22. Lauren
22
LAUREN
David never returned any of my calls all weekend. I wasn't the sort to get super bent out of shape in situations like this, but it did disappoint me a little. I had hoped to have dinner with him one night and discuss the potential pregnancy I was staring at. I hadn't taken a test, though I did purchase one. I thought maybe if we were together, I could have him beside me when we got the results. I thought it might make him feel like he was part of the process. After all, he'd been there at conception.
But I stalked into work Monday morning with a bit of anxiety. I had put a call in to a banker on Saturday before the close of business, and now I was awaiting a call back. I wouldn't have the money to get Jason into the rehab place without the down payment, and after bailing him out and paying his thirty dollars per day fee for the ankle monitor, I was still a few thousand shy of the deposit. I couldn't tell him that or he'd flip out, not only that I wanted to send him to rehab but that it was affecting me financially again. I really didn't need him breaking his house arrest to deal drugs for the cash.
"Dr. Newhouse," Dr. Cooper said, smiling as I walked into the diagnostics lab. David sat in his office at his desk alone, and the interns were working on paperwork.
"Good morning," I mumbled, plopping my bag, tablet, and cup of coffee onto the table next to them. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out and glanced at the time. I had a few minutes before our day was supposed to start, so I went ahead and answered it, but I stood and walked back through the lab doors into the hallway. "Hello?"
"Hello, is this Dr. Lauren Newhouse?"
"Yes… go ahead." I knew by the tone of voice that this wasn't a personal call, and I naturally assumed it was the banker. If it was a police officer again, I would have an aneurysm.
"Dr. Newhouse, my name is Gary Leach from Providential Bank. You called me on Saturday seeking a personal loan." I could already tell by the tone of his voice that this wasn't going to go the way I wanted.
Over the past week with my morning sickness, the worry about how a pregnancy would affect my relationship with David and our jobs, and the stress of Jason being on house arrest, I had hardly slept or rested. I needed something to go my way, and soon. I was fast reaching my breaking point.
"Yes, I did. Do you have any news for me?" I watched as David stood from his desk and pushed through the glass doors into the diagnostics lab. He looked up at me, and I held up a finger indicating I needed a minute, grimacing. His expression was placid, no emotion. It felt like a hand gripping my chest and squeezing so I couldn’t breathe. Was he being distant now? And why?
"Dr. Newhouse, I see that you've got a steady income and consistent work history, but unfortunately, with your lack of credit history, I don't think we can offer you a loan without a cosigner. Do you have someone you could speak with who would cosign for you?"
Every ounce of hope I'd had stored up for this call came crashing down around me and sucked the air out of my chest. No loan from the bank without a cosigner meant no loan at all. I couldn't ask anyone to cosign for this because no one knew about it. I doubted Amber would do it. We were close, but not that close. And David had offered to help me, but I didn't want to get him in on a loan. Maybe that was just me being too scared that it wouldn't work out between us and then there would be this awkward arrangement.
"I'm sorry to give you this disappointing news…" The banker was still there waiting for me to speak, but I was staring at David who'd already begun the day of work, likely a differential on a patient waiting for us downstairs.
"Yes, I’m here. I'm sorry. I'll, uh, have to get back to you on this later this week. Is that okay?" I asked, but I knew I wouldn't follow up. I hated how our financial system worked. In order to build credit, someone had to take a chance on me, but no one would take that chance because I had no credit. It was a catch twenty-two.
"Certainly. I'll wait to hear from you. Speak soon…" The banker hung up, and I locked my phone and slid it into my lab coat pocket.
When I opened the door and walked back into the room, the team was getting orders from David.
"So the bleeding ulcer needs to be found and cauterized, but if the patient is septic from a perforation, we'll need to do surgery. Dr. Baine, run a full blood panel again. We need to know what's going on there." The interns began collecting their things and preparing to head downstairs to do the tests and procedures, and I stood next to the table waiting for my orders.
"Dr. Park, what about Jim Yates, the seizure patient? Are we following up with that today?" Dr. Holt's question struck me as odd. As far as I knew, there was no other patient. I was confused.
"Yes, you can follow up, but do it discreetly." David eyed me and said, "Go on. Get to work." With a flick of the wrist, the interns were gone and I was left wondering what I was supposed to do. Now I had two reasons to want to speak with him privately, but he walked into his office as if he had nothing to say to me. I followed behind him, though I felt awkward doing it for the first time in weeks.
"Uh, Dr. Park…" David sat at his desk and looked up at me.
"Yes?" he said, his tone cold and cutting. There was a gulf between us, fixed and chilling. I had no idea how to cross it, so I started with work.
"A seizure patient?" I asked, stepping closer to his desk. No one had told me about anything like that.
"Not important. We had a case over the weekend. Go ahead downstairs and run the blood panel with Dr. Baine." He looked back down at his tablet now on the desk in front of him. It frustrated me.
"You had a case this weekend and you didn't call me?" I asked, now hurt.
"Is there something I can help you with, Dr. Newhouse?" I noticed the tired circles under his eyes and felt bad for being frustrated with him. He obviously had a long weekend, and he probably let me have the time off to deal with Jason. I cried on Friday last week during work, and he probably thought it was something to do with that.
"No, sorry," I said, backing away. "I'll help with the CBC." I headed down to help the other interns, but my heart was heavy now. I needed to ask David about the possibility of getting an advance on my salary now, but it clearly wasn’t the time.
The rest of the day was much of the same, David being grumpy and cold. He took a call around three and left for the rest of the day, and without a lot to do, we all knocked off early. The gang went to a local sushi shop and asked me to join them, but my heart wasn't in it. I had started all of this by begging David to go public. He said to keep things professional, and in my emotional fog and disappointment, I had gone too far. Now he was taking it a step further and I was left wondering why I couldn't just be happy. Why I had to push.
At home, I locked myself away in the bathroom with the little white pregnancy test stick. I already knew what it would say. My period was far too late to be just stress-induced delay. And my boobs were so tender, not to mention vomiting at least once a day, sometimes more if I forgot to eat. I was pregnant, and this little plastic stick was just the proof, not the confirmation.
I peed on it and replaced the cap, then cleaned myself up and washed my hands. As I sat on the edge of the bathtub waiting for the results to process, I closed my eyes and pictured myself and David reading bedtime stories to our little one, tucking them in, taking them to the park. It brought tears to my eyes. It was such a happy picture, one I'd grown so attached to that I thought I would be heartbroken if this test said I was wrong and I wasn't pregnant.
But it also brought tears to my eyes because David was acting so differently now. Like he was upset with me for doing exactly what he'd told me to do. Or maybe it was because I was so emotionally worked up from hormone shifts and worry over Jason that I hadn't been very open with him during our evening calls. I was certain that if something else were going on, he'd have told me. We were really close, close enough to tell each other almost everything.
Almost…
I'd kept my suspicion about the pregnancy quiet, so maybe he was keeping something quiet too, but I doubted it. David was an open book. He'd introduced me to his daughter early on. He had no secrets from me. I knew he wanted to have more children, and I hoped he wanted them with me, but maybe now wasn't the right time. Or maybe I wasn't the right person. Maybe I had him all wrong. But that romantic night under the stars before we got interrupted, and that weekend away at the conference, led me to believe something different.
I picked up the test and looked at it. It must have processed instantly. The dark pink lines streaking across the readout window told me what Amber suspected and I already knew. I was pregnant.
Despite the past two weeks of worry, despite the stress of the day and the uncertainty of my relationship with David, I felt a smile creeping across my lips. I was having his baby and nothing would stop that, and even if things went pear-shaped for us and we ended up having a very awkward and difficult working relationship, I would have this little one to love and be loved by.
Tears welled up, of happiness for the new journey in life I was about to embark on, and of fear for what it would look like if David didn't want to take the journey with me. I could do it alone, but that didn't mean I wanted to. And likely, it would mean moving to a cheaper city where rent wasn’t three grand a month. That would at least relieve the pressure between me and David, but I hoped it didn't come to that. I hoped he would see how much he meant to me and like the other couples who'd survived this, how much I was willing to fight for us. How much I wanted him to fight for us too.
"You done in there? I gotta pee…" Jason's words startled me, and I dropped the test, then scrambled to pick everything up and hide it beneath some wadded-up toilet paper in the bin. I slipped out to let him in and hid the fact that I'd been crying.
Now to tell him. If I got the chance. If it wasn’t too late. If fate hadn't already ordained us to break up. I was scared, but I was going to be a real mom, not a guardian of a teenager. I had to do what I had to do, so I put on my brave face.
It wasn't going to be easy.