Chapter Eighteen
Ishould have told Adam’s financial advisor ahead of time to invest some of our portfolio in the stock for pregnancy tests, because I was single-handedly driving up their profit margins these days, testing early and often. I, who understood the medical probability of getting an inaccurate result by testing too early was still peeing on sticks days ahead of when my period was due.
I knew all of this and yet, like a junkie, I pulled yet another stick out of the package, held it under my urine stream and prayed my aim was good enough that I wouldn’t end up peeing on my hand—again.
With that mishap averted, I set the test on the back of the toilet and hopped into the shower.
I hadn’t taken a basal body temperature or charted anything in almost two months. And the sex had gotten back to the more interesting spectrum of things. Thank goodness. It felt good not to worry—at least for the next few months.
At some point, though, I needed to get that full fertility workup. But I’d worry about that later. Maybe I’d magically have more time then.
The shower was long, hot, relaxing, just the way I loved them. I slowly massaged shampoo, conditioner and a hot oil treatment into my scalp, then shaved my legs. By the time I dried off and started prepping for work, I’d all but forgotten the pee stick sitting on the back of the toilet.
And because I’d left them sitting there more than just once—to be pointed out to me later by either Adam or the housekeeper, I remembered to grab it and trash it after I blew my hair dry.
Only, after I grabbed it, I had to glance at it. And then, halfway to pivoting to toss it in the wastebasket, I had to do a double take. Then a triple take.
Followed quickly by a quadruple- and quintuple-take.
There was a second line on the test this time.
I stared at it, for far too many seconds uncomprehending, merely registering that something was different. Then suddenly and without thinking, I let out a sharp yelp. Holy shit!
A positive pregnancy test.
Like...for real? Was this thing broken or something? I checked the date on the package and then promptly peed on a second stick—this time not so deftly avoiding the pee-on-your-hand side-effect. I guess that’s why God invented surgical soap.
As I spent the requisite two minutes washing my hands with the sterile soap, I stared at that damn stick like they tell you to never watch a pot that’s supposed to start boiling. And this time, I watched as that second blue line showed up right before my eyes. Like a magic trick.
Damn.
The odds of two positive pregnancy tests taken within minutes of each other showing a false result were next to none.
The proof was incontrovertible.
I was pregnant.
But as a doubting skeptic who couldn’t believe in the magic of a pee stick, I wrote up a lab bloodwork order for myself and stopped by an outpatient lab where nobody knew me. No sense in starting gossip at work and risk the news spreading before I even had a chance to tell my family. I marked the test STAT and was promised results within the next five hours. Good enough for me.
If I was going to be delivering this news to Adam, I was absolutely going to have every bit of information before he started shooting rapid-fire questions at me. The pee sticks were enough for me. But of course, when the STAT blood test came back positive with an HcG hormone level of 721 ml, any doubt that had lingered in the back of my mind, somehow determined to disbelieve the happy news, was now abolished.
Adam and I were going to be parents.
I punched the date of my last menstrual period into an online pregnancy calculator to learn that I was almost six weeks along. The likely conception date, based on the average length of my cycle was during our trip to Arrowhead for Adam’s birthday.
And then it told me the approximate due date.
Christmas day.
I blinked, stunned. Of course, Adam and I would make a baby that had to be special about his or her entrance into the world and come on the craziest day of the year.
Damn...
Later during the long shift, in a moment where I got a few hours to breathe, I went to the residents lounge to catch up on paperwork. At the coffee station, I filled a mug and prepped a cup, only remembering to stop myself right before taking that first sip. With a sigh of deepest regret, I had to watch as that beautiful-smelling cup of brewed beans, along with the much-needed caffeine, poured down the drain.
No coffee for at least the next nine months, and likely longer, depending on my breastfeeding schedule. And no wine, either, though I’d been off that for a while.
But caffeine...caffeine was single-handedly getting me through the trials and tribulations of medical residency. I’d have to do a little research to come up with new, healthier strategies for boosting my energy.
The first symptom I noticed—and it was ridiculous to notice because it was still so early—but I definitely seemed to be peeing a lot more than normal. And on a medical resident’s intern-year schedule that wasn’t conducive to bathroom breaks, that was a challenge.
Then there was the other hurdle to get over—coming up with a way to break the news to Adam.
If I went with fanfare and something fancy and ostentatious, I’d have to enlist other people to help, like my mom, Heath, maybe even reach out to my extended friend group. And while it might be fun to get everyone involved in the great news-breaking, it inevitably meant that I’d have to tell all of them before I told Adam. That didn’t seem right, since he was the one who was about to become a dad. He should be the second person to find out, after me, right?
But I still wanted to do something memorable. I wanted him to have a story to tell his friends and family. A story to tell our child when he or she grew up and was curious about that sort of thing. I wanted it to be something that would cause him to get a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes and remember when his wife was young and beautiful. When we were both full of hope before being broken down by the perils of decades of life and parenthood.
Damn, that went dark fast, didn’t it?
Regardless, when I was in the on-call room trying to get a little catnap but not succeeding, I started searching social media for ideas—TikTok, even Pinterest—for any graphics or fun crafty hints. Every possibility I came across was either completely insipid or so very not us.
Frustrated, I finally dozed off. Only to be abruptly awakened by my work cell phone pager going off. A patient was reporting symptoms that I needed to check in on. Groggily, I left the bunk room and meandered into the lounge, stretching my arms and arching my back to get some blood flowing.
“Whoa, you look awful.”
I turned. Senior resident Dr. Iverson, because of course this guy would have to show his ass up right in the middle of this long but crazy exciting day, just to pee into my cheerios. He seemed to enjoy doing that on a regular basis.
“Thanks, I call it my trendy ‘resident on call’ look. It will be in all the magazines next fall.” I smirked, then swerved dangerously close to that damn coffee machine. The brew was fresh. I inhaled deeply, getting that fun tingly feeling I got whenever I relished the smell of fresh coffee. Mmm. I’d been a tea drinker for most of my life but becoming a medical student had made a coffee worshipper out of me. Dr. Pepper or tea didn’t come close to being the magic wake-up drink that coffee was. Now I knew what Adam was always going on about as he guzzled cup after cup every morning.
If I could mainline the stuff, I would.
This kid better be grateful for the sacrifices I was making for them already.
I had to laugh at myself because even now I was lancing maternal guilt at the zygote that I’d just found out existed only twenty-four hours before.
Iverson moved to my side to refill his cup. I should have walked away then. But for some reason I wanted to torture myself by watching him pour and fix himself a cup.
“Where’s your cup at? I can refill you.”
I blinked. “Uh, no. I’m good, thanks.”
“I mean, you don’t look good.”
“I’m just groggy.”
“Hence my question. Where’s your cup? I’ll refill you.”
I stepped back. “Gotta go check on a patient then finish my charts. See ya.”
Before he could reply, watching me with an openly astonished expression, I slipped out of the lounge and high tailed it down a couple flights of stairs.
Even with a relatively calm last few hours of call, I still had no ideas.
When I got home, Adam was still at work. I hopped in the shower, got into my fleece pajamas, and inevitably, did more searches.
Eventually, I conked out on the downstairs couch.
When I woke up, it was dark outside and someone had pulled my phone out of my hand and covered me with a throw blanket.
I got up, feeling parched and fumbled my way over to the light switch adjacent to the kitchen, blinking at the brightness when the lights hummed to life.
Immediately, I grabbed a glass and went to the fridge to fill it with ice water. What time was it, even? And was Adam home yet? The house was pitch black, but that didn’t mean much. Adam had the super-annoying habit of entering the house in the dark and only illuminating the room he was currently occupying. Which meant that often, I’d get home and not even realize for ten or fifteen minutes that there was another soul in the house. I had his location turned on for my phone, and he had mine. But my phone was sitting on the coffee table in the other room and I was feeling unmotivated to go get it while I replenished my poor parched body.
Of course, then I had to promptly go empty my bladder.
This was already getting annoying and I hadn’t even gone through the merest fraction of the body changes I’d be enduring over the next few months.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, I was nearly scared out of my own skin by the very large man lurking right beside the doorway.