29. CHARLOTTE
29
CHARLOTTE
I woke up incredibly happy. The sun was shining, work was going pretty well, and Alex was a great guy. His family was just as wonderful.
What had I done to deserve this in my life? For so long, things had been so horrible that I’d been pretty sure that this was it—my life was pretty crap despite the things that went right from time to time.
But now, everything was great, and I couldn’t believe I’d ever gotten this lucky.
When I got up, my head throbbed dully. The day after the barbecue—which hadn’t been a barbecue at all but a lavish buffet—I’d had a headache and I’d felt sick to my stomach but I never handled wine very well.
Wine caused the worst kind of hangovers. Even if it was really expensive wine, like the kind Alex had brought me every time he’d refilled my glass.
The few days after the get-together I hadn’t felt much better. My head ached dully every now and then, a strange pain between my temples, and the nausea didn’t want to budge, either.
Was it possible that I had some kind of food poisoning?
Everything they’d had on that table had been delicious, and I had to admit, I might have overeaten. I’d had so much more than I usually did, but the food had been incredible, and the buffet had looked so good, so well thought out and put together by people who really knew how to make food.
The Blackwoods’ parents, Alex had confided in me, had access to the best chefs in the world and used them for everything, from dinner parties with friends to business meetings to their own family barbeques.
It couldn’t be that something there had been off and made me sick, could it? It didn’t seem like anyone would allow something like that to slip through.
I walked to the kitchen and programmed my coffee machine to make a cup. When the coffee was ready, I added sugar and cream like I always did and took a sip.
My stomach turned violently, and I ran to the bathroom. I fell to my knees and retched over the toilet bowl, emptying my stomach contents before it went over to dry heaves.
I finally sat back against the bathroom wall and pressed my hand against my head, breathing hard.
I couldn’t tell if I had a fever this way, of course, but something was definitely wrong.
I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. I never usually felt sick; generally I stayed healthy, and even getting a flu wasn’t something that happened every year.
When I woke up, I didn’t feel much better. My stomach still turned, making me worry about eating anything. If I kept throwing it up, it was better for me to figure out what was wrong and get it over with.
I called my doctor and made an appointment, and I was lucky—he had a spot open. I drove to the doctors’ offices a couple of blocks away.
“Thank you for seeing me so quickly, Doc,” I said when I walked in. “I don’t know what’s going on. I think I might have a stomach bug or something.”
“We’ll fix that right up,” Doctor Norton said. He was an older man with graying hair and a warm smile that made everyone feel at ease. I’d come to the doctors’ offices the first time for a regular checkup and landed with him. It had been just after I’d arrived in Rhode Island, and since then, I’d always come to him when I needed help.
He always made me feel welcome.
“What are your symptoms?”
I told him what I was struggling with and that I’d thrown up the coffee I’d tried to drink this morning. I explained it wasn’t the first time this week I’d felt sick, either.
“It could very well be a bug,” Doctor Norton said, nodding. “There is one doing the rounds, and I’ve had a few cases so far. When was your last period?”
“Oh. It was…” I frowned, trying to remember when it had been. I’d been so busy, with so much going on, I hadn’t thought much about my period.
The more I thought about it, the more my stomach twisted into a knot, and my headache became more acute.
“I don’t remember,” I said honestly. “But I think I might be late.”
“That could be a reason for you feeling sick,” Doctor Norton pointed out.
I shook my head. “No. I can’t be pregnant. I have so much going on now.”
“Are you sexually active?”
I pursed my lips together and nodded.
“Then you could be pregnant, Charlotte. But that’s easy to find out.” He opened a drawer and took out a pregnancy test. “Why don’t we have a look?”
He handed me the test and pointed to the bathroom adjacent to his office.
“When you’re ready, I’ll be here.”
I took the test from him and swallowed hard. Alex and I had used protection every time. Every time except that night at the lighthouse. Could it be that I’d gotten pregnant? It hadn’t been very long ago—it wouldn’t show yet. And it had just been one time.
But… it only took once, didn’t it?
I followed the instructions on the packet and took the test the way it was supposed to be taken before I put it down on the basin and closed the toilet lid. I sat on the toilet and stared at the test until the allotted time was over.
When I looked at the test, it had a plus sign on it.
Pregnant.
No.
I took the test out to Doctor Norton, my eyes stinging.
“This is a false test, right?”
Doctor Norton studied it before he looked up at me.
“They’re not usually wrong, Charlotte. A false negative, maybe, but a false positive isn’t likely.”
I shook my head. “I can’t be pregnant.” Tears sprung to my eyes, and I whispered again, “I can’t be pregnant.”
Doctor Norton looked sympathetic.
“Here. I think you should go see Doctor Amelia Rowe. Her offices are in the same building, just on the other side. Reception will point you in the right direction. You can tell her I sent you, and she’ll help you with the rest.”
I nodded and took the card he handed me.
“It’s going to be okay, Charlotte.”
I wasn’t so sure he was right about that.
How could it be okay? I couldn’t have a baby.
I couldn’t have Alex Blackwood’s baby.
By some miracle—or some twist of fate—Doctor Rowe was available, too. Did no one have patients they saw all the time? I usually had to wait so long for a booking, but as if the world wanted me to know that things were falling apart right away.
Doctor Rowe looked to be in her thirties with a bright smile and bottle-blonde hair that hung over her shoulders.
“What can I help you with?” she asked.
I wanted to tell her what had happened, but I burst into tears.
“Oh, honey. It’s going to be okay. Whatever it is, we can fix it.”
“I’m pregnant,” I sobbed.
She let me cry it out before she started asking me questions. My morning sickness symptoms—because that was what it was. The date of my last period, which she helped me figure out by backtracking on my social calendar.
“I only had unprotected sex like two weeks ago,” I said. “And I’ve been on the pill for years. I didn’t think…” I couldn’t talk for fear of crying again.
Doctor Rowe frowned and shook her head.
“Honey, you’re further along than two weeks.”
“What?”
“You look like you’re about four weeks along already if the dates of your last period are accurate. Maybe even longer since we can’t be completely sure.”
I shook my head. “That can’t be. What about all the birth control?”
“They’re good but not completely foolproof,” Doctor Rowe said sympathetically. “There is a one in a million chance that something like this can happen. Believe it or not, you’re not the first person sitting in my chair with a case like this.”
I shook my head. “I’m always so careful.”
“I hear you,” she said. “But sometimes these things happen.”
I groaned. I hated she was right, but it looked like there was less and less denying what was going on.
“I don’t suppose a blood test will help?”
“Help how?”
“You know, to see if there’s a chance it was a false positive or something?”
Doctor Rowe thought about it, nodding slowly.
“We can do a blood test, and it will tell us a lot of things that will help to know, but that will take a while to come back. How about we do a sonar? I’ll see what’s going on in there, and we can take it from there. Will that help?”
I nodded. Maybe, if I was lucky, the pregnancy test really had a false positive. There still was that possibility, right? Even if the doctors kept telling me it wasn’t probable.
I didn’t have to undress and put on the johnny. Instead, the doctor just asked me to pull down my pants far enough, and she pressed the wand against my stomach with the jelly on it. I gasped when it was freezing cold.
“Sorry,” Doctor Rowe said, and she moved it around, looking at the screen.
She nodded slowly, looking around a little more, and then she glanced at me.
“Do you want to see?”
I nodded.
She turned the screen a little, showing me gray shapes on a black background.
“This is your uterus,” she said, pointing out the shape. “And this over here is the placenta. And that right there…” She moved the wand a little. “Is the baby.”
I stared at the screen, the little tadpole-like blob that didn’t look like a baby at all.
“I’m pregnant,” I said softly.
“Yeah,” Doctor Rowe said, smiling at me. “Congratulations, Mama.”
I looked at her, trying to smile, but my eyes filled with tears again.
“Thanks.”
She handed me a paper towel to wipe off the lubricant on my stomach, and I fastened my pants again. She drew blood for the tests we had to do. In her office, she wrote me a script for prenatal meds and something that would help with the nausea before she sent me home.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, honey,” she said. “It’s going to be fine. Come see me again in two weeks, and we’ll see what those tests tell us and if there’s anything we need to be worried about. Until then, take it easy if you can, and remember you have all kinds of options, okay? You’re going to be okay.”
I nodded and thanked her before I left her office.
On the way back home, I called Maya.
“Are you busy?” I asked.
“I’m working on a document for the campaign.”
“Oh, right.” I didn’t want to bother her if she was busy.
“What’s wrong?”
I hesitated before I said, “It’s nothing. We’ll talk later.”
“Have you been crying?” Maya asked. She knew me so well.
“No.” I sniveled.
“I’m coming over,” Maya said. “Should I bring wine?”
“No.” My eyes stung with tears again. “Just chocolate.”
“On it.” Maya ended the call.
I felt like my world was crumbling. I was having a baby, and I didn’t know how to do this. I couldn’t be pregnant, not now. Not with Alex’s baby.
He’d already told me he didn’t think he was going to be a good father, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted children, and the business needed him. He knew what he wanted.
And a baby wasn’t it, that much I was sure of.
How could I have a baby with him? It wasn’t the right time for him. It wasn’t the right time for me, either.
We’d only just come together. How could we do something like this?
The more I thought about it, the more terrified I became. I forced myself to take deep breaths and calm down until Maya came to me. She would talk some sense into me, be a voice of reason.
Or at least a sounding board.
I hoped she could give me some good advice, too. Because I was stuck.
Stuck… and pregnant.