2 - A MISTAKE AT THE CLINIC #2
The queasiness hit her the moment she sat up in bed, a wave of vertigo that sent her stumbling to the bathroom. She made it to the toilet just in time, retching up bile and the remnants of last night's dinner. Joey's voice drifted through the door, muffled with sleep. "Babe? You okay?"
"Fine," she called back, her voice thin. "Just something I ate."
The lie came easily now. All the lies came easily.
She flushed the toilet and pressed her forehead against the cool porcelain of the sink.
Her reflection looked back at her—pale, hollow-eyed, a faint sheen of sweat on her brow.
She'd read the early pregnancy symptoms a hundred times on the forums.
Morning sickness. Bloating. Fatigue. The metallic taste in her mouth that wouldn't go away.
It's the hormones, she told herself. The injections can cause all of this. It's just side effects.
But the hope was already blooming in her chest, a fragile thing she was afraid to name.
She pressed her palm to her belly, still flat beneath her nightshirt, and imagined a cluster of cells dividing and dividing and dividing.
Imagined Brock's gray eyes in a tiny face. Imagined the impossible made possible.
"Victoria?" Joey was at the bathroom door now, glasses askew, worry creasing his forehead. "You're really pale."
"Stomach bug." She straightened up. "Go back to bed. I'm fine."
"You've been tired a lot lately."
She had. The fatigue was a lead weight in her limbs, dragging her toward naps in the middle of the afternoon, sending her to bed earlier and earlier while Joey stayed up watching television in the living room.
He'd noticed. Of course he'd noticed. Joey noticed everything about her—had always been attentive that way, even when she wished he wasn't.
"I think the hormones are just catching up with me," she said. "Dr. Harmon said it could take a few cycles for my body to regulate again."
Joey's expression flickered—guilt, always guilt—and he nodded. "Maybe you should make an appointment. Get checked out."
"Maybe."
But she didn't. Not at the fertility clinic, where they'd ask questions she couldn't answer. Not anywhere.
Joey dragged himself back to bed. Victoria waited until his breathing evened out, then crept downstairs to the kitchen, where the morning light was gray and watery through the window. The clock read 5:47 AM. Brock would be up soon, shuffling down in his sweatpants to make coffee before his shift.
She couldn't face him. Not yet. Not with this new suspicion taking root in her body.
She poured a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table, her bare feet cold against the linoleum. Outside, the crickets were still singing their summer song. Inside, everything was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator.
Please, she thought, the same prayer she'd sent up three weeks ago. Please let it be true.
—
On day forty-two, Victoria bought a pregnancy test from a drugstore two towns over, where no one would recognize the wife of Joey Carter or the daughter-in-law of the correctional officer from FCI Beckley.
She stood in the aisle for five minutes, staring at the boxes.
First Response. Clearblue. The generic brand that was ten dollars cheaper.
She chose the one that promised results six days before a missed period, even though her period was already two weeks late.
The cashier was a teenager who didn't look at her, who rang up the box along with a bottle of prenatal vitamins she'd grabbed at the last second, who said have a nice day like it was any other Tuesday afternoon.
Brock was at work. Joey was at work. The house was empty.
Victoria locked the bathroom door even though there was no one home to walk in on her.
Her hands trembled as she opened the box, as she read the instructions she'd read a dozen times before—remove cap, hold stick in urine stream for five seconds, lay flat, wait three minutes.
The ritual of it was almost religious. She'd performed it so many times over the years, each time with the same desperate hope, each time with the same crushing disappointment.
But this time was different. This time, there was no trigger shot to mess with the results. No embryo transfer to pin her hopes on. Just a night on the couch and a man who'd asked where should I? and her own voice saying inside me.
She peed on the stick. Set it on the edge of the sink. Sat on the closed toilet lid and watched the seconds tick by on her phone.
One minute.
She thought about Joey's face when she'd told him the IVF failed. The way he'd crumbled, the way he'd held her anyway, the way he'd whispered we'll try again like he could will it into being.
Two minutes.
She thought about Brock's hands on her hips. The stretch of him inside her. The sound he'd made when he followed her over the edge—a groan that was half pleasure, half anguish. You're my son's wife.
Three minutes.
Victoria picked up the test.
Two lines.
Two.
The air left her lungs in a rush. She blinked. Looked again. Still two lines, the second one dark and undeniable, a pink stripe that meant yes, you are, you finally are.
Pregnant.
Her hand flew to her mouth. A sound came out of her—half laugh, half sob—and she was crying before she could stop herself, tears streaming down her cheeks, the test clutched in her fingers like a talisman.
Pregnant. She was pregnant. After four years of trying, after the injections and the ultrasounds and the twenty thousand dollars that had bought them nothing but grief, she was pregnant.
Brock's baby.
The thought sliced through her joy, cold and sharp. She sat back down on the toilet lid, the test still in her hand, and stared at the two lines until they blurred in her vision.
This wasn't Joey's child. Joey, who had held her hand through every doctor's appointment. Joey, who had apologized a hundred times for a failure that wasn't his fault. Joey, who wanted to be a parent as badly as she did. The baby wasn’t his.
Unless she made him believe it was.
Victoria looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The woman who stared back had tear-streaked cheeks and wild eyes and a secret growing in her belly that could destroy everything. But that woman was also a mother now. Finally. After everything.
She wrapped the test in toilet paper and buried it at the bottom of the bathroom trash, beneath an empty shampoo bottle and a wad of cotton balls. Then she splashed cold water on her face and practiced the smile she'd need to wear for the rest of her life.
Joey came home at six-fifteen, his laptop bag slung over one shoulder, his shoulders still carrying the weight of the last three weeks. He found Victoria in the kitchen, stirring a pot of pasta sauce that she'd been stirring for twenty minutes without really seeing it.
"Hey," he said, dropping his bag by the door. "You look—different. Did something happen?"
Everything happened. "I need to tell you something."
His face went pale. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." She turned off the stove. Moved toward him. Took his hands in hers. "Joey, I got a call from the clinic today."
"The fertility clinic?" Confusion creased his brow. "Why would they—"
"They made a mistake." The lie unfurled from her tongue, smooth and practiced.
She'd rehearsed it in the bathroom mirror, in the kitchen, in the empty living room while she waited for him to come home.
"Apparently there was a mix-up with the lab results. Something about a mislabeled sample. They ran the blood test again, and—"
She paused. Let the moment stretch. Let hope flicker across Joey's face, fragile and afraid.
"And?"
"Joey." She squeezed his hands. "I'm pregnant. The transfer worked. I'm pregnant."
His mouth opened. Closed. The color rushed back into his face in a flood. "You're—what? That doesn't—how could they mix up—"
"I don't know. I don't care." She was laughing now, tears spilling down her cheeks, and maybe the emotion was real even if the story wasn't. "It worked, Joey. I'm pregnant. We're going to have a baby."
"Oh my god." His voice cracked. His eyes, behind his glasses, filled with tears. "Oh my god, Victoria, are you serious? You're serious?"
“I’m serious.”
Joey pulled her into his arms, crushing her against his chest. She could feel his heart hammering through his shirt, could feel his body shaking with sobs he wasn't trying to hold back. "I can't believe it. I can't—after everything—"
"I know." She clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder so she wouldn't have to see his joy. "I know."
"We have to call the clinic. We have to make an appointment, get a confirmation ultrasound—"
"No." The word came out sharper than she intended. She pulled back, composing her face. "I don't trust them, Joey. They already messed up once. What if they mess up again?"
"But we need to confirm—"
"So we'll go to a different doctor. A new clinic. Somewhere that didn't almost ruin our lives with a paperwork error." She cupped his face in her hands. "Please, Joey. I can't go back there. Not after everything. Remember how upset we were?"
He hesitated. She could see the accountant's mind working, the part of him that needed things to be logical and documented and correct. But then the joy won out, and he was smiling, laughing, picking her up off her feet and spinning her around the kitchen.
"You're right," he said. "You're right. We'll find someone new. Who cares about the clinic, we're having a baby!"
"We're having a baby."
He kissed her then—really kissed her, with a passion she hadn't felt from him in months. And Victoria kissed him back, her husband, the man she'd betrayed in the worst possible way. The guilt was a physical weight in her chest, but beneath it was something else. Something that felt like victory.
The front door opened at seven-thirty.
They were sitting on the couch, Joey's hand pressed against Victoria's still-flat belly, both of them pretending they could feel something there.