Fourteen #2
Stupid hot tears welled in her eyes at his tentative request. She owed him an explanation. She knew she did. But … right now, despite the evidence staring at her for the past five hours, she was a little blindsided.
Also, quite suddenly, she knew she was going to be sick.
‘Oh god,’ she wailed.
Whirling away from the sink, she took the three paces that separated the vanity and the toilet, bent over the bowl and promptly threw up, deep guttural retches that felt as if they’d come from her toes.
He was behind her then, his hand on her back. ‘Can I—’
‘No!’ she half yelled, half groaned. It was bad enough she was vomiting like it was her superpower, she didn’t need a bloody audience. ‘Get out!’ A new wave hit and she just managed to choke out, ‘Go!’, before she deposited more of her stomach contents down the loo.
*
Rowena emerged ten minutes later. She’d tried to do something about her appearance, which could be best described as wrung-out dish mop, but, apart from finger combing her hair into some semblance of a ponytail, cleaning her teeth had been all she’d been able to manage.
Red gave a low whine and a tail thump from his position on the end of her bed, where Lachlan must have sent him because he didn’t move, but he didn’t take his eyes off her either. She joined Lachlan, who was sitting at the table staring at the tests she’d laid there earlier.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she eased herself into the chair opposite. ‘I didn’t mean to yell.’
He shrugged dismissively as he looked up from the table. ‘You took three tests?’ He sounded as discombobulated as she felt.
‘Yes.’
The space between his eyebrows furrowed again. ‘Why?’
‘Because they were all positive.’
‘And you … wanted to be certain?’
‘No. Because they had to be wrong. A … faulty batch or something.’
A theory he’d just disproved.
He nodded like her response was perfectly reasonable, even though he was clearly struggling with her logic. ‘So you didn’t at any time think they were all positive because you might be pregnant?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Never.’ No matter how much she’d hoped they were accurate, deep down she just didn’t believe them.
‘And the whole throwing up thing didn’t clue you in?’
‘There’s a vomiting bug going around. I thought …’
Rowena let it dangle because clearly, she hadn’t been thinking very well at all. Surely any woman of her age who’d recently had unprotected sex would at least wonder?
‘But you are pregnant.’
‘Apparently.’
She must have sounded pretty miserable because his next question was unexpected.
‘And … that’s a bad thing?’
Hot tears sprang to her eyes as quickly as her vehement rejection of his question rose in her throat.
‘No.’ The tears spilled over before she could blink them away.
‘I know I assured you it wouldn’t happen and I’m really sorry about that.
Truly. If I’d thought for a moment pregnancy was a possibility, I’d have been upfront about it.
But, no …’ She dashed away a second wave of tears. ‘It’s not a bad thing.’
‘Then …’ He gave her a very gentle smile. ‘Why are you crying? Or are they happy tears?’
They most certainly weren’t happy tears.
‘Because …’ Rowena sucked in a breath. Even thinking the words was hard enough—having to voice them was a knife to her heart, and they clawed at her throat desperately trying to stay put. ‘I’ve been down this road and it’s not …’
Shutting her eyes, Rowena reached for that calm she and her therapist had worked so hard on achieving.
Oh god. She was going to have to call her therapist.
Rowena opened her eyes, her gaze meeting his. ‘It’s not going to come to anything.’
There. She’d said it. Spoken the quiet bit out loud.
Rowena knew, both through her work and through personal interactions, that a lot of men, confronted by such raw female emotion, might have rushed in with assurances or subject changes to avoid upsetting her any further.
Particularly, she was learning, outback men, who were even worse than their city counterparts when it came to emotion.
But not Lachlan. He got up, came around to her side, pulled the chair out beside her, placed his palms on the table and calmly cut to the chase.
‘Is this about Archie?’
‘Yes.’ Her breath caught as more tears brimmed in her eyes. Archie. He’d said Archie. Not the baby. Or the pregnancy. ‘And the multiple fertilised eggs that never ever implanted or only lasted a few days or weeks no matter what drugs or latest scientific wizardry they used.’
Not to mention that, at thirty-six, she was considered a geriatric pregnancy. They didn’t officially call it that anymore—advanced maternal age was now the preferred term—but she knew she was at increased risk of miscarriage.
And then there was the other baby. The one she couldn’t talk about. The one they’d sucked from her body before the convenience of a pill had revolutionised abortion, when she’d been a scared-shitless fifteen-year-old. The one her therapist was sure she’d been punishing herself over, ever since.
The one a small part of her was convinced the universe had been punishing her over, ever since.
‘You think it—’ He stopped for a second and corrected himself. ‘The baby. Isn’t going to … stick?’
Her heart heavy, Rowena slid her hand over the top of his, and her heart skipped a beat when he turned his palm, entwining his fingers with hers.
‘I know it’s not, Lachy.’
She broke it as gently as she could, aware in this moment that it was no longer just about her. This was his baby and it would be his loss as much as hers.
‘Maybe,’ he said with a squeeze of his hand, ‘it will this time?’ Smiling gently, he shrugged. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
Rowena returned his smile, if a little wanly, as Lachlan unknowingly echoed his grandmother.
Yes, it was true, miraculous stories of babies after years of infertility did happen.
As a midwife, and a NICU nurse, she’d been a witness to a few.
But she knew they weren’t as common as the media would have people believe.
And she couldn’t buy in to the fantasy.
‘Sure,’ she conceded. ‘But I just … can’t think like that. I can’t … hope.’ Her eyes beseeched him, needing him to understand. ‘The other side of hope is this gaping, horrible void, and I can’t go there again.’
She’d recently escaped another horrible void, and Rowena was done with them.
More hot tears came and, without speaking a word, Lachlan drew her in for a hug. She sat stiffly for a moment but within moments she was melting into him, burying her face in his neck. Shutting her eyes, she inhaled the earthy aromas she was fast coming to associate with Lachlan.
Dust. Hay. Dog. Wool.
‘Okay,’ he soothed, his warm hand a solid comfort between her shoulder blades. ‘Let’s just take it one day at a time, shall we?’
Rowena nodded, sniffling into his neck. That was the only way forward, because if she looked ahead she’d plan.
She’d hope.
‘I’ll be with you every step of the way.’
His soothing assurance made Rowena realise she hadn’t even asked Lachlan how he felt about any of this, which was exceedingly selfish. True, she didn’t really have the capacity right now to process much, but that didn’t mean his feelings should be ignored.
Pulling out of his embrace, she scrubbed her hands over her face to dry the tears.
‘Oh god, I’m sorry, I haven’t even asked you how you feel about the situation.
You come in here, I make you wee on a stick, then I not only disgrace myself by hurling everywhere but also crying all over you.
You’ve had this news dumped in your lap and I’ve made this all about me. ’
‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed. ‘I get this has been a shock.’
‘Maybe. But that’s no excuse. So, come on … talk to me.’