3. Lily
3
LILY
I hovered over the trash can in my parents' kitchen wishing this nausea would go away. I'd been dealing with it for weeks, knowing in my gut what it meant. I just hadn’t had the courage to take the test to confirm it. Though, I had purchased one.
"Honey, you get yourself so worked up." Mom was there, holding my hair up and rubbing my back as my stomach emptied itself for the second time today. I hadn’t spoken to Ethan since the board meeting on Monday morning and now, being Thursday afternoon, I still had no intention of returning his calls.
"Tissue," I grunted, and Mom left my side. When she returned, she had the box of tissues from the living room in hand. She pulled a few out and handed them to me, and I blew my nose and wiped my face clean. She was a smart woman. She'd figure it out soon enough, but even still, I couldn't face that thought. If I was pregnant, I was doing it alone, and that hurt. Almost as much as Ethan's words in front of the board.
"I can't believe I'm fired, Mom. I needed that job so badly." I tossed the tissues into the trash and slogged over to the dining room table and sat down. Not even the view of the Rockies out the kitchen's picture window could cheer me up, and I'd been missing this view since I took that residency on the other side of Denver last summer. Despite only being three hours away, it seemed like worlds apart from my parents’ place.
"I know, honey, but you'll find something soon." Mom sat with me, carrying her cup of tea, the smell of which was what had triggered the vomiting, not the emotion like Mom thought.
Her warm brown eyes were compassionate as she touched my hand softly and smiled. "You're a brilliant woman, Lilian. Any place would be lucky to have you."
Dad offered to pull some strings and help me get into a good residency here, but I didn't want favors. I wanted to do this on my own, the way all other doctors did. It was bad enough that I was back under their roof at the age of twenty-five. I felt useless and desperate.
"I just can't believe he said I was a mistake." The tears welled up again as I thought of the tone of Ethan's voice when he told the board chairman that. It was a hot knife in my chest that I still couldn't pull out. How could he call me a mistake? After everything we'd done together, the way he told me he loved me and the way we dreamed about a future together. I deserved better than that. I deserved an explanation, but I didn’t even want one. It wouldn’t matter. It hurt too badly to hear the first time.
"You deserve someone who doesn’t have any doubts about you or your future. Someone who will fight for you in difficult situations. Lily, it sounds like maybe this Ethan fellow just isn’t the right one for you." She patted my hand then squeezed it, and I felt my stomach knot up again.
Ethan was the perfect man for me. I loved everything about him. We had an ease to the relationship that most people never had. We almost never argued, but when we did, we were able to step back and talk rationally when it was over. We could talk easily for hours about anything. He made me laugh, and I made him happy, or at least I thought I did. Until he called me a mistake.
"Yeah…" I agreed numbly with Mom's words, but up until Friday, I'd have said Ethan was that man who had no doubts about me. Now, I didn’t know if I'd ever know when a man was being truthful with me again.
Everything changed the instant Dr. Hayward walked in on us. Ethan had been overly cautious the whole relationship, and I knew why. He told me he was afraid something like this would happen, that one of us would be fired. But now I knew deep down that he was just ashamed of his "mistake". It made me question whether any of the past nine months with him were even real or if he'd just been stringing me along for the amazing sex.
"You're going to find someone who loves you, Lily. And you can stay here until you find the right residency program to get back into the game. And if you find a place here in Denver, you can stay as long as you'd like. No need to feel pressured to move out." Mom's hand withdrew, and she picked up her mug of tea and sipped it as my stomach rolled again.
"I'm sure Kate will love that." Kate, my younger but needier sister, lived across town after a few months of my parents’ badgering her to grow up and become more responsible. When they started forcing her to pay rent, she finally decided if she was going to have to pay, she'd rather be on her own. She found her own place and now resented me for being the responsible one who didn't need Mom and Dad. I hadn't heard from her since I got home yesterday, but it was only a matter of time.
"Kate will get over it. You just take your time. Your heart is broken right now." Mom smiled gently at me, and I stood and kissed her on the forehead.
"I'm going to go lie down, I think. Let me know when it's dinner time, and I'll come help cook." I headed toward the guest bedroom where I was staying, and Mom stayed at the kitchen table with her tea.
My heart really was broken. I'd never had a moment in a relationship where I'd become so raw, so disillusioned that I had no interest in speaking to the person again. This one took the cake. Ethan's words cut me to the quick and I was bleeding out now. It made it difficult to even open my laptop and search the job board for a new position. I had no energy, no motivation, just dreaded nausea and so much exhaustion, I could sleep for weeks and not feel better.
My parents' place was small, but the guest bedroom had a private adjoining bathroom. I missed our old home forty miles west of the city, but once Mom retired from being a schoolteacher, Dad moved them closer to his job as a podiatrist in the city to lessen his commute. This dinky two-bedroom ranch was nice, but it wasn't the sprawling craftsman I grew up in. It made me ache for any familiarity from my past because I felt like my footing had been ripped out from under me and I was floundering in an ocean of regret.
I sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off my shoes and my eyes rested on the nightstand, on the small white paper bag that held the pregnancy test I bought yesterday. A baby would have changed everything anyway, maybe for better, maybe for worse, but now it didn't matter. Life had already changed for me so drastically in a split second. The upheaval meant job searching and moving to a new location. And it meant facing the truth, because if I was pregnant, I needed to know before I took a new residency position. My new employer would want to know. And I would need to make sure I had the support.
If I took a residency at UCLA like the one offered to me last year, I would be completely alone raising a baby. I couldn't do that. I needed a support system like Mom and Kate to help me through it all. If I took a residency here in Denver, I could stay with Mom and Dad, and Kate might even help babysit at times. The first step in this new journey would be knowing, though, and that made me anxious.
I picked up the paper sack and folded it open to pull out the test. It wasn't the first pregnancy scare I'd had with Ethan, either. We'd been screwing around at work for about three months when I thought I was pregnant— sore boobs, tired, the works. I took the test, and it turned out I wasn’t. My thyroid was underactive and causing some issues. But after being on the proper meds for a few months, that worked itself out. The doctors said it was stress-induced and I agreed with them. Sneaking around was stressful, but I'd learned to manage that stress.
This, however, was different and I knew it. Last time, there was no nausea or excessive crying. I could chalk the tears up to being heartbroken, but that would be a lie. I was overly emotional about things before any of this blew up, and I'd been hiding it from everyone. Professionals don't cry at work.
It was time. I had to know. I took the test into the bathroom and set it on the sink as I pulled down my pants and sat on the toilet. I didn’t even bother shutting the door. Mom would never just walk right in here. She thought I was napping, and after this, I'd be crying myself to sleep for sure, anyway.
I tore the box open and then the foil pack that contained the plastic wand. When I peed on it, I made a mess and got it on my hand. Frustrated, I set the test to the side and finished, then washed my hands and returned to see the test was already processing. The results window already showed a faint pink pair of lines that didn't even surprise me. I stood there watching the lines grow darker and darker, and tears welled up.
This should have been a thrilling, happy moment for me and Ethan. I should have been overjoyed at the idea of telling him he'd be a father, that we would have a family. Now, all I could think was that if he thought I was a mistake, what would he call our baby?
I pressed my hand to my lower stomach and blinked out a few tears. My heart was a little fuller knowing I was right, that I'd be a mother. I knew it was stupid and would be crazy difficult, but I wanted it. I wanted to feel my baby moving inside me and kicking. I wanted to give birth and experience the joy of bringing life into the world. And most of all, I wanted to love and be loved in the purest bond I'd ever have. I just wanted it with Ethan by my side, and that would never happen.
I could never tell him about this baby, at least not while my heart was so torn up. Which meant being alone and staying in Denver. It was better this way. If I went back to clear things up and tell him, I'd listen to him apologize and say he was sorry. I'd take him back, and somewhere further down the line, he'd do something worse. Or worse still, he'd just reject me outright because what we had was never real.
I didn't want my baby to grow up feeling like a mistake. I might not have planned this on purpose, but I wanted it, and I would fight to make sure my little one felt loved from the moment he or she took their first breath.
I tossed the test in the trash and turned the light off, then crawled into bed for a nap. We'd have an interesting discussion tonight at the table, and I'd have to explain to my parents why I wasn't telling Ethan about the baby, but my decision was final. Now I just hoped there was a residency here in Denver. If not, I didn’t know what to do next.