He smiled. “I’ve been doin’ this for thirty-seven years. I think I know what I’m talkin’ about.”
I put my hands over my face, unable to speak. “How far along am I? Can you tell?”
“I’ll have to schedule you for a sonogram before we can diagnose something like that. Do you know when your last menstrual cycle was?”
I tried to think back to when I’d had my last period. I knew it was a couple weeks before my wedding date, because Branch was trying to get some until he found out I was bleeding. Then we got busy with the wedding. “December fourth, maybe. It was somewhere around that time.”
“Just based on that I would say you got pregnant somewhere around the nineteenth to the twenty-fifth of the month maybe a little later. Does that sound about right to you? The normal ovulation cycle is usually around fourteen days after your menstrual cycle starts.”
I began to cry, so uncontrolled that a nurse came in to see what was the matter. The doctor dealt with a couple other patients and came back in with all sorts of paperwork and different options.
I flipped out after looking down at one of them and seeing something on being pro-choice. It went on to say that abortion was a legal option.
I threw the pamphlet at him and said words that I knew I shouldn’t have. By the time that they’d gotten me calmed down enough to walk to the car, Sarah was practically in tears with me. I’d embarrassed her and I was so sorry for it.
None of them could understand the complexity of the situation. They could never understand how important this pregnancy was to me. I couldn’t kill something that belonged to him. I couldn’t ever fathom that as being an option.
She closed the door on the driver’s side and handed me a prescription written out for prenatal vitamins. “You didn’t have to be mean to him. He was just doin’ his job.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not like you were happy about that flyer.”
“I would never have an abortion, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that everyone around feels the same way I do. I respect your decision, no matter what it is.”
I put my hands over my face and started to panic. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Let’s get you home and in bed and we’ll figure it out. I’ve got plenty experience havin’ babies. We’ll get through this. You need to remember that you’re not alone.”
But I was.
Sure, I had friends, but the friend that I needed the most wasn’t around. He had more vested in my pregnancy than any of my new friends could have.
I shook my head and looked at her, unable to still admit what was burning through my mind. “I’m not ready to be a mother. My child won’t have a father.”
“Katy, calm down. It’s bad for the baby. We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
She drove us to the pharmacy and waited for my vitamins to get filled. She also picked up a bag of ginger snaps, in which she swore would settle my stomach.
After helping me get into a nightgown and back in my bed, she left me to rest.
I didn’t get out of that bed for two days, and in that time I’d soaked my sheets at least three times with buckets of tears. Not only was I having a baby, but based on the doctor’s calculations, there could only be one father. Brooks, the man that I shattered and abandoned, had given me more than his heart that night we’d made love. He’d given me something even more fragile.
I was having his baby, and he was never going to find out about it.
Chapter 15
April 2011
I stared into the full-sized mirror, looking at my stomach from the side. Sarah sat on my bed laughing at me. “It says here that in the second trimester you can expect the sickness to go away. It makes sense since you haven’t thrown up in a few days.” She liked reading my baby books, as if she’d never seen them before. Since she’d been the person to give them to me, with half of the pages dog-eared, I knew she was just revisiting her own two pregnancies.
I often wondered if she’d end up pregnant one day because she actually liked it.
“Does it say how fat I should be at four months? Look at my stomach. I don’t know whether it’s gas or the baby.”
She laughed. “It was a good thing you finally had the first sonogram. Can you imagine if it was twins? I know you were freaking out for a while.”
I shot her a dirty look and went back to admiring my little bump. We’d made a pact not to bring up the word twins anymore. That word only brought me memories of a something that I’d never have again. My whole childhood was like I lived it in another life.
I kept running my hands over my belly. It wasn’t like I was worrying about getting fat. I had no one to impress.