“Celia, when is your cycle due?” He looked confused, and as I calculated I realized why. It should be time for my period.
“It was late last month, so maybe it’s off this month too. All the stress has thrown me off-kilter, that’s all.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t look like he believed me.
“What?” I asked him, dread in the back of my mind. Trust him to notice when I had my period and when I didn’t.
“You were late?” He didn’t look upset, just curious.
“Yeah. But it’s just the stress. It made me sick too for a few weeks, but that’s all done now.”
“Hmm. You’re going to see a doctor on Monday.”
“I’m not pregnant, Grant!” I said loudly, terror gripped around my heart. I couldn’t be pregnant. I’d have to quit school, and I’d probably never go back. Even if they took care of me for the rest of my life, I still wanted to find a cure for that horrible disease. I wanted to work on
it.
“We weren’t exactly careful,” Keith said and sat up. I moved off him and slumped back against the couch.
“No, it’s just stress.” I refuted. I didn’t want to have a baby right now. In a few years, maybe, when I was done with school, but not right now. I wasn’t even nineteen yet!
“Celia.” Colin took my hand, very calmly, and spoke in a soothing tone. “We’ll take you to the doctor and find out for sure. If it’s stress, great. We’ll get you on birth control and you won’t have to worry. I know your studies are important to you, and we should have all been more careful.”
“I can’t be pregnant. It’s just… not…,” but it was possible. I started to cry, and Colin took me in his arms. He crooned to me softly, and held me in his lap, as if I were a small child, and compared to him, I almost was, in size anyway.
“Celia, if you’re pregnant, we’ll take care of the baby and it’ll have three dads. It won’t interfere with your studies. We’ll be finished with school in the spring, and then we’re free to take care of the baby.”
“Can they even do DNA testing on triplets?” The sentence wasn’t exactly right, but my brain was just too full of terror to think straight.
“We don’t care, Celia. We’ll all be the baby’s dad.”
“But, can they?” I focused on that one thing for the moment, my mind too afraid to even think about a baby at this point.
“There is research into identifying ways to tell identical multiples, whether twins or triplets, apart. I’m not sure they’ve gone far enough to really tell yet but yeah, there are studies into ways to tell us apart on a genetic level that can be identified.”
“Cool.” I stood up and walked out of the living room. “I’m going to have a shower and then, I’m going to sleep. Good night, fellas.”
I was numb again, afraid despite what they’d said. I couldn’t have a baby right now. I just couldn’t.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Celia
I was fucking mad as Colin drove me to the clinic. I didn’t want to do this, but I soon as I woke up this morning, they’d insisted. They’d called a doctor to come in on a Sunday and paid him a fortune to run the blood test on me. It took an hour or so, but after what felt like days of chewing my thumb the doctor called us back to his office.
“Celia, the test was positive,” he said bluntly and looked at the three brothers behind me. “She’ll need to rest too since she’s a little anemic. So, whichever one of you is the dad needs to take care of her until we can get her blood built back up.”
“Of course,” they said in unison, and I blushed. I wasn’t sure I was ready for other people to know about us, but they would soon enough. I couldn’t think about that right now, however. I had a baby on the way.
I’d gone to sleep, alone, terrified, but now that it had been confirmed, I felt calm. Maybe I’d freak out later, but for now, I was happy just knowing the truth at last. Now, I could go about the business of dealing with it.
“I’ll make an appointment for you with my staff tomorrow, Celia, and have you come back in. We’ll get you an appointment with an OB/GYN and give you more information on what to do from here. I want to keep an eye on you until you get into see the OB/GYN. That anemia can cause a lot of problems for you, so don’t blow this off, alright?”