Chapter 34 Ivy
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ivy
I tell Jesse it’s just a check up.
Nothing serious. Just, you know, girl stuff. Routine. No big deal.
He grunts from the couch, halfway through a bowl of cereal and a YouTube rabbit hole about off grid solar setups. “Cool. Want me to drop you off?”
I shake my head and fake a yawn. “Nah, I’m good. Gonna walk. Need air.”
Which is technically true. What I don’t say is that every breath feels shallow lately. My lungs have forgotten how to function under pressure.
Pickle watches me from the window as I leave, his squishy face pressed to the glass. I flip him a mock salute and start walking.
The women’s clinic is tucked behind the bakery, next to a store that sells antique rocking chairs and aggressively wholesome signage. One of those Live, Laugh, Love kinda places. I almost turn around right there.
But I don’t.
I go inside.
It smells of lavender and sanitizer. The front desk lady is overly cheerful and wears a pin that says Uteruses Before Duderuses, which is… oddly comforting. I fill out paperwork with shaking hands, then wait. And wait. And wait.
My name gets called and suddenly I’m in a little room that’s too cold, staring at a motivational poster of a mountain peak that says YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS.
Cool. Great. Love that for me.
The room is too quiet.
Library after hours in a haunted house quiet.
But the nurse is nice. Warm eyes, soft voice, a kind of quiet calm that makes me feel like maybe I won’t vomit or spontaneously combust in the next five minutes.
She doesn’t ask a ton of questions, just the basics, which I answer in clipped syllables while trying not to stare too hard at the ultrasound machine parked in the corner, a harbinger of doom.
But then before I know it, I’m stripped down, wearing a gown of paper, a preparing for the vaginal wand of regret and medical grade horror. There’s no pretending anymore.
The tech hums softly to herself as she preps the wand and glances at the screen. “Just relax. Let’s take a quick look.”
Relax. Sure. Great advice for someone seconds away from seeing their own life implode in real time.
I brace myself for the flutter of movement. For the grainy little blob. For the confirmation of what I already know.
The ultrasound tech goes still, hand frozen as she watches the screen. Her face doesn’t do anything dramatic, no gasp, no wide eyes, but something changes. Just a flicker. A tightening around her mouth. The tiniest inhale.
But I catch it.
Because I’m watching her as if she’s holding a live grenade and deciding whether or not to pull the pin.
My stomach flips. “What?” I say. My voice sounds weird. Croaky and far away, like someone else is talking through me. “Is something wrong?”
She doesn’t answer at first. Just narrows her eyes at the screen, moves the wand again. Clicks. Clicks again.
And then she says, so casually it almost kills me, “Well… looks like you’ve got a full house.”
I blink. “What does that mean?”
She tilts the monitor slightly toward me, points. “One here…”
Okay.
“…and another here…”
Okay?
“…and one more over here.”
Nope.
Nope.
I stare at her. Then at the screen. Then back at her. “What?”
Her voice drops to the kind of tone people use when they’re trying to be gentle about telling you your goldfish died.
“There are three heart beats.”
The words don’t land. They float in the air, confetti at the wrong party. My brain grabs at them but can’t get a grip. Three heartbeats. Three. That’s… no. That’s a typo. A computer glitch. A prank, maybe? Is this some reality show? Am I being Punk’d?
“Triplets?” I whisper, like saying it too loud might make it more true.
She nods.
I laugh.
Not a cute laugh. Not a haha what a funny joke laugh. This one scrapes up from deep in my chest like a busted garbage disposal.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Nope. That’s not… I mean, no. That’s not possible. I’m not a Duggar.”
She offers a small, almost apologetic smile. “It’s rare, but spontaneous triplets do happen. You’re very early, so we’ll need to keep monitoring things, but…”
“I don’t even know which one of them…”
I clamp my mouth shut before the rest spills out, my words barreling toward confession, they’ve got no brakes. I sit up too fast and almost pass out, the gown rough on my skin, my hands shaking as if I’ve been electrocuted.
Three.
Three babies.
Three heartbeats.
Three guys who could be the father.
My uterus is hosting a damn roulette wheel.
“Are you okay?” the tech asks.
I nod. Lie. Smile. Lie harder. “Yep. Totally fine. Just... little surprised.”
“Do you want a photo?”
I almost say no. I almost bolt straight out the door, leaving behind a perfect Ivy shaped hole in the wall. But instead, I hear myself say:
“…Sure.”
Because if I don’t take it, it’s not real. And if it’s not real, I don’t have to deal with it.
But it is real. So I nod again, a malfunctioning bobblehead, and watch as she presses a few keys. The machine whirs, and then out it comes, this tiny square of thermal paper that now contains the rest of my life.
She hands it to me carefully.
“Congratulations,” she says.
I don’t respond. Can’t.
I stare at the blurry grain of rice blobs floating in their little black space capsule. Three of them. Three pulsing dots. Three heart beats.
I stuff the photo into my bag away from my eyeline.
Smile one more time for the tech. Say thank you like a normal person. Walk out of the clinic with my legs moving but everything else staying behind, trapped in that freezing little room with its stupid motivational posters and the smell of fake lavender.
Outside, I finally breathe. Not well, but it's something.
I reach into my bag and pull the photo back out. Look at it again. Maybe this time it’ll say something different. Maybe they miscounted.
Nope.
Still three.
My fingers tremble as I hold the picture up to the light, the angle might change the meaning. It might reveal some hidden text that says just kidding.
But it doesn’t.
It just says: Everything has changed.
A delivery truck honks. A woman walks past with a stroller. I think I might throw up or laugh or possibly both at once.
I drop onto the nearest bench and just sit there, cold air burning in and out of my lungs. My heart’s racing. It’s trying to keep up with all three of theirs.
I dig my phone out with numb fingers. Pull up my messages.
I stare at the screen.
Because now?
Now I have to tell them.
Not just that I’m pregnant.
Not just that I don’t know who the father is.
But that I’m carrying three tiny humans who are going to blow all of our lives apart.