The Fireman's Baby(13)

It was one evening when she was sitting reading another magazine and eating a pot of noodles that her mind began to wander back to that incredible evening, as it seemed so often to do nowadays. She began to figure out how long it had been since she'd had her one-night stand with the captain. It must have been six weeks or so. It wasn't long after that she had first started to feel unwell.

A sudden clarity struck Laura and she nearly dropped her noodles. She set them down on the coffee table and placed an anxious hand on her stomach. When was the last time she'd had her period? It couldn't be... Could it? She and Daniel hadn't been careful. Laura had stopped taking the pill after her last awful first date. Before then, she had been taking the pill since she was eighteen and had never before had to think about contraception before having sex, but she couldn't be pregnant, could she?

“Oh God,” Laura moaned, running her hands over her hair in a panic and running over the dates in her mind once again. Her friend Emily had gotten pregnant last year, and she found out after she had started feeling sick and bloated, but Emily had been trying with her partner for months. Laura had just been after one night of no-strings attached sex and now there was the daunting and terrible realization that perhaps she hadn't taken enough care to ensure the “no-strings” part.

“Don't panic,” she told herself out loud. “You haven't even taken a test yet.”

Laura quickly got herself ready and picked up her purse, heading down the street to the pharmacy in town. All the while she was talking to herself in her head, wondering what on earth she would do if she was pregnant with the fireman's baby.

She had always been a sensible girl. Sophie had always made fun of her for always thinking so far ahead and being so organized. Laura had been starting her own business when Sophie was still living off of Mom and Dad and going to concerts every weekend. Out of all their friends, Laura had always been the one to have had her head screwed on right. Her life had a very clear plan: 1) Start a business; 2) Buy a home; and 3) Get married.

Having kids was somewhere way down the line on her schedule, if she ever had kids at all. It wasn’t in her plan to be a mother now, not when she was so unprepared for it and certainly not alone.

Laura walked into the pharmacy like a fugitive on the run and kept her head down as she headed to the aisle where the pregnancy tests were waiting for her like a sentence for a crime. She felt like everyone was watching her; like everyone would know that she was possibly pregnant with the baby of a fireman she had slept with one night six weeks ago.

She ran her eyes over all the different types of test: Clear Blue, First Response, Answer... Every type was claiming to be the most accurate, or able to detect pregnancy the earliest. Laura was in such a panic that she needed to be sure. She scooped six different tests into her basket and then picked up some bubble bath as though that would disguise the fact that she had a basket full of pregnancy tests. Her skin flushed red as the cashier scanned them, one by one and gave her the total. Laura hastily paid and ran out of the shop, jogging slightly towards her house in desperation to know if this was all just some terrible mistake.

Once at home, she rushed to the bathroom and began the process of using each and every one of the tests in turn and lining them up side by side on the bathroom counter and then began the endless two minute wait which seemed to last a lifetime. One by one, the line of pregnancy tests began to reveal their results and with each line that appeared Laura felt herself become more and more terrified. Positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive.

Laura sat down on the edge of the bath, gripping the edges of the ceramic tightly and taking a few deep breaths. This was unbelievable. For a few minutes she tried to convince herself that this could still be nothing more than a mistake and it was something else making all those pregnancy tests show positive. She would have to book a doctor's appointment and confirm it.

Deep down, Laura knew that it would make no difference. All the signs were there. She had started to be sick in the mornings, her flat stomach had started to round out just slightly, she hadn't had her period this month, and six tests don't lie. Tearfully, she crawled into the bathtub and tried to figure out what she was going to do.

She would go to the doctor's the next day and if her pregnancy was confirmed, then she would have no choice but to seek out the captain, because there was no way that she was doing this on her own.

The young woman felt so small. She had given everything for one night of supreme pleasure, but all her attempts to be sophisticated, mature, and wild had come down to this and now she simply felt scared. What would Daniel say?