Chapter 27
Tucker
I put the wedding talk completely behind me as Ava and I moved into a new year. I got two job offers and accepted one, putting me into the nine-to-five class I’d never experienced.
Was this what it had been like for my dad, leaving every morning to fight traffic to work, being gone all day, then fighting it back home?
I saw Ava less because she and Vinnie often scheduled photo shoots for the golden hour, so she missed dinner.
But we had weekends, when there weren’t wedding gigs, and our evenings.
In February, I took the day off for both Ava’s and my neurologist visits. We were seeing the same doctor and had scheduled ours back to back.
Dr. Simmons ran us both through the usual eye tracking and muscle tests. “You both seem good. Any concerns?”
“None here,” I told him. “Although my VNS is over six years old. They said seven to ten years on the battery.”
“Do you manually stimulate it a lot?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“I’ll put in for the technician to test it at your next visit,” he said. “It’s a simple connection between a wand and a monitor. It will tell us when you might need to replace it.”
“Which is surgery, right?” I asked.
“Yes, but very minor compared to the original one. We don’t have to touch the wire, just the device.”
“Okay, cool.” I stepped back so Ava could talk to him.
She hesitated for a moment, and for a second, I wondered if I should leave. But then she said, “I was curious about my menstrual cycle.”
“Oh?” Dr. Simmons looked up. “Your OB/GYN should be able to guide you on that.”
“Yes, I guess, but I read that seizures and the medication could delay them?”
He frowned. “I suppose they can, in theory, although that would more likely be for young teens, and the medication you are on doesn’t have that side effect. Nor do you have the frequency of seizures where we see other body impairments.”
She sat up. “Oh. So, you’re saying my cycle shouldn’t be affected?”
“I wouldn’t think so. Besides, it says here you’ve always taken Depo-Provera as a precaution in case your seizures were hormone related. That would be the reason your cycle has ceased.”
Oh, God. Her shots. All the blood ran from my face. “Ava, we haven’t gotten you in for a shot since the last seizure.”
She turned to me. “Should we have?”
“They’re only good for three months.”
Her eyes got wide. “It’s been eight.”
“Okay,” Dr. Simmons said. “I would check for pregnancy. You could certainly go from the shot to a pregnancy without ever having a cycle.”
“I had one a little over a month ago,” Ava said. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Christmas Eve.”
So, that was why she stopped on the way to her father’s.
And why she was elusive for a few days. Why hadn’t she felt she could tell me?
We could have handled this. And I would have remembered the shot.
Not that I ever had much to do with it. The OB/GYN visits weren’t ones I typically went to. But, of course, she hadn’t been.
“Let’s stay on top of this,” Dr. Simmons said. “Because the current drug you are on has not been sufficiently tested for safety during pregnancy. We’ll need to switch you.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ava said. “I haven’t been sick or tired or anything.” She smiled, but I could tell she was masking her anxiety.
“Okay, good. But do let us know.” He stood from his stool. “Otherwise, I’ll see you in six months. Tucker, we’ll test that battery then.”
“Great, thank you.”
When he left, I turned to Ava. “Christmas Eve, right?”
She nodded.
“That would have been the last week of December.” I counted on my fingers. “Then four weeks of January and a week of February. You should have had another one by now.”
“I know.”
“Let’s stop at the store on the way home. We have to know right away.”
I wanted to kick myself the entire drive to our neighborhood. Why hadn’t I checked on something so important? I guess because I’d never had to.
But if she bled in December, she wasn’t pregnant then.
And probably she was only late because it had been years since her last cycle. Her mother had put her on the shot as a teen. She might not have had a cycle in a decade.
I tried to relax. The likelihood that she would get pregnant on her first cycle ever was practically nil.
It would be okay.
This time, Ava sat in the car while I ran inside to buy the test. I had no idea which one to get. There was a package with two. That seemed like a good idea. The indicator was very clear, either “Pregnant” or “Not Pregnant.”
I stood in line, ignoring the far-too-interested look of the young female cashier. I guessed men didn’t buy pregnancy tests very often.
We were quiet on the drive home. Ava pulled the instructions out of the package. “I have to pee on the end of the stick, and then it has a countdown to tell us when the results are ready.”
“How long does that take?”
“One to three minutes.”
One to three. How quickly a little stick could change the course of your life.
We entered the front door, not talking or holding hands. Every step felt grave, like we were walking into the unknown.
She couldn’t be pregnant. Surely not. The world wouldn’t do that to us. She would have to change medications. It might not work. We’d reset with a baby in her, not married.
My stomach roiled. I’d let this happen. I was the keeper of the memories, the medication, the appointments.
She’d had her last shot a week before the wedding. I remembered that now. When the next shot came due, she might have gotten a notification and ignored it. We got so much random stuff all the time. Everyone did.
“I’m going to go pee on it,” Ava said. She took off alone. I wondered if she would do all of it without me, including waiting for the result. She could be so private. It was more pronounced this time than after any of the other resets.
It was that same hesitation that made her not want to get married, I feared. Something she saw or learned early in this reset had triggered that feeling. She wasn’t as close to Maya this time, either.
Maybe it was Harry, or Schitt’s Creek, or the history documentaries, or working at the diner. Something Flo said. Cosmopolitan. We couldn’t control what influenced her early thoughts.
It didn’t matter now. We could only move forward from here.
She returned to the living room quickly and set the test on the coffee table. It was in countdown mode.
I let out a small sigh of relief that we was including me. She sat down, and I took her hand.
All we could do was wait.
The rectangles at the bottom of the window blinked. There were two when she put it down, then three. Space for one more rectangle remained.
“It will be all right.” Ava kept her eyes on the test. “No matter what. It will be all right.”
I gripped her hand more tightly. “It will.”
Fourth rectangle. It blinked for only a moment before all of them disappeared, and words formed at the top of the window.
I blinked, not sure I could register what it said.
But it was there.
Pregnant.
Ava let out a sob, then jumped up and took off down the hall.
I picked up the test as if somehow the “Not” could show in front, but the single word remained. I set it down again and hurried after Ava.
She had flung herself diagonally across the bed, her face buried in a pillow. I circled the mattress and kneeled next to her, my hand in her hair.
“We’ll be all right.”
Her shoulders shook. I stroked her head, waiting it out.
All the scenarios lined up. Best case, the new med would work well, no seizures, and then…a baby.
We’d need help if she was going to keep doing photographs. We hadn’t changed our lifestyle, and I made more money. We could hire someone for the shooting hours. She could do the digital retouching when I was home.
We’d make it work.
Her voice emerged from the muffling of the pillow. “I’ll forget it. I’ll leave it in the car. Or at the store. Or in the bath. There will never be a mother worse than me.”
I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed beside her. “There is no wrestling that award from your own mother,” I said.
She turned her red, tear-strewn face to me. “That’s funny, actually.”
I drew her close. “I’m here, Ava. You’re not facing this alone.”
She curled into my chest. “A baby, Tucker. What are we going to do with a baby?”
“Love it?”
“What if it has epilepsy, too? It’s like the Time Traveler’s Wife. She ends up with the traveling husband and the traveling kid.”
“What would Gram say?”
Ava let out a half-sob, half-laugh. “Don’t borrow trouble from the future. You’ve already got enough.” She rolled onto her back, sniffling. “I guess we have to make a list. Call Dr. Simmons. Call the OB/GYN. Get the new med.” She covered her eyes with her arm. “Prepare for another possible reset.”
“We’ll make a list.”
She lifted her arm to peer at me. “It’s your baby, too, isn’t it?”
I had to laugh at that. “It is.”
“We should get married.”
“It might be time. It will help me handle things if…”
“If I forget you and the baby. You can keep the baby even if I run away.” She squeezed her eyes closed.
“I don’t think that will happen.”
“You work all day, Tucker. I’ll be alone.”
I rolled onto my back next to her. We both stared at the ceiling, thinking.
Then I said, “Maybe we can hire someone full time.”
“That’s so expensive.”
“Gram will help.”
She started sobbing again. I pulled her close. “Hey, what about a seizure dog? We could get on a list. You know your dad. He’ll find the best company.”
“I’ll make him pay for it.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. God, Marcus was going to freak out when he heard Ava was pregnant. All the better to get married.
Ava sat up. “Let’s get married right now. Before the meds change. Before anybody knows anything. We’ll keep it a secret until it’s done. Then spring it on them in a few weeks.”
“Okay.”
“Just a few people. Family only.” She hopped from the bed and began pacing. “I shot a small wedding up on Mount Bonnell last fall. It was pretty. A small gathering. We like Mount Bonnell. We’ve been there together.”
“We have. We do.”
“How fast can we do it?” She lunged for her phone and started typing.
“Okay, it says here we can apply at any time. Even today. And we have to wait three days. Then we can do it.” She flung her phone onto the bed.
“I know lots of officiants. I liked the guy who did the wedding a few weeks ago. He was funny.”
I stood next to her. “See, we’re figuring it out.”
She turned to me, her cheek on my chest. “So, doctors. Wedding. Tell everyone. New meds.” She lifted her chin, her gaze meeting mine. “Then what?”
“We hope,” I said. “We hope that the seizure stays far, far away.”
Her arms wrapped around my waist. “We hope,” she repeated. “We hope and hope and hope and hope.”