"Not for three weeks," That almost got her a smile.
"Well, are you sure?"
"I've been feeling sick all week," Samara looked down at her hands, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. "And I'm late. And-and-" Tears choked the words from her throat, and Amy immediately wrapped her arms her. She felt the strong sisterly comfort that she'd only ever experienced from her. Amy was like the older sibling Alison neglected to be her whole life.
"What are we going to do about it?" The jump to 'we' was automatic. Of course it was we, she had told Amy.
"We can't tell him!"
Amy pulled away. "Samara, we have to tell Bjorn."
"We can't."
"It's his," Amy insisted, before she squinted leaning away skeptically. "Unless... it's not?"
"No, Merlin, no," Samara shook her head, and Amy relaxed. "It's definitely Bjorn's."
"Then he needs to know." She comfortingly rubbed her arm.
"Not yet."
Amy snorted, poking her in the side. "I think eventually, if it turns out positive, you will have to."
"I'm going to tell him," she winced. "Just, not today."
The pregnancy test was positive. Samara had no idea where she was supposed to go from here. The thought that this might happen hadn’t even crossed her mind once. She felt stupid just thinking about it. She was top of her class in her Masters program for crying out loud! How had she not thought to use birth control? Come to think of it, how had Bjorn just gone along with her. They must both have been drunker than she’d thought. But it was spilled milk now and she needed to get on top of the situation as fast as possible.
Amy had left brochures scattered about for abortion clinics. She thought she was being subtle but she wasn’t. Samara had tried to read one of the brochures but she’d been overcome by nausea as soon as she began reading about terminating her pregnancy. She didn’t know if it was the morning sickness or just her baby protesting but she hadn’t been able to finish reading. She didn’t want to think about aborting the child.
When she closed her eyes, she imagined telling Bjorn she was pregnant and his eyes lighting up with delight. He would hold her close and tell her how happy he was about the baby and that they should get married right away.
Samara snorted; she was too much of a realist to actually fall for her own fantasies. At least she’d thought she was. Still, she went to Professor Zhang’s office, knocking tentatively in spite of the open door policy.
“Yes?” the professor’s crisp voice rang out from the other side of the door. Samara pushed it open with a tentative smile and stepped in .
“Er, professor? Good morning.” She began.
Her mentor frowned, “What’s the matter Samara? Why do you look so…”
“Grey? Pale? Ill?” Samara finished for her.
“All of those. Is something the matter?”
For a moment Samara was tempted to just…spill all of it. But she wasn’t sure what the university policy was on sleeping with guest lecturers let alone allowing them to get you pregnant so she refrained.
“Uh…I’m fine. I was wondering if I could possibly get the address for Bjorn Fredriksen?”
Professor Zhang just stared at her as if awaiting further explanation. Samara sighed, crossed her fingers and drew on her years of hustling to sell this story.
“We got to speaking about his father and he promised to send me some mementos that might help me in my research. It's been five weeks since he left however and I haven’t heard anything. I thought I might just remind him…”
The professor frowned, “Now Samara you aren’t going to be a nuisance to him are you?”
“No! Of course not. I just need….I mean we were talking and I was supposed to take his email so I could remind him; I just forgot. I just want to send a polite reminder that’s all.”
Professor Zhang sighed, giving her a look, “I’m only doing this because I trust you and I know how passionate you are about the subject matter. And I know you know better than to send nuisance emails.”
Samara sighed with relief, “Thank you ma’am.”
Professor Zhang tapped a few keys on her laptop then looked up at Samara.
“I’ve sent it to your inbox,” she said. Samara nodded, faked a smile and left the office. All that was left now was to notify Bjorn.
Inga Sorenson opened her boss’ mail for the day, as she did every day, in order to divide them into ‘Personal’, ‘Business’ and ‘Spam’. She would then categorize each mail in the former two categories according to its urgency while deleting the latter. When her eyes fell on an email sent from a UCLA.edu address, she hesitated whether to place it in spam or business because the addresser seemed to be an individual rather than an office and negotiations about the artifact were already completed. She decided to open it and read it so as to have a better idea where it belonged.