I didn’t need anyone else. I didn’t need Vince. That’s what I would tell myself until I believed it.
Telling myself to put Vince out of my mind and concentrate on my life was far easier than actually doing it. I still felt tired and run-down a couple days later when I was at the bar cleaning glasses. A wave of nausea hit me, and a glass slipped from my hand. Fortunately, my waitress Abigail happened to be standing right next to me. Her ability to snatch the glass out of midair was masterful, and I had the compulsion to applaud her.
Abigail laughed and shook her head as she set the glass down on the counter again. “I have a very insistent cat who likes to fling things off any surface she can when she wants attention. I’ve learned to catch things.”
“Maybe you should add it to your resume. It sounds like a special skill you might find marketable,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed at me. “Was that your way of firing me?”
I shook my head. “No. Of course not. It sounded a lot funnier in my head before I actually let it come out of my mouth.”
She nodded and started to turn away but looked back and examined my face a little closer.
“Are you doing okay? You don’t look great,” she said.
“I don’t feel great,” I told her. “I’ve been absolutely exhausted the last few days and I’m dealing with a bunch of stomach upset. It has been less than pleasant.”
She laughed at my description. “You might want to get into the doctor if you’re not feeling any better by tomorrow. I know there’s a virus going around. It wiped out a good chunk of my book club last week.”
I agreed, hoping it wouldn’t have to come to that. But by the next morning, I was only feeling worse and decided it was time to get checked out. The last thing I needed was to pass a bunch of germs around my customers and get everybody sick.
At least, I thought that was the last thing I needed. I stuck to that until the doctor said words I’d heard before, but never thought I’d hear again. Especially not now.
“You’re pregnant.”
I blinked at him a few times, sure he was going to start laughing. But he didn’t.
“Pregnant?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” he said. “When you described your symptoms, I suspected it could be nutritional deficiencies, so I had them draw that blood and run labs on it. One of the customary tests we run on any woman of childbearing years is a pregnancy test. And yours came up positive. Which also explains the symptoms you’ve been having.”
I shook my head, completely incredulous. “That can’t be. I can’t be pregnant.”
“Are you saying you haven’t been having sex?” he asked.
I stumbled over figuring out the words to answer him. “Not recently.”
“Anytime in the last two months?” he asked.
My cheeks burned. “Yes. A few times starting a little less than a month and a half ago.”
“That timing makes sense for the onset of your symptoms. We could do an ultrasound to check in on the developments, see if it would pinpoint the timeline a little more,” he offered.
A few minutes later, I was staring at the computer screen at an image I couldn’t wrap my head around.
“I’m really pregnant,” I said under my breath.
“Yep,” he confirmed. “It’s still very early days. Four or five weeks at the most. Remember, gestational weeks count from your last period, so you have to account for two extra weeks that already existed in the pregnancy the moment you conceived.”
I nodded. “Yes, I know. I went over all that when I was pregnant with my son. I’ve done all this before. How could I have not realized that’s what was going on?”
“You didn’t have symptoms like this when you were pregnant with your first child?”
“No,” I said. “He was an easy pregnancy. Some food aversions early on and hip pain at the end, but that was it. This doesn’t feel anything like that.”
“Every pregnancy is different. Just because you’ve had a child before doesn’t mean you will know one hundred percent what to expect. It seems like this little one just wanted to be known.”
I was still trying to process it an hour later when I walked out of the doctor’s office with a strip of fuzzy ultrasound pictures, a bottle of prenatal vitamins, and a packet of information about the prenatal program at the local birthing center. As I got into my car, my phone rang. I immediately picked it up and answered.
“Hello?” I said.
“Lindsey?” Charlie said.
Hearing his voice snapped me back into a whole new level of reality. I had nearly forgotten about the whole lawyer mess, especially after that doctor’s appointment. But now he was calling, and I couldn’t help but feel palpitations wondering what was coming next.