“If something comes up that becomes an issue, then I hope you’ll still feel the same,” she said. “But the injections won’t be an issue, either way,” she told him, her expression easy. Calm. “If I need them, I’ll do them. It’s not a big deal.”
Painful injections on, at minimum, a weekly basis? Okay, so it wasn’t peeling off skin or anything, but...
“They won’t be nearly as painful as giving birth,” she told him, with a cock of her head. Reminding him that she knew what she was talking about.
He’d never witnessed a birth live. She’d done more than that.
“It’ll be an extra minute out of my day once a week,” she said.
She’d been so upset in Dr. Adams’s office that morning. But it apparently hadn’t been about the injections. Maybe he’d known that from the beginning. Maybe he just wasn’t sure how to talk about the emotional pain being pregnant seemed to have been causing her that morning.
Maybe he’d been wrong about that tear he’d seen.
And her abrupt departure from their appointment?
“More than a minute. You’ll need to make weekly trips to the doctor’s office and...”
She was shaking her head.
“Progesterone shots can be given in the thigh. I can do that myself.”
He shook his head. Sure, some diabetics and others learned how to give themselves injections, but it took time. He’d watched his father’s struggle when he’d had to do at-home injections. He knew this one. “You’d have to learn how to...”
Her headshake back interrupted him. “Enough already, Jamie. I knew what I was doing when I signed the contract and I’m fine. I’m a pro at giving injections,” she said. “I’ve been doing them since I was in junior high. My grandmother was diabetic,” she said. “I spent all of my junior high and high school years coming home for lunch to give her her shots. She said Gramps hurt too much when he gave them and she had a needle paranoia and couldn’t give them to herself. Her hands weren’t really steady enough, either.”
“You left school every day?” He stood there, wanting to stay and chat for as long as she’d allow it. “You never had lunch with your friends?”
Shrugging, she said, “I had great lunches. Gram was a phenomenal cook, and she always had something good waiting for me.”
He wanted to say more about how she’d missed out on some of the most important teenage socialization time, but knew that no good would come from pointing that out. Realized, too, that she’d know more than he what she’d sacrificed. “Maybe that’s why I don’t remember you from high school,” he said. “Emily and I looked you up in our junior and senior yearbooks, and neither of us recognized you.”
“I was two years younger, not in any of your classes.”
“And never in the cafeteria,” he said, beginning to understand a bit more who Christine Elliott really was. A woman who’d been sacrificing herself seemingly most of her life, to tend to others.
He didn’t like being one of those using her to find his own happiness.
Who tended to her beside Christine herself?
Who sacrificed for her?
Jamie didn’t like questions without answers.
Problems without solutions.
But he sure as hell liked her.
Too much.
Chapter Fifteen
The next seven weeks settled into a routine that transitioned to a sense of normality. Christine lived her life as she had before impregnation: working, volunteering, spending a couple of evenings a week at the center, having dinner out with friends. Racquetball changed from focusing on rigor to prec
ision. And her diet changed a bit, with the addition of vitamins and the omission of foods she used to like but suddenly had no taste for, plus those she could no longer eat. Tuna was first on her list of foods no longer welcome anywhere near her. The smell made her nauseous, exactly as it had the first time she’d had a baby—and that was the extent of any signs of morning sickness. Just like back then.
So many similarities. Right down to giving up the child at the end of the pregnancy. She’d done it before. She could do it again. And it should hurt less this time. The baby wasn’t biologically hers; she knew it was going to a loving home. And she had the chance to see it if she wanted to.
Her clothes were getting a little tighter, and her stomach developing a paunch so slight most wouldn’t even notice.