5. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
Before the Dinner
The nausea hits before I’m fully awake.
I’m on my feet and moving toward the bathroom before my eyes are even open, muscle memory from too many early morning shifts guiding me through the darkness.
My knees hit the cold tile just in time, and I’m gripping the edge of the toilet, heaving up nothing because I haven’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch.
When it passes, I sit back against the wall, breathing hard. The bathroom is still dark - I didn’t bother with the light - and the only sound is my own ragged exhale.
This is the fourth morning in a row.
I tell myself it’s stress. The isolation.
Kenneth’s been gone for weeks, and when we do talk, his voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere much farther than Hong Kong.
Something has shifted between us, some tectonic plate of our marriage grinding against another, and I can feel the tremors but I can’t find the fault line.
The nausea rolls through me again, not as urgent this time, just a slow wave of wrongness that settles in my stomach and refuses to leave. I press my palm against the cool tile and wait for it to pass.
I’m a doctor. I know what these symptoms mean.
I’ve known for days, probably. Known in the way you know something you’re not ready to face, the knowledge sitting in the back of your mind like a patient in a waiting room, polite and persistent and impossible to ignore forever.
But acknowledging it would make it real. And real things can be broken.
The dizziness finds me two hours later.
I’m in the master bathroom this time, the one with the marble countertops Josephine chose and the lighting that makes my skin look sallow, trying to get ready for a shift I’m not sure I can work.
The room tilts sideways without warning, and I grab the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles go white.
“Okay,” I whisper to no one. “Okay. Just breathe.”
I breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth, the way I’ve taught a hundred anxious patients in the ER. The room steadies. My reflection stares back at me from the mirror - dark circles, unwashed hair, the ghost of someone who used to feel certain about her life.
The nausea rises again, and this time I don’t fight it. I sink down onto the cold floor, back against the cabinet, and let my head fall between my knees.
I can’t keep pretending I don’t know.
The test is still in my bag from three days ago.
I bought it at a pharmacy twenty minutes from our house, paying cash, wearing sunglasses like some kind of absurd spy. As if anyone would recognize me. As if anyone in Kenneth’s world would be caught dead in a CVS.
I didn’t take it that night. Or the next morning. Or the morning after that.
But now I’m sitting on the bathroom floor with the room spinning around me, and I can’t pretend anymore.
The box is simple. Clinical. Two tests inside, because the manufacturers know that nobody believes the first result. I read the instructions three times even though I could recite them from memory, even though I’ve explained this process to teenage patients who couldn’t meet my eyes.
Urinate on the absorbent tip for five seconds. Lay flat on a clean surface. Wait three minutes.
Three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds to find out if everything is about to change.
I follow the instructions with steady hands. Doctor hands. The hands that have started IVs on screaming toddlers and stitched up wounds in the middle of chaos and never once trembled.
I set the test on the counter and I wait.
The two pink lines appear before the three minutes are up.
I know I should wait. Know the instructions say to wait.
But I can see them forming, one dark and certain, one fainter but growing stronger by the second, and my hands are shaking now, doctor hands forgotten, just Beatrice hands, just a woman alone in a bathroom staring at the answer to a question she’s been too afraid to ask.
Pregnant.
I’m pregnant.
The tears come before I can stop them. Before I even understand what I’m feeling.
They just spill over, hot and sudden, streaming down my cheeks and dripping onto the marble countertop that I hate, the countertop Josephine chose, and I’m laughing now too, this strange broken sound that doesn’t belong to me.
A baby. Our baby.
I press my palm flat against my stomach, against the place where something impossible is beginning. Something that started in the middle of all this loneliness, all this distance, all these weeks of feeling like I’m disappearing into the walls of this house.
Kenneth was home for a few days two months ago, before the Hong Kong deal swallowed him whole - the last stretch of time we were really together, before the distance opened up between us. I count backward. The timing fits. Barely, but it fits.
Life. Growing inside me. Stubborn and persistent and refusing to wait for the perfect moment.
“Hi,” I whisper, feeling foolish. Feeling wonderful. “Hi, little one.”
The joy is overwhelming. Unexpected. I didn’t know I could still feel this way - this enormous, this full, this certain about anything.
I’ve spent so many months swallowing smaller and smaller pieces of happiness, rationing hope like it might run out, and now here is this flood, this tidal wave, this everything.
I want to call Kenneth immediately.
I want to hear his voice, share this moment, tell him that everything is going to be different now. I want to bridge the distance that’s grown between us with this news, this gift, this proof that we’re still building something together even when it doesn’t feel like it.
My hand is reaching for my phone before I stop myself.
He’s been so cold lately. Short texts that feel like afterthoughts.
Calls that go to voicemail, then callbacks that come hours too late.
Something is wrong, and I can’t figure out what, and I don’t want this moment - this perfect, impossible moment - to be tainted by whatever darkness has crept into him.
I’ll tell him in person.
At the family dinner. In front of everyone. A surprise.
I imagine his face. The stress lines smoothing out. The joy replacing whatever has been weighing on him. The way he’ll pull me close and whisper that everything is going to be different now.
This baby will fix things.
This baby will bring him back to me.
The next few days pass in a haze of quiet happiness.
I move through the house differently now.
Touch my stomach when no one’s watching, which is always, because no one is ever watching.
I eat breakfast for the first time in months - plain toast, nothing that might trigger the nausea - and I smile at the orchid Kenneth sent weeks ago, still blooming on the kitchen windowsill despite Josephine’s dire predictions.
We’re both tougher than we look, I think. Me and this flower.
I buy a tiny onesie at a boutique downtown. Pale yellow, soft as a cloud, small enough to fit in my palm. The saleswoman asks if I know the gender yet and I say no, it’s early, and she smiles like she understands.
I hide the onesie in my drawer, underneath the sweaters I never wear. My secret. Our secret, mine and the baby’s, until Saturday.
I research cribs and car seats and pediatricians, falling down internet rabbit holes at two in the morning when sleep won’t come.
I make lists of names I like and names I don’t, then delete them all and start over.
I read about developmental milestones and nursery colors and the best hospitals for delivery, even though Saint Anne’s is the obvious choice, even though I already know every doctor in the maternity ward.
It feels like planning. Like building. Like the opposite of waiting.
I call my mother on Thursday.
“Hypothetically,” I say, curled up on the bed with the phone pressed to my ear, “if someone were planning a big announcement at a family dinner, how would they do it?”
Patricia Calloway laughs, this warm knowing sound that makes me homesick for the house I grew up in.
The small kitchen with its chipped countertops.
The backyard where Dad used to grill burgers on Sunday afternoons.
The bedroom I shared with Celia until she left for college, covered in posters of bands neither of us listens to anymore.
“Hypothetically,” my mother says, “I would say that someone should just come out and say whatever she’s not saying, because her mother is very perceptive and very patient but also very curious.”
“I can’t tell you yet. It’s a surprise.”
“For the dinner on Saturday?”
“Maybe.”
“Does this surprise involve my future grandchildren?”
I don’t answer, but I’m smiling so hard my face hurts.
“Whatever you’re not telling me, sweetheart,” Mom says softly, “I’m sure it’s wonderful.”
“It is, Mom.” I press my hand to my stomach. “It really is.”
Kenneth texts on Friday morning.
I’ll be home tonight. Dinner tomorrow with your family still on?
My heart leaps. Finally. After weeks of absence, weeks of distance, weeks of feeling like I’m married to a voicemail greeting.
Yes, I write back. Can’t wait to see you.
I stare at the phone, waiting for his response. The three dots that would mean he’s typing. Some indication that he’s as eager to see me as I am to see him.
Nothing.
I add: I have a surprise.
Still nothing.
He doesn’t respond.
The night before the dinner, Kenneth comes home.
I’m in the bedroom putting on earrings - the sapphire drops he bought me for our first anniversary, back when he still had time for gestures like that - when I hear the front door open.
“Kenneth?” I’m moving before I finish saying his name, feet bare on the hardwood, heart racing. “Kenneth!”
He’s standing in the foyer. Still in his travel clothes, suit wrinkled from the flight, carry-on abandoned by the door. The chandelier throws light across his face, and something is wrong.
His expression is stone. Closed off. Empty in a way I’ve never seen.
“Hi.” I slow as I approach him, that joy from a moment ago curdling into something uncertain. “I missed you.”