Xavier is immediately there with a towel to take it from me and hurry it out to the doctor while I wash my hands. After I do, I splash some water on my face.
Holy shit. How long does it take before we have a positive or negative? Will the doctor have to send it off to a lab?
I walk back out to the other room.
I’m surprised when I see my cup sitting on the nightstand with two little plastic sticks that look very similar to the ones from the store sitting beside the cup.
The doctor has gloves on and she’s looking at her phone. Xavier’s head is also bent, looking at the phone.
“What is it?” I come closer and see that it’s a timer. So it really is just like the at home tests. I’ll be damned. I stare at the timer with the same silent intensity.
Two minutes and twelve-seconds left. Eleven. Ten.
Commence with the slowest two minutes of my life.
At the end of which, the doctor checks the sticks only to look up at us and announce, “Congratulations, you’re going to be parents.”
Chapter 17
It’s another three weeks before we can hear the heartbeat.
Xavier’s called Dr. Winthrop about fifty times in the interim with all sorts of ridiculous questions. Should I be eating a special diet? How limited should my activities be? Should I, in fact, be on bed rest? That question came after a knock-down drag out fight between us when he tried to keep me in bed for two days straight after she left the first time.
Xavier had shown her the little bit of blood on my underwear and she’d calmly explained that light spotting happened in twenty to forty percent of first-trimester pregnancies and that, with such a small amount, it was nothing to be worried about. It most likely meant the fertilized egg was implanting in the uterine wall.
Xavier wasn’t impressed with most likely. He wanted her to do the ultrasound but she stood her ground and said she could, but it wouldn’t show much at this early stage and the wand might irritate the cervix and cause more bleeding.
That shut him up.
Instead, she just did a physical exam with her hands and determined that everything looked perfectly normal.
That didn’t stop Xavier from going crazy commando about my health right after she left and all but chaining me to the bed. When he found me wandering the resort looking for good books, he ordered me straight back to bed.
The first day I didn’t mind. I’d been working my ass off for a week. A day of R&R being pampered, resting in bed, and reading? Sign me up.
But it turns out that over the past two months I’ve gotten accustomed to being active. I only lasted half a day before I suited up and joined Xavier out in the stables.
Or rather, I tried to join Xavier.
He scooped me up and trotted me right back to bed.
Annoying, stubborn, mule of a man.
He turned the goddamned cameras back on me and threw a shit-fit if I got out of bed for more than a five-minute bathroom session.
Yeah, that lasted a whole half-day more before I’d wait until he got back out to the stable before getting up to go downstairs. He’d see me on the camera and come to drag me upstairs. Then he’d go out to the horses again… and repeat. Until finally a nice shouting match ensued and I finally got him to call the doctor and ask her opinion.
And ha! She said that regular activity was important at this stage in my pregnancy. As long as it wasn’t too strenuous. So no more lifting huge feed bags. Naturally Xavier wasn’t going to let me even carry water buckets. Or muck stalls.
Basically I was relegated to grooming duties.
Okay, so I couldn’t say I minded ab
out not having to muck the stalls anymore.
Plus, Xavier suddenly thought I needed all the sleep I could get.
So now I get to sleep in past sunrise. Miracle of miracles.