22. Saturday
CHAPTER 22
SATURDAY
O nce, Maggie had pulled two consecutive all-nighters, hopped on a Ryanair flight to Germany, changed into her running gear in the airport bathroom, and gone directly from Berlin Brandenburg to the starting line of a 10k where she PR-ed. She had never bailed on a race. But after the fourth time she dry heaved over the bathroom sink on Saturday morning, thankful only that she’d been too nauseous to eat anything at dinner the night before, she conceded that there was, indeed, a first time for everything.
Raincheck on the race, she texted Daniel, realizing only after she sent it that he’d never actually said he’d be meeting her at the trailhead. She’d just come to expect him.
Almost immediately, he sent back a gif of Rocky, in the training montage, running up the stairs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She didn’t have the energy to figure out what that meant.
She dragged herself out of bed to get breakfast for Parton and barely managed to scoop out a bowlful of kibble before she had to bend over the kitchen sink and retch for a full minute. Parton had been startled by the sound at first, but apparently she’d been doing it often enough that he’d decided he could ignore it. Plus, the kibble was a very compelling distraction.
After she’d let the dog out the front door for a day of whatever he got up to, Maggie proceeded to do something so wildly out of character that she hardly believed it of herself: She got back into bed and stayed there until noon.
For lunch, she managed to drink a glass of water and choke down half of a stale pop tart she found in the box she’d rescued from the camp kitchen.
The Casino Social was that night, and Maggie was set to deal at a blackjack table. She’d snuck out to Goodwill earlier in the week and scored a truly excellent black sequined suit and a red silk necktie, a sartorial choice that had since taken on some…additional significance in light of recent developments. Bailing on the race was one thing, but there was no way she was missing Casino night. She probably just had food poisoning, and that wasn’t contagious, right?
Maggie got back in bed after lunch, another thing she’d never done, even when she’d worked on a project in Madrid. (She’d accomplished a lot during everyone else’s siestas.) She lasted fifteen minutes before she threw up the pop tart. At this point, she didn’t think she’d be able to keep down the Advil her headache was so insistently pounding out a demand for. And she was probably getting pretty dehydrated.
So, for the fourth time that day, Maggie did something she absolutely never did: she went to see a medical professional for something other than an annual physical.
April was puttering around the nurse’s cabin doing what appeared to be inventory when Maggie let herself in through the creaky screen door. There were, at least, no sick or injured campers waiting in any of the plastic seats in the front room, and glancing down the hall, it looked like all the overnight beds were empty. A small mercy, because she doubted she’d make it through the visit without dry-heaving, and the fewer people around to witness that the better.
April climbed down from the step stool she was using to reach into the back of an upper cabinet and turned to see who had come in.
“Did we have a meeting?” she asked in a curt tone that Maggie had quickly learned was April’s neutral. Her bedside manner was unorthodox for a pediatric nurse, but Maggie had seen her campers respond well to the even, no-nonsense way that April cared for them. She just hadn’t expected to have the opportunity to assess its effectiveness first-hand.
“No,” she replied, letting herself sink into the nearest chair. “I’m sick.”
April immediately went to work, asking questions about the onset of symptoms, checking Maggie’s blood pressure and oxygen saturation, taking her temperature. It felt a little like someone had tried to soften Dr. House by giving him the voice (and hair) of a Disney princess.
Maggie hated when her body betrayed her, but she was grateful that April was on the case. The situation was now under control. At least, she thought it was. Then, April asked her to take a deep breath in so that she could listen to her lungs, and, with absolute horror, Maggie found herself bursting into tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said, when she’d blown her nose on the tissue April had handed her. She looked up to see, worryingly, genuine concern in the other woman’s eyes. Shit. “Sorry, I don’t know?—”
“When was your last period?” April asked, her efficient tone soothing.
“I’m on the pill. I stopped getting them.”
April nodded. “I’m going to have you take a pregnancy test.”
Maggie could almost feel all the blood in her body rushing to her critical organs as her fight or flight response kicked in. “I’m not—” But April’s expression made the protest catch in her throat.
“Let’s just double-check.”
Maggie had never had a pregnancy scare, so she read the instruction pamphlet twice to make sure she followed the directions precisely. The box came with two tests, and, at April’s suggestion, she took them both.
It was possible that no three-minute timer had ever ticked as slowly as that one. At least April didn’t try to make small talk. She just took the plastic sticks, laid them on the counter, set a countdown, and went back to doing inventory.
After what felt like several millennia, the timer finally beeped. Maggie rose too quickly from the seat she’d sunk back into and had to stand a moment with her hand braced against the wall until the room righted itself. When she was reasonably confident that she wasn’t about to pass out, which she really didn’t need on top of everything else, she raised her eyes from the spot on the floor she’d chosen as an anchor. April was by the counter, expression inscrutable. She motioned Maggie over.
Well, the box had been accurate in advertising that its tests provided clear results.
She was extremely pregnant.
“Fuck.”
She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the nightmarish still life in front of her. Despite the 90-degree afternoon, her fingers were icy when she raised a hand to rub at the knot newly formed in the back of her neck. Her whole body was tense almost to the point of pain. Now was she going to pass out?
She waited for the panic to flood her system, but it never came. At work, Maggie was famously good in a crisis, calm and methodical, impossible to rattle. It was the first comment she got at every performance review. Apparently, that was the case even now, when the crisis was acutely personal. At least she had that going for her.
April stayed quiet, and when Maggie eventually looked up, she was almost startled to find her still standing nearby.
“Can I even get an abortion in North Carolina?”
Maggie was back in the cottage twenty minutes later with the names of three different clinics and a standing offer from April to take her anywhere she needed to go. She’d clearly wanted to keep Maggie in the nurse’s cabin until she had a clear plan of action, but Maggie had insisted that she could handle it, that everything was, in fact, under control, and April had eventually let her leave with only a bag of ginger chews as a party favor.
Maggie’s first order of business was to text Jordan and ask them to take over the blackjack table at Casino Night. Jordan, ever reliable and on their shit, responded right away. So that was one thing done.
Maggie’s second order of business was to text Becker to let him know that she wouldn’t be at the Social. Easy. She just needed to find the right phrasing that would allow her to share no relevant information, raise no questions, and imply that everything was totally fine without actually saying so because saying that everything was totally fine would be a big red flag. No one said that everything was totally fine unless everything was, in fact, an unmitigated disaster.
She went with:
Hey, sorry, have to miss Casino Night
She debated adding a final period for a full thirty seconds. Then she almost added a slot machine emoji instead, but she’d come to her senses just in time. Talk about a red flag.
With that done, Maggie switched her phone to Do Not Disturb, put it face down on the coffee table, and flung herself haphazardly onto the couch, one foot dangling over a floral armrest, the other still grounding her to the hardwood.
Her third order of business was What. The. Fuck.
Subtopic: How.
She was so careful! Annoyingly careful! Frankly, it put a cramp in her style how exceedingly careful she was!
Because Maggie didn’t want kids, had never wanted kids, had spent three different doctor’s appointments during her mid-to-late twenties trying (and failing) to convince three different gynecologists that she was, in fact, competent to make that decision permanent without consulting the wishes of her hypothetical future husband. And, considering that she was a bisexual commitment-skeptic, the future existence of any such husband was hypothetical in the extreme. Having failed to talk anyone into tying her tubes, she set an alarm for her daily birth control pill (which was a nightmare when she was constantly changing time zones), and, on top of that, she always, always used condoms. She reasoned that both were fallible, but the odds of them failing at the same time had to be infinitesimal.
Lucky her, apparently.
She should buy a lotto ticket.