to a tiny room with an exam table crammed in. The platform seemed unusually high. Climb? Dude, she could barely wipe herself these days, the stretch a, well...stretch. Climb?