I shook my head. “No. I haven’t made any decisions. I need some time to think about this.”
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
The rest of the appointment was a bit of a blur, and when I left, it was with a stack of information and a card with my next appointment scheduled on it. I sat behind the wheel of my car and stared at the papers for a few seconds before stuffing them into my glove compartment. I didn’t want to think about it right then. I just wanted to ignore it, forget about it.
I knew I couldn’t. Eventually I was going to have to really confront the reality of the situation and think about what it meant for my future. No matter what I decided.
But that eventuality didn’t have to be right then. I might not have had a lot of confidence in the situation, but one thing I did have was time. Like the doctor said, I was still very early on. Just a month or so. That meant there was a lot of time ahead of me I could use to sift through my feelings and decide what I was going to do.
I drove home and transferred the papers from my glove compartment to my dresser drawer.
My next step was to call Derek.
“Hey,” he said. “How you feeling?”
“Feeling a little better,” I said. “But I think I need to hang out at home for the rest of the day. I’ll be in tomorrow.”
“You sure?” he asked. “You don’t have to rush to get back in. If you’re still sick, stay home. The last thing we need is for anybody else around here to get that thing.”
“No worries about that.” I realized what I said and hurried to cover it up. “The doc said the contagious period is over. I won’t be able to pass it to anybody. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It was still the middle of the day, but as soon as I got off the phone, I stripped down and crawled into bed. Pulling the blanket up over my head, I tried to hide from the reality of everything. A baby. I still couldn’t even wrap my head around it. This definitely wasn’t something I wanted or was ready for.
This was one of those times I wished my best friend had a normal job and wasn’t constantly traveling all over the place. That day Holly was in Michigan, and I highly doubted she was going to have any time to talk to me. I called anyway, just on the off chance I caught her when she was having lunch or walking from meeting to meeting.
I didn’t. I ended up having to leave a message, telling her it was important she called me as soon as she could. A couple of hours later, I got a text from her saying she was slammed with work and she had to go out to a late dinner with clients that night, so she wouldn’t be able to do our usual Skype call until late.
By evening I found myself exhausted. Far more tired than I usually was even though I’d dozed on and off for the last few hours. I made myself as bland and easy to digest a dinner as I could think of and curled up on the couch for some useless television.
The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes and it was four in the morning. I’d missed my call with Holly, and there was no way I could call her then. I dragged myself into my room to go to bed for another couple of hours before I needed to get up and head to the vineyard.
When my alarm went off, I opened my eyes to a wave of nausea I now had a new name for. It wasn’t a stomach virus. It wasn’t the flu. It was morning sickness. It wasn’t too bad, and when I got down some tea and a piece of dry toast, I felt better. Putting on a strong face so Derek wouldn’t notice anything different, I headed into the kitchen and powered through the morning.
On my lunch break, Holly called me back.
“I called you on Skype last night, but you didn’t answer,” she said.
“I know, I’m sorry. I fell asleep on the couch.”
“Wow, Derek must be working you hard.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not exactly the reason,” I said.
I brought the basket of extra-salty French fries that were the only thing that sounded palatable for lunch out into the courtyard. Walking over to the stone retaining wall, I set down the basket and fought back the tears that were starting to form in my eyes.
I hadn’t let myself cry about the situation yet. It was one of those times when I knew if I did start crying, I wasn’t going to stop. It would just open up the floodgates, and I wouldn’t be able to pull myself together for a good while. That wasn’t something I wanted to do while I was at work. Maybe when Holly got back to town and I was able to actually see her. Then I could let it all out. Until then, I needed to try to hold it in.