Deadshifted (Edie Spence 4)

Would I make a good mom? Oh, God, who knew. I knew I’d be full of good intentions—just like the proverbial path to hell.

I threw the sheets off me and walked across the room to the balcony, unlocked the doors, and stepped outside into the night.

The Maraschino put out too much light pollution itself for me to see the stars. But the newly waning moon was overhead. I knew all weres were safe from its pull for now. I leaned against the railing, looking out at the water.

Was it even safe to bring a kid into this world? One that I knew had vampires, and weres, and a hundred other things that could go bump in the night in it? If we did have a kid—ours, or adopted—and it was scared of something under the bed, would I honestly be able to tell it that things would be just fine?

“Edie?” I heard Asher’s voice from the room behind me and turned around. There were no lights in the room; his disembodied voice was coming from the dark. “Come back to bed. ”

I walked back into our cabin, blindly. I didn’t lock the balcony doors behind me, because really, we were six floors up and in the middle of the ocean. It wasn’t like we were expecting a visit from Batman. I took three steps in—and then I turned around and walked back and did lock the doors, because, well, who knew.

When I slid back under the sheets Asher moved to spoon me. “Why’re you so cold?” he murmured, and threw an arm across me to pull me close.

* * *

In the morning, the ship was bucking against the waves. I didn’t know if this was normal or not, but it felt as if the ocean were trying to throw the Maraschino off, and it was making me seasick.

Asher was already awake, reading a book beside me. “You ready?” he asked as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes.

“Not really. But let’s go. ” I knew that you were supposed to use your first pee of the day for pregnancy testing, and I didn’t want to wait too long.

We got up and dressed, and the elevator we rode down was full of people. Many of them got off and immediately went to queue up at the guest services station, where I could see them handing out seasickness bags. Maybe somehow we’d gotten contaminated with norovirus, like I’d privately feared, after all those shows about “my cruise ship tried to poison me” on the news. Whatever it was, I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one who found the current motion disconcerting.

We reached the first floor alone, although I realized when we got there the ship was actually deeper than this—there must be floors underneath that were all engines, laundry, and rooms for the crew. The medical center was down the rightmost hallway. I walked through the open door into a small waiting room, with another open door beyond, and I peeked into it. There was a short examination bed, a desk, some cabinets, and a chair—and a man sitting in it with his back to me. I went back to Asher. There was only room for one of us in the medical room, really. “I appreciate the moral support, but you can stay here. ”

“I’ll be right outside. ”

I knocked on the doorjamb and took a step inside. “Hello?”

“We are not open yet,” the man said curtly, without turning around. There was a clock fastened to one wall; it was 7:45 A. M. ship time, which made it almost noon back home.

I didn’t want to wait, and more important I wasn’t sure how much longer I could not pee. “I just need a pregnancy test. ”

He made an irritated noise, spinning around in his chair to look at me. He had brown skin, and an accent, and he made a pointed look at my ring finger. “Where is your husband?”

“Does that matter?”

He didn’t answer me.

I knew from having worked with people of different ethnicities that certain cultures had ways of acting, talking, or gesturing that could be perceived as rude from the outside when compared with one’s own cultural norm without that being their intended gist at all. I’d learned to look past a lot of that, because I knew it wasn’t personal, and because I realized it was mostly in my head.

However, as both a woman and a nurse, I could also identify a judgy doctor at twenty paces.

“Is it an emergency?” he asked archly, looking me up and down, as if I were unclean.

“No. ”

“Then can’t it wait?”

“Look, I can pay you for it. I’d just like to know. ”

“So you can drink,” he said, and I had a feeling it wasn’t just me he hated, but possibly his job, and possibly all Americans. I bet he did see a ton of alcohol poisonings on these trips—were I in his likely Muslim and abstemious shoes, that might bias me, too.

“Nope. Mormon,” I lied. Super-lied, come to think of it, seeing as I was asking for a pregnancy test, and I clearly wasn’t the Virgin Mary. “Look, I just want to know. ”

He started going through the drawers of his desk. When those didn’t produce what he was looking for—probably a card with a disappointed-looking face that said YOU SHOULD HAVE WASHED YOUR HANDS BETTER! in twenty languages—he started looking in the cabinets above his desk, where the contents of each shelf were held in with slide-stoppers and/or bungee cord.

He produced a pregnancy test at long last from the back of one of these. If it was possible for one to expire, I’m sure this one would have. I’d seen less wrinkled packaging emerge on strips of gum that I’d lost in my purse.

“Do you know how to use it?” he asked again.

“Pretty sure I just pee on one end. ”

“That might be the last one I have. So don’t come back here looking for more. ”

“I won’t. I swear. ”