17. Beth
17
BETH
I leaned over my desk feeling nauseous and tired. For days, Rachel and I had been snacking on leftovers from our small Thanksgiving meal—which was more like way too much takeout that we couldn't eat. The warmed-up food was still delicious, but something told me it had gone sour and my stomach was paying for it.
I felt queasy a few times yesterday, but this morning was the worst. I should have called in sick, but there were a few reports Will was counting on me to have done, so I came in early and I'd been sitting here working on them between bouts of nausea.
"Morning beautiful," Will said as he walked into my office. He shut the door before he spoke, but it still made me a bit nervous when he said things like that at work, even in privacy. He carried a cup of coffee in hand and set it on the corner of my desk, as had become his normal routine.
"Good morning," I said, fighting the urge to yawn, which I knew would only make my nausea worse.
"Ah, great," he said, eyeing the reports on the printer tray. I hadn't had a chance to collate them or put them in folders but they were there. "Thank you," he said, then he kissed the top of my head as he scooped them up. "These are fantastic."
"You're welcome," I managed right before I belched. I hated feeling sick; I just wanted to go home.
"Stop by my office in about an hour. There's something I need to go over with you…Oh, and dinner tonight?" he asked and I nodded, but I didn't say much. He seemed distracted and that was okay with me. I didn't want to have to explain why I felt sick from eating old leftovers from Thanksgiving more than a week ago.
Will went into his office and shut the door, and I slumped over on the desk and rested my head on my arms. I closed my eyes briefly, feeling so tired I could nap. It was only 8 a.m. and I felt like I'd been awake all day already. I figured it was just from my body fighting whatever was going on and I hated it.
"Oh," I heard, and I sat up to see Sarah walk in. She wore a pink cardigan and gray slacks. Her hair was tied back in a bun so tight it made her eyes narrow into slits, and she scowled at me. "I thought you were gone." She moved toward the filing cabinets at the end of the office and typed in the code to open them.
When I took her office, there were things she couldn't take with her. The filing cabinets held important confidential documents as hard backups of things Will didn't want stored on the cloud. Sarah couldn't have them in the hallway outside his other office entrance because he wanted the added layer of security of them being behind a locked door. We weren't sharing the office, but she did have to have access to them.
"Sorry," I mumbled, readjusting myself in my chair. I watched her work and she had a scowl on her face the whole time. I felt bad for having taken her office, and I had apologized a dozen times, but she still treated me with contempt no matter what I did. I knew it couldn't be easy. If it would have been my choice, I'd have stayed in a cubicle downstairs.
Sarah huffed and sighed hard as she sorted through the filing cabinet, and I felt like I should apologize again, but before I could manage a single word, my stomach decided it was finally time to empty itself. I bent over my trash can and threw up, trying to hold my hair back but failing. I hadn't even eaten, so it was mostly bile that came up, and Sarah scoffed and groaned.
"God, didn't anyone tell you if you're sick to stay home?" She snorted, took a few steps backward, and shoved the filing cabinet drawer shut. "You better not get me sick. I can't afford time off work."
I continued retching over the trash can until my heaves stopped and I plucked a tissue from the box on my desk to wipe my mouth. "Sorry," I grumbled and swallowed hard against the bile still pooling at the back of my throat.
"Honestly, Ms. Reid, you have some nerve," Sarah said before scoffing again and she stomped out of my office with an attitude.
I sank back down onto my desk and wished it would swallow me whole. If it wasn't for those reports I'd have just stayed home, and now that they were done I strongly considered leaving. I wondered if Rachel felt this bad too. When I told her yesterday that I was feeling queasy, she mentioned not feeling so great either. I bet she was home throwing up like me.
So I took out my phone and called her, thinking if I was headed home and she was sick, I could bring her something to feel better too.
"Hey, what's up?" she asked, and I heard the background noise and knew she wasn't home. She was out on the street somewhere, maybe waiting for her Uber.
"Oh, you're not at home?" I asked, sitting up. My head spun a little, probably dehydration, and I closed my eyes to make it stop.
Rachel scoffed and laughed. "Home? Woman, I have to work to pay the bills…What's wrong?"
"I'm sick…Like, throwing my guts up sick. I'm gonna go home, I think." I pressed my palm against my forehead. I didn't feel feverish, but I didn't think food poisoning gave you a fever anyway.
"Sick?" She snickered and said, "Probably knocked up! That's what you get." I knew she was joking about it, but the sickening dread washed over me anyway.
"Yeah, probably," I told her, forcing a joking tone, but I wasn't joking. Oh my God, could I be pregnant? The anxiety hit me worse than the nausea, and I thought I'd throw up from that now too.
"Guess we'll throw those leftovers out now, huh? Let me know if you want me to bring anything home when I'm done at work." Rachel's joking tone shifted and she sounded concerned, but all I could do was bend over my trash can and vomit again. "Talk later, sis," she said, and the line went dead as I laid my phone on my desk.
The sheer panic her words induced made me throw up thrice more before I managed to scribble a note to Will saying I was going home sick. I left it on my desk and shut off my computer, then grabbed my coat and staggered to the door.
My gut told me this wasn't just food poisoning, and it terrified me. I wasn't ready to be a mom, and I didn't know what Will would think. Let alone his daughter. If I really was pregnant, everything was about to get a whole lot trickier really fast.