10. Josephine
CHAPTER TEN
Josephine
By eleven thirty, I've convinced myself of three things.
One: I’m not waiting for a message.
Two: I don’t care that there hasn’t been one.
Three: Whatever that was with Clay McCoy was always going to end exactly like this.
Clean, simple, temporary, which is what I wanted.
I press the tip of my pen a little too hard against the chart in front of me, underlining a dosage that was already perfectly legible.
“Josephine.”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
Dr. Harris doesn’t respond right away, which is how I know I’m not as convincing as I’d like to be.
I look up.
He’s standing across the exam table, arms folded, watching me with that mildly infuriating patience of his.
“That’s interesting,” he says. “Because I didn’t ask if you were fine.”
I straighten the papers in front of me into a neater stack. They don’t need straightening. “You were about to.”
“I was about to ask why you’ve rewritten the same note three times.”
I glance down. He’s right. “That’s… attention to detail.”
“That’s avoidance,” he corrects mildly.
I give him a look. “I’m working.”
“You're circling your own handwriting.”
“I like it to be consistent.”
“Josephine.”
I sigh, setting the pen down. “I’m just tired.”
“That, I believe,” he says. “You look like you’ve been running on coffee and stubbornness.”
“That’s most days.”
“Not usually with this level of intensity.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it again because I’m still not right. It doesn’t matter how much I try to convince myself I am; I feel like shit.
I brush past him while pointedly ignoring my phone. “I have work to do.”
The morning continues with a border collie with a torn pad, a goat that refuses to be examined without screaming, and a routine vaccination that turns into a fifteen-minute negotiation with an owner who insists his cat “doesn’t believe in needles.”
I move through the rhythm of cleaning, assessing, treating, and documenting. There’s comfort in that. In the logic of it. In the way problems present themselves clearly and can be solved with the right combination of knowledge and action.
Unlike everything else.
It hits just after one.
I’m mid-sentence, explaining a course of antibiotics, when the nausea rolls in without warning. Stronger than before. Sharper. It twists low in my stomach and climbs quickly, bringing dizziness with it this time.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, stepping back from the table. “I just… excuse me…”
I don’t wait for a response. I turn, moving quickly toward the back room, one hand already bracing against the counter as I reach it.
The room feels too bright.
I grip the edge of the sink and focus on breathing slowly, but the sensation doesn’t pass. It builds instead, dragging my center of gravity with it until the floor feels unreliable beneath my feet.
“Jo.”
Dr. Harris again.
“I’m alright,” I say, quieter now.
“You’re not.”
“I just need a minute.”
“You’ve needed a minute for the last hour.”
I try to straighten, but the movement sends a sharper wave of dizziness through me. My hand slips slightly against the counter before I catch myself.
The edges of my vision narrow again, more sharply this time, the room pulling inward in a way that feels sudden and irreversible.
“Josephine—”
The word doesn’t quite reach me. The floor disappears first. I don’t hit anything—I think he catches me—but nothing feels quite real anymore.
“Okay,” he says. “That’s enough.”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, though the words feel less convincing even to me.
“You nearly went down.”
“I didn't.”
“You did,” he says simply. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“No need—”
“You can argue with me later.”
I open my mouth to do exactly that, then the room tilts again.
“Fine,” I say quietly.
The hospital is small in the way everything in Buckhorn is small. Efficient, familiar, and quietly observant.
They take me straight through.
“Blood pressure’s a little low,” the nurse says as she adjusts the cuff on my arm. “Have you eaten today?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
I hesitate.
She smiles faintly. “That’s what I thought.”
Dr. Harris answers the rest of her questions. I run through the symptoms and timeline, trying to make the facts line up. I sit on the edge of the bed, hands folded in my lap, focusing on staying upright and composed while my body catches up with itself.
“I’d like a urine sample,” she says, handing me a cup. “Standard procedure.”
“Of course.”
Time stretches in a way I don’t like.
There’s nothing to do but wait, and waiting leaves too much room for thoughts I've been actively avoiding.
Dr. Harris stays longer than necessary, leaning against the wall, making occasional comments that are meant to be reassuring.
“You’re doing fine,” he says.
“I’m sitting still.”
“Exactly.”
I huff out a quiet breath.
Eventually, he checks his watch. “I’ve got to get back.”
“You should,” I say immediately. “The clinic—”
“Will survive for an hour without you.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“We’ll see.”
“I will,” I insist.
He smiles slightly. “Call me if you need anything.”
He leaves me in a stifling quiet. Not that it lasts long.
“Oh my goodness, Josie, the store got a call from Dr. Harris. Are you alright?”
My eyes widen as Penny races into the waiting room. “I… I’m fine, I…”
She stops short. “You’re at the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not where fine people usually are.”
“I’ve been informed.”
She softens immediately, stepping closer. “What happened?”
“I felt unwell. Dr. Harris escalated.”
“Good boss.”
Despite everything, a faint smile tugs at my mouth.
She sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. “Did they say anything yet?”
“They’re running tests.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “Tests are good. Tests mean answers.”
“Yes.” I swallow hard. “I think so.”
Eventually, they call for me again, and this time Penny bounds along beside me. I don’t know whether to be grateful for the support or nervous that she’s about to hear everything, but I’m sure as hell not about to send her away.
“We’ve got your initial results back,” the nurse tells me before I even hit the chair. “And we need to run a few more tests.”
My blood runs cold. I grip the chair hard. “Why?”
A small pause. “Because your pregnancy test came back positive, and your hormone levels are higher than we’d expect at this stage, so we want to take a closer look.”
Fuck.
Pregnant.
The room doesn’t spin; nothing dramatic happens. Instead, everything seems to narrow slightly, as if the world has pulled inward and sharpened around that single point.
“That…” I say slowly. “Is…”
Penny’s hand closes around mine, tighter than before. “Shit, Josie.”
I don’t look at her, because if I do, this becomes more than I’m currently prepared to handle.
She explains the next steps: blood work, follow-ups, and an ultrasound to confirm viability.
This is way out of my control.
I nod where appropriate, ask a question or two, process information the way I always do. But underneath that there’s an instability I don’t like the sensation of. This is way out of my control.
The ultrasound room is dimmer than the rest of the hospital; the overhead lights are softer, the air is cooler, and everything is arranged in a way that feels purposeful and contained.
It should be calming. But the quiet leaves too much space for thought, and I’m not entirely certain I want that right now.
I move to the edge of the bed, pausing when the technician turns toward me.
“At this stage, we’ll get a clearer image with a transvaginal scan,” she explains gently. “It’s standard this early.”
“That’s fine,” I say.
The instructions are simple, clinical, delivered in the same calm tone I use with my own clients.
I follow them without comment, focusing on each step as a task to complete rather than something to feel.
There's a quiet discomfort in the loss of control, in the awareness of being examined rather than the one doing the examining, but I keep my expression calm, my breathing even.
Penny stays close, her hand finding mine again as I settle back. “I’m right here.”
“I know.”
The room settles into a working quiet as the technician prepares the equipment, movements efficient and practiced. I watch the ceiling, then turn my head toward the screen, choosing to focus on what I can understand.
“This might feel a little strange,” she says.
“That’s alright.”
The moment passes uncomfortably. I anchor myself instead. The pressure of Penny’s hand, the soft hum of the machine, the faint rhythm of my own breathing.
The screen flickers to life.
I watch as the image forms, at first indistinct, a shifting collection of light and shadow that resists immediate interpretation. My mind reaches automatically for structure, for something to categorize and understand, but clarity comes slowly, unfolding in layers rather than all at once.
The technician adjusts the angle, her focus narrowing slightly. I follow the movement on the screen, tracking the changes, waiting for a recognizable shape to emerge.
“There we go,” she murmurs, almost to herself.
I lean my attention into the image, searching for definition, for confirmation of what I've already been told.
The technician stills. “Just a moment.”
“Is everything alright?” Penny asks quietly.
“Yes,” the technician says quickly. “Everything looks good.”
She tilts the screen slightly toward me. “Do you see this here?”
I follow her gesture, narrowing my focus. At first, it’s still abstract. Movement, contrast, shapes that don’t immediately resolve into meaning. I study it more closely, forcing myself to look properly, to interpret what I’m seeing instead of skimming past it.
And then everything shifts.
There isn’t one.
There are two.
The realization lands somewhere deep and immediate, pulling the air from my lungs in a quiet, involuntary catch.
“These are—”
“Yes,” she says gently. “There are two.”
The room feels different after that, as if the space itself has expanded to accommodate something I wasn’t prepared to hold.
“Two?” Penny breathes beside me, her grip tightening around my hand.
I don’t answer.
Not because I don’t understand, but because I had only just begun, reluctantly, to adjust to the idea of one. One was already enough to shift everything I had planned, enough to require careful thought and measured response.
Two doesn’t simply add to that.
It changes it entirely.
I close my eyes briefly, drawing in a slow breath, trying to steady the sudden expansion of thought that follows. Possibilities branch outward too quickly, overlapping before I’ve had the chance to examine them, and instinctively I reach for the familiar.
Order, sequence, one step at a time.
When I open my eyes again, I look back at the screen, forcing myself to see it clearly now. There are two distinct shapes, each marked by a faint, rhythmic flicker that's unmistakably real.
“Okay,” I say, the word quieter now.
Penny turns toward me, disbelief written openly across her face. “Okay?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“It’s a starting point.”
She studies me, caught between concern and an uncertain softness. I understand the feeling.
The technician continues speaking, explaining what she’s seeing, outlining timelines and measurements in a calm voice. I listen, absorbing what I can, filing the information away even as part of my mind struggles to keep pace. There will be time later to organize it, to make sense of it properly.
Later.
When this feels less immediate.
When I’m not lying here trying to reconcile the life I thought I understood with the one that has just, quietly and irrevocably, changed.