Willow awoke feeling weak, hungry, nauseous, and with the terrible urge to use the bathroom. Unsteady on her feet, she grasped the bed and dresser with one hand while clutching her milk pail with the other. A glance inside the bucket surprised her. It was clean. It didn’t smell.
A smile spread across her face. “He cleaned up for me. What a man.”
She stood confused at the closed bathroom door. Why was the door closed? Willow knocked. She rattled the knob. As cautiously as she could, she pushed it open, calling for Chad. Silence greeted her. She took a step forward and froze as she realized her mistake. Her foot slid through the previous contents of her stomach, sending her careening across the bathroom. She slammed into the edge of the tub and groaned.
“Ow!” Tears sprang to her eyes as her head impacted with the cast iron. “Oh man.” The room spun, her hand groped for the milk pail and grabbed it just in time.
Sounds of feet on the stairs sent her into fresh tears. “Chad?”
Chad, hearing he commotion upstairs, had dropped his bags just inside the front door and bolted upstairs. The sight of Willow sprawled across the vomit streaked bathroom floor, holding her head in one hand and her bucket in the other, made him wince. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I almost cleaned it up and then I thought I could get back faster and clean it even if you were awake. I—”
“I’m coated and it’s making me feel worse.”
Chad grabbed two towels and mopped up the worst of it. Quickly, he helped her out of her sodden pajamas and into the tub. While she soaked with bucket in hand and whining about the disgusting practice of sitting in one’s own filth, he raced downstairs with the stinky laundry gagging any time he was forced to take a breath. He tossed the towels in the washer, dumped a scoop of dripping laundry soap into the machine, turned it on “normal wash,” smelled his shirt, peeled it off, dumped it the tub, and raced back inside.
Willow was almost asleep by the time the tub filled. He brought her water, crackers, and sat on the floor beside the tub wishing he’d thought to buy some ammonia. “Bleach! That’s what the floor needs. Bleach. Be right back.”
All morning and into the early afternoon, Chad brought her something to drink, something to munch on, dumped her milk pail, and then sat beside her on the bed, stroking her hair and praying for her. As the day passed, he grew worried. What would they do if every day was this bad? What if it kept going for several weeks or even the whole time? He’d heard of that.
His phone vibrated in his pocket sending him downstairs quickly to answer it. “Mom?”
“How is she doing?”
“Better, I think. She’s kept down her last few crackers and the Jell-O. The broth was a nightmare.”
“Does sound like it—did you get a test?” Marianne tried not to sound as eager as she felt.
“Got a test, but we haven’t taken it yet. We’ve been talking. She’s so excited—when she’s not puking anyway.”
Marianne’s sigh filled both their hearts with delight. “I’m going to be a grandmother! Isn’t she going to be the cutest pregnant mother ever?”
“Mom, you are a grandmother—you’ll just have to wait to meet your grand-something.”
“Child. It’s called a child, Chaddie. Oh, do you want a boy or a girl?” Her excitement became infectious.
“Both?” He laughed with her. “Actually, whichever is most likely easier for a first baby.” He tried to do the math and couldn’t think. “When do you think the baby is likely coming?”
Murmuring as she counted, Marianne finally said, “Mid February to the first of March I think.”
“Valentine’s Day.”
“Or if she goes overdue, you could be talking St. Paddy’s Day.”
“That’s forever.”
Her laughter turned to howls. “Son, you sound about six years old.”
Willow stirred. “Gotta go mom, she’s waking up. I’ll call after she takes the test. Can you scout around for doctors in Brunswick?”
He whispered his love, and then hurried to Willow’s side. “How are you feeling?”
“Weak, thirsty, and hungry.”
“How’s the nausea?”
She shrugged. “I can tell it was there, but I think it’s gone.”
“Well,” he chuckled, “I hope you don’t have it that bad every day.”
She stared at him in horror. “Every day?”
“Some women—” he didn’t have the heart to tell her. “Have it more than others.”
“I’d better be done.” The finality in her voice was comical.
“Mom is calling around for a doctor. If it keeps up, they have medications that can help.”
Willow didn’t answer. She was already asleep. Frustrated, Chad carried the box of pregnancy tests back to the bathroom, opened it, and placed one wrapped test on the back of the toilet. He stood in the bathroom doorway, hands stuffed in his pockets, and stared at it.
When his feet ached, he forced himself to go downstairs. “You’re acting like an idiot, man. Go feed the chickens and get eggs—” The thought of eggs made him smile. First baby chicks and now baby humans. They’d have to start breeding goats, cows, and sheep next.
His eyes widened at the direction of his thoughts. “Oh, ick. I’m not going there. We’ll stick to breeding humans. Wait—” Chad shook his head. “That sounds even worse.”
Chapter 11 2
She stretched, yawned, clutched the bucket, and then relaxed. No wave of nausea followed, but her muscles felt weak and her mouth tasted as though something crawled inside and died. Willow crawled from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom, eager to brush her teeth. Minutes later, she flushed the toilet and saw a plastic wrapper and a folded paper pamphlet.
Not until she was cuddled against her pillows sipping on 7-Up and resting did she realize the purpose of the wrapper and pamphlet. She read all instructions carefully, reread them, and was on a third pass before Chad found her flipping the paper back and forth curiously.
“Hey, did you test?”
“I’m reading. Did you know that the other side is in what looks like Spanish? I saw diez. I think that’s ten and on the other side the same paragraph says something about not reading it after ten minutes.”
“Most medications and instructions come in English and Spanish.” He hesitated searching for the right words. “Estados Unidos llega a ser una sociedad bilingüe. Or something like that. I’m rusty.”
“Say it again. That’s beautiful!”
Chad repeated the words slowly watching comprehension dawn as she listened. “I heard States United society bilingual. You said something about the United States being a bilingual society.”
“Very good. I actually went with a fairly literal translation of ‘the United States is becoming a bilingual society.’ I’m sure it’s not correct, but I was always better at translating than at communication.”
“When did you learn Spanish?”
Chad shrugged. “Two semesters in high school, two more in college. I thought it’d help on the job, and it’s easier to learn than Japanese, Korean, or Russian which are the other four most spoken languages in the greater Rockland area.”
“I can see why it’s easy to understand anyway. It’s very similar to English. I mean I knew it was to a degree—Latin is at the core of both languages, but the songs I’ve heard in Spanish were never as easy to understand as what you just said.”
“Well,” Chad admitted, “It’s not all that simple, but compared to Swahili or something—”
“Why would you learn that? Is there a large population of Swahili speaking criminals in the area?”
Her question would have seemed sarcastic to the average person but Willow was curiously serious. “No. That’s just a joke. So are you ready to try the test?”
“It wants me to—” Suddenly, Willow understood her mother’s distaste in discussing personal bodily fluids. In general, things were fine. Personalize them and well, she’d either gotten self-conscious for no reasonable reason or
she was becoming her mother.
“Yeah, I know how they work.”
“Really? Then why leave me the directions? Why not just tell me?”
Chad stared at her oddly. Was she teasing him? Was she serious? Was she curious? The whole scenario was bizarre. “Well, you tend to like to read things for yourself…”
“I do. You just usually tell me how it works, and I wonder why you don’t want me to read the instructions, and this time you didn’t.”
He stared to protest but the truth of her words effectively corked his reply. He did tend to set instructions aside and tell her what he thought they said. He hadn’t picked up on it but Willow sure had. “Next time, ask for the instructions. I wasn’t doing it consciously.”
“You haven’t steered me wrong yet. When you make me take twice as long as necessary to do something, then I’ll start asking to read the instructions.” Before he could reply, she tossed the paper at him. “I used the bathroom before I read it, and I have very little liquid to absorb as it is. I need to drink for a while.”
Chad rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “Where do you think we should put a baby? In Mother’s room or in the one you just fixed up?”
Willow curled next to him resting her head on his chest. “I don’t know. I’ll have to read which is best and see why mother chose this room for me and her room for her. There might be a reason.”
Willow covered her mouth to stifle a giggle as Chad stood in front of the bathroom window rocking the pregnancy test back and forth trying to get a clearer reading. “It’s not going to change. I think I did something wrong.”
“What can you do wrong? How hard is it to pee on a stick for goodness sake!”
“Well, maybe for a man it’s not so hard but women are shooting blind you know!” The indignation in Willow’s voice did little to hide her amusement.
He threw her an impatient smile and shifted once more. “Well, I think there’s a line in that control window, but it’s so faint I can’t tell. The other window seems to have a line too but it’s also faint so I can’t tell what is going on. I think you need to do it again.”
“Well, then we’ll have to wait a while because I need a nap.”
Chad glanced at his watch, confused. She’d hardly been awake for an hour. It was almost four o’clock, and she’d slept most of the day away. He’d never heard of that kind of somnolence as a symptom of pregnancy, but what did he know? Tucking her into the bed, he positioned the bucket nearby just in case. “Get some sleep. I’ll go buy the soup du jour at the deli. It’ll be easier on your stomach for dinner than anything I can make, and it’ll taste better than canned.”
“Mmm hmm. Thanks,” she murmured, half asleep already.
On the porch, Chad dialed his mother. Her excited voice sent him into panic mode. “Mom, stop! I don’t know. She took the test and it was a dud or something. You’re supposed to see lines in two windows and if I held it just right with my right hip cocked and my tongue sticking out, I think I saw a line in each window, but for all I know, it’s just the light shining on whatever chemical makes up that line in the first place.”
“Well, she can take another one. Did you buy two?”
“I bought two boxes so we’d have a spare but there are three in each box. Honestly, Mom, why three in a box? Do they really need to triple confirm?”
“I think it’s so if you’re negative one month, you don’t have to go back over and over.”
The disgust in Chad’s voice was comical. “I think it’s so they can sell the duds and blame it on the consumer. Willow immediately said she thought she messed up the test.”
“Oh, what did she do wrong?”
“Come on, Mom, how hard is it to pee on a stick!”
“Well Chad,” she began patiently, “really. Remember how you and Chris used to drop Cheerios in the toilet and try to aim for them. Girls couldn’t do that. They’d be shooting blind.”
Chad stared at his phone. “Have you been talking to Willow?”
“No, why?”
“She said the same exact thing. It’s like déjà vu. I feel like that kid in A Christmas Story. Is everyone going to tell me she’ll shoot her eye out?”
“Oh honestly, Chad. You are being silly! Now why don’t you just go make her a nice bowl of soup—”
Chad interrupted quickly. “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I’m on my way to buy some at the deli. We don’t have anything light enough for a weak stomach.”
“You’re calling about soup?”
“No, I’m calling,” he tried again with practiced patience. Why wasn’t his mother following the conversation better? It was as though she’d lost her mind at the hint of babies or something. “Because she’s asleep again. She’s slept most of today and all last night.”
“Well, some pregnant women do that. I remember Libby saying she slept away the first four months of her pregnancy with Corinne.”
“We don’t even know if she is pregnant, Mom!”
Marianne reminded her son that after any stomach bug, he’d always slept most of a day away while he recuperated. “She’ll either be fine and pregnant or fine and ready to handle a miserable late cycle. It’s pretty much either-or on that one.”
At two a.m., Chad strolled into the police station, trying not to worry about his wife, thanking the Lord for the unlikelihood of a drunk tourist, and counting the hours until his lunch break. “Hey, Waverly. How’re you doing?”
“Fine, but what are you doing here?”
Chad pointed to the board where his name had been written, erased, and Waverly’s filled in. “You worked for me yesterday. Go home.”
“No. Your wife is sick. You go home and get some sleep before you come down with it. That bug is awful.”
Oh how Chad wanted to deny it was the problem. He couldn’t wait until he could tell everyone that his wife was having a baby. “Ugh,” he mused to himself. “You sound um… paternal! You’re only twenty-six man, get a grip.”
“Chad?”
He glanced back up into Waverly’s concerned face. “Huh?”
“Go. Home.”
“I can’t do that to you.”
Waverly placed his hand on the phone. “Do you go home now, or do I wake up the Chief and tell him you refuse to obey orders.”
“Since when do I take orders from you?”
“From the chief, you moron,” Waverly spat exasperated. “Get out of here, or I’m calling and you can deal with Sir Sleepless.”
“Sir Sleepless?” Chad couldn’t help mocking him.
“It’s two in the morning, and I’ve almost worked a double shift. What do you want from me?”
“You to know how much I appreciate it. Thanks, Brad.”
At four, Willow finally dragged herself from the bed, grabbed the instructions, and padded toward the bathroom. Chad barely stirred. Though woozy from lack of food and fuzzy from too much rest, Willow felt nearly well. She grabbed test number two and reread the instructions carefully. Instructions for saved urine seemed easier so she retrieved a pint canning jar from the pantry and followed directions step-by-step.
The clock never moved so slowly. As the thought flitted across her mind, Willow realized that it was also a strange thought. How would she know? She’d read the comment repeated times and finally understood the meaning in more than a theoretical sense, but the fact of the matter was, she rarely noticed the passing of time unless it was one of those odd occasions when she realized that something was unusually swift. This was the opposite feeling. If it could go any slower, time would cease.
Finally, the clock in Mother’s room insisted that ten minutes had passed. She picked up the test and examined it carefully. In the “control window,” a nice bold line stood out from the damp background. In the “results window,” nothing. She wasn’t pregnant. Chad would be so disappointed.
Laying the test on the sink where he could see it and tucking the instructions behind the faucet for easy reference, Willow crept slowl
y downstairs, out the back door, and sat on the porch whistling softly for Portia. “No baby, girl. I couldn’t imagine so soon, but then again, when we bred Dandy, it only took the once so…”
Portia rested her head comfortingly on Willow’s leg. Together, woman and dog, sat on the back porch of Walden Farm, and while the woman imagined life with a tiny baby, a toothy toddler, or an inquisitive child, Portia slept dreaming of chasing butterflies that turned into steak. Or at least, that’s what Willow assumed.
Chapter 11 3
Being as observant as most males, Chad’s hands were washed, dried, and he was on his way out the bathroom door before he glanced at the back of the toilet. The test was gone. He hurried into their bedroom and eyed the bedside tables, but nothing was there. Back to the bathroom, he glanced in the trash and found the wrapper but no instructions and no used—the test at last.
Comparing instructions to test, it was obvious to Chad that the test was negative. Disappointment washed over him. He’d been so sure. Why was she so sick if she wasn’t pregnant? Willow was never sick and had little opportunity to catch anything anyway. The sound of the back screen door banging softly against the doorjamb told him she was up and dealing with her own discouragement.
She sat on her heels stuffing the stove with wood and mumbling something under her breath. “You’re awake.”
“I think we’re a pair of geniuses. I was just about to make the same observation.” Chad’s heart constricted at the pain in her eyes, but he didn’t move closer. “Lass, it’s not the end of everything. There’s always next month, or the next, or even next year or so.”
“You were so excited…” She reached for another handful of kindling. “It feels like I failed—”
Chad’s hands, on their way to his pockets in his characteristic frustrated stance, reached for her instead. “Oh Willow, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to feel like that! I jumped the gun. I’ve never seen you sick so I just assumed—”
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