13. Thalassa
THALASSA
I used to think snow was just cold rain that stuck around too long.
Wrong. Snow is powdered starlight, and skiing is basically surfing the Milky Way on two Popsicle sticks.
Sure, my turns look like baby-giraffe pirouettes at the moment, but I stay upright eighty percent of the time, and that’s a B-minus in my book.
The mountain roars under my rental boots—wind whistling, board edges scraping, distant whoops from show-offs launching.
Above, the sky is so blue it’s practically neon.
I grin inside my fleece neck gaiter, cheeks burning with that good, sun-kissed sting.
This beats PTSD beach flashbacks by a thousand light-years.
I imagine Dad—now with the bionic arm Dr. Hoskins fitted last week—trying a bunny slope. The idea makes me giggle. Mom would film every wobble. Dad would brag to the prosthetist about durability testing.
It’s weird timing. The foundation my parents work for is legendary for taking care of their long-term employees, so why wait four years to surprise him with a new arm? Maybe budget cycles are slow when you’re preserving endangered species.
Whatever. Dad’s jazzed. I’m jazzed. Life is peak.
Hell, Mom didn’t even mind when I told her I was going to Colorado instead of family Christmas.
“You take everything too seriously, T. Glad you’re going to have some fun.
” I suspect Dad’s new arm put her in a good mood, because that was not what I expected out of her.
“Last run, then hot chocolate!” Arabella yells, carving past in gold goggles. She looks like a snow angel sponsored by Vogue. I give a thumbs-up, push off, and angle into a gentle blue trail called Sunset Boulevard.
Cue mental playlist—some pop song about golden hours. I find a rhythm—plant pole, slide, edge, whoosh. My grin stretches so wide that cold air squeaks between my teeth. I?—
Impact.
A human missile—teen boy in a rental helmet plastered with Red Bull stickers—slams my right side. My ski pops off with a thunk. I spin, snow spray blinding. The world tilts. Something hard smacks the back of my head even through the helmet. Stars explode, not the pretty kind.
I flop sideways, half-buried. Head ringing. The boy tumbles ahead, swears, scrambles upright, and skis away, yelling, “Sorry!” like that fixes physics.
Everything inside me goes cartoon static. I breathe slow—check my limbs. Left leg aches like it argued with a sledgehammer. The helmet strap digs into my chin. My vision wobbles.
Rescue volunteers appear. Red jackets, patient voices. They load me onto a sled stretcher—“just a precaution, sweetheart”—and whoosh me downhill. Trees blur as nausea flickers. My inner voice alternates between don’t puke and Dad is gonna lose it.
Breckenridge Medical Center smells like bleach, coffee, and overworked forced-air heating. Nurses wheel me through double doors into imaging. X-ray tech jokes about me lighting up like a glow stick. I laugh so I won’t cry.
Shockingly, my shin bone is intact, yay.
The concussion is mild, but my bruises are gnarly.
The doctor starts explaining what to watch for.
Vomiting, dizziness, blah blah, and a nurse slips an elastic cuff on my arm for vitals.
She checks a tablet, frowns, and checks me. “HCG positive,” she mutters.
The doctor stops mid-speech. “Ah—Ms. Howard, this kind of athletics can be detrimental to a fetus, so watch for any spotting or cramping, as well.”
I bark a laugh that tastes like metal. “Um, fetus?”
The doctor’s eyebrows climb. He and the nurse share that professional look—equal parts sympathy and oops. “The one you’re carrying.”
I’m still kinda woozy. “I’m not carrying anything.”
“Based on labs, you are in your early first trimester. Maybe four to six weeks.”
Four to six weeks? Fetus? No. No, no, no. This can’t be. “I’ve never even…”
Except that I have. Thanksgiving weekend. Three sugar daddies, one biology major, zero emotional preparedness for any of it. Now this? My brain bluescreens.
I shake my head, which hurts. My voice cracks as it rises. “There has to be a mistake. I—no. I can’t be. Check again!”
They redraw my blood. Meanwhile, Arabella charges in, snow gear half-zipped, phone still recording from an Insta story she abandoned mid-caption. Her eyes go saucer wide when she spots my tear-streaked face. “What happened?”
I croak, “They say I’m pregnant.”
She powers down influencer mode in a heartbeat, tosses her phone into her pocket, and grabs my hand. “Deep breaths.”
It’s not long before the doctor returns with a confirmation. Positive. Dizziness whooshes right through me, so Arabella steadies me against the pillow.
He continues his professional spiel. “We’ll do an ultrasound, but with no abdominal trauma, we don’t suspect anything amiss. Get an obstetric follow-up within a week.”
Arabella stays for all the testing. I’m in the clear—just bruises, a mild concussion, and a tiny invader in my uterus.
Back in the exam bay, she sits cross-legged on the cot, braids snow-damp.
She squeezes my fingers until my knuckles protest. “Okay,” she says, voice low and even, the same tone she used freshman year when my dorm flooded. “Step one. Freak-out. Go.”
It’s like opening floodgates. Tears, ugly sobs, whole-body tremors.
Words blur. How? When? What do I do? My life plan explodes in confetti.
Next semester? Yeah, right. Grad school apps?
Trash fire. Dad’s prosthetic high-five moment?
Now overshadowed by me becoming a parent before I figure out how to do my own taxes.
Arabella absorbs it all like a saint, nodding, handing me tissues fetched from the supply cart. She reminds me that my helmet saved my skull, the baby is fine, and breathing is nonnegotiable.
“We can buy pregnancy tests to triple-check. I have a great ob-gyn back home. There’s counseling on campus to go through your options?—”
“Stop. Stop,” I choke out. “I can’t think about that right now.”
She takes my hand in both of hers. “Sweetie, you have to.”
Those words trigger another avalanche of tears. “I don’t want to!”
She almost laughs, but it’s not cruel. Just amused. “If you want, we can fly back home tonight and get this ball rolling.”
“I can’t go back…” I stare at fluorescent ceiling tiles that buzz faintly. “My life is over.”
“No,” she says, tone iron. “Your life just pivoted. We’ll reroute. You’re a scientist. You know how variables can change a situation.”
The hospital clears me after two hours and four pages of discharge instructions. Concussion watch means no slopes for at least forty-eight hours—not that I’m thinking about skiing now.
Twilight sets the Rockies on fire outside—peaks glowing orange, sky bruising purple. It looks like a postcard from someone else’s reality. Not mine. Not anymore.
Arabella drives our rental Jeep back to the chalet. Heated seats toast my bruised muscles, but I can’t feel warmth through the mental numbness. My phone lights up twenty missed messages—a group chat exploding with Where r u?
I ignore it.
Dad texts a photo. Him catching a ball with his new hand, another prosthetic milestone. My chest seizes. I type Awesome! complete with emoji confetti, guilt stabbing with every exclamation.
Back at the chalet, Becca and the crew greet me with hot cocoa and a blanket fort. Their excited chatter dims when they see my face. Arabella ushers them out—“give us a moment”—and we huddle in the loft bunk room.
She hauls out two pregnancy tests from the pharmacy haul. “Redundancy check.”
I pee, wait, stare at the barnwood floor. Two little plus signs bloom. No margin for error. I knew that at the hospital, but holding out this hope felt like a lifeline.
A lifeline now cut.
The bathroom mirror reflects a girl with helmet hair, bruised cheek, eyes like storm clouds.
I whisper, “Mom’s gonna kill me.” I was supposed to follow her footsteps into science, not detour into teen-mom plotline—except I’m not a teen, I’m twenty-two, and this isn’t a plotline, it’s a fetus. Or a zygote at this stage.
Arabella perches on the counter, shoelace swinging. “Next steps. Clinic in Atlanta on Monday. Confidential.”
I nod, throat raspy.
“And…the father?” She tiptoes around the phrasing.
Three fathers, potentially. My stomach flip-flops. Could be Atticus, Dean, or Colin—same allele pool but wildly different paternal realities. Telling them feels impossible. Not telling them feels deceitful.
I croak, “One problem at a time.”
“We keep this between us for now, yeah?”
“Yeah. Tell everyone else I need to rest or something, okay?”
“Of course.”
She leaves, and I lie in my bunk listening to my chalet-mates binge a rom-com downstairs. Every thump of my heart syncs with their laughter. My headache flares behind my eyes—the concussion or panic or both.
I picture embryo cells dividing, oblivious. A weird, fierce protectiveness sparks, colliding with my terror. I can’t keep a houseplant alive longer than a semester. But I want…
I don’t know yet.
Sleep evades me. I thumb through my photo roll—Dad’s new arm, Mom’s soup, three brothers smiling soft in lamplight. That last one is in my head. We never took pictures. It’s against the rules for Just Desserts.
Tears start again, quieter this time. I mute the world under pillow corners, whisper to whatever speck is growing inside. “Hi. Sorry about the crash out. Hang in there. Or don’t. I’m not here to tell you what to do.”
Outside, snow falls—giant flakes this time—dusting eaves, resetting the mountain under fresh white. A blank page. Wish I had one of those right about now.
But for now, I breathe, and let Arabella’s even breathing from her bed across the room anchor me. Maybe the morning will bring a little clarity beneath the mess.