Cease Fire (Blackbridge Security 9)

She shakes her head. “It’ll pass.”

I help her to the sofa, grabbing her favorite blanket from the back of the couch.

“I’ll get you a glass of ginger ale.”

“Water,” she whispers. “I think the carbonation would be too much right now.”

I nod, making sure she’s comfortable before I walk to the kitchen.

“Cold or room temp?” I ask.

“Cold,” she answers, her voice sounding much farther away than it actually is.

She accepts the bottle of water from the fridge readily, giving me a weak smile of thanks. After taking a sip, she wraps both her hands around it and lowers her head to the throw pillow on the couch, her eyes closing on a sigh.

I leave the room, feeling utterly helpless. She’s been sick before, but after she throws up, she’s fine and asking for a snack. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but I’ve grown used to that type of illness. This feels like more, like there’s something terribly wrong.

Despite her telling me that there’s really nothing she can take for nausea while pregnant, I head into her bathroom to raid her medicine cabinet anyway. Women have been getting sick for centuries during pregnancy. I find it hard to believe that modern medicine hasn’t come up with something to ease that for them.

Her medicine cabinet is nearly bare with only extra toothpaste and some type of face mask cream, so I continue my search.

The top drawer of her bathroom cabinet has her makeup in it. I know this from watching her get ready on the mornings she has to have teleconference calls for work. The second drawer is washcloths. The third contains travel sized personal hygiene items.

I know I won’t have any luck with the very bottom drawer, but I pull it open anyway. I blink down at the abundance of individually wrapped pregnancy tests, confused.

Does she take them all the time? Is she worried she’s going to lose the baby?

My hand is shaking, my concern for her feeling bad right now multiplying.

I can’t go ask her because I don’t want her to be any more nervous about what may be going on. I don’t want her to feed on my fear, but this also isn’t something I can just let go.

Google doesn’t give me any damn answers, and that probably has more to do with me not asking the question right than an actual lack of information.

I fire off a picture of the tests in the Blackbridge Security group text. We normally only use this for work, but the importance of the situation means getting everyone involved.

Me: Please explain why a pregnant woman would have so many pregnancy tests?

Deacon: Anna confessed to taking a pregnancy test nearly every day when she suspected she was pregnant.

Jude: Why are you going through her things?

I scowl at my friend’s response.

Quinten: I agree with Deacon. They’re probably left over from when she was trying to verify if she was pregnant.

Wren: Fuck, man.

Deacon: ???

Me: Wren?

Wren: Those aren’t pregnancy tests.

I tilt my head in confusion before starting to type out what I fear the most, asking if they’re tests to determine whether she’s losing the baby.

Jude: Oh shit.

My heart is pounding, hands growing slick.

Me: Is there something wrong with the baby?

Wren: Those sticks are part of an ovulation testing kit.

My breaths grow shallow, but it can’t mean what I think it means. I look back over at the generic sticks lining the bottom drawer as if they’re a stick of dynamite getting ready to explode.

Quinten: Holy. Shit.

I drop my phone on the counter, ignoring the vibration of incoming texts. All I can do is stare down at the open drawer.

I’ve never seen an ovulation test kit before, but I know what they do. Anders and Cadie had trouble getting pregnant with their first child, and Cadie raved about how an ovulation test kit helped realize the days she was guessing she was most fertile was off.

I don’t know if I’m grateful for how open everyone in my family is about sharing such personal information right now.

I shake my head, moving the tests around with my hand, praying that my head is wrong with where it’s going right now.

My fingers brush over a pack of pills, and it looks like a packet of birth control pills but there aren’t weeks and weeks of medicine. There are only ten pills on this pack. I flip it over.

“What the fuck is Clomid?” I mutter to myself.

Picking up my phone, I close out of the text thread and pull up a search browser, typing in the name of the medicine and hitting search.

My stomach turns when I see fertility drug as the description. The word is on repeat all the way down the results thread as if I need numerous slaps in the face at her betrayal.

My phone rings in my hand, Wren’s name lighting up the screen, and I answer with the hopes that he’s done some digging and calling to calm my fears.