by Lexi Whitlow
“Oh.” She walks me out of the door and down the hall to the lab. She leans in close and brushes my hair back over my shoulder. “You know what you didn’t say? ‘This isn’t possible because I didn’t have unprotected sex with my boyfriend.’”
“Husband,” I croak. My throat feels like someone forcibly opened my throat and poured acid down my gullet. Actually, that’s just about what happened, except my angry stomach was the person.
She shoves a cup into my hand. “Pee in this. Then we’ll take your blood if it’s positive. Should be able to tell how far along you are.”
“Oh God.” I look at the cup in horror. “Okay. Everything is going to be okay.” Zelda pats me on the shoulder. “Give me the stick and I’ll test it myself. I’d be five weeks. Take my blood, and schedule me for an ultrasound—tomorrow.” Zelda shrugs and hands me a pregnancy test, and I head into the bathroom next to the lab. As soon as I complete the test, two parallel pink lines show up.
My heart starts beating fast, vision failing, twisting and turning.
In my line of work, I’ve seen plenty of faint lines, lines that indicate tiny amounts of hormones circulating in a body. But this line is bright fucking pink and appeared in less than ten seconds.
Is there pain?
There’s no pain.
I close my eyes and put my hand to my stomach. By five weeks, there’s an amniotic sac, and a tiny yolk that will nourish the embryo until the placenta is done growing. The embryo itself is “no larger than a grain of rice.” I remember that from my bio text book in college.
And I remember it from the ultrasound picture. The doctor who removed her gave me the picture to keep. I keep it with Ash’s letters.
It had been so strange to me back then. The endometriosis was always there, looming, barely helped by birth control.
Scarred.
Despite the lingering feeling of nausea, a warmth spreads through me as I straighten out my clothes and look back at the pink lines on the test. The sensation lasts only for a few moments. When I look in the mirror and straighten out my hair, the grief rushes over me in a wave so powerful, it almost knocks me down. I sob and put my hand to my stomach, a ghost of the old pain coming back.
It’s strange—since I started seeing Ash again, the pain hasn’t hit me like this. It’s like that empty space was finally starting to fill up.
It seemed fun, when we’d gotten together again. It seemed almost inconsequential that Ash was still working with criminals in town, even if it was only peripherally. He’d assured me that his business would be clean from now on—there were just a few details to work out, and then he’d make his gym legit. A crushing weight settles over me, and I throw the empty cup in the trash. I slip the pregnancy test into one of the lab’s plastic bags as I walk out the door and move briskly down the hall. By now, someone’s surely paging me for the day.
Zelda appears from nowhere and stops me as I turn the corner. “Hold out your arm,” she orders me. I do as she says, and she takes my blood while I stand in the hallway. “Repeat in forty-eight hours. We can get you in today for an ultrasound.”
“Tomorrow is fine. There’s no pain. It was—it was ectopic last time.”
“Got it.” She pats my hand.
I smile wanly, and she nods and then vanishes back to the lab where she draws and catalogs blood all day.
I don’t think she’ll spread secrets, but there are secrets in my life far more damning than this one.
The secret husband.
My mother’s failing business.
Every bit of illegal shit that happened in New York.
What’s one more secret? I’ll add it to the pile and deal with it when it becomes a reality, if it becomes a reality.
I put on a clean lab coat and bag up the vomit, tossing it conveniently into one of the medical waste containers as I move along to the emergency room. Before another episode hits, I stop at the pharmacy and pick up some anti-nausea meds.
Hope is of no use. It’s not a certain thing.
There’s no time for starry-eyed fantasy. I’m a medical professional. And I know as well as anyone that this embryo might not make it past the first twelve weeks. If it lasts beyond that and I start showing, then I can let that warmth take me over again. And then, and only then, can I tell Ash.
We’re not your typical husband and wife, and this child—no, this collection of cells—won’t make it any different.
Wait and see.
As I move throughout my day, I find myself wondering if it might be a boy, like Zelda said. I still have that buzzed, humming feeling, and I wonder if it has to do with the new resident I’m harboring.
Best not to think about it. Not until it starts to matter.
Still, I find myself patting my lower belly, even though it’s not really anything yet. Just a collection of cells, a tiny thing.
I’ll see if it’s in there tomorrow, but there are no guarantees of anything.
Especially not with everything that happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Present Day
“Frank’s pissed at you, Ash,” Josh says. He’s lean and limber, prepped for the fight at the end of October that’s supposed to bring us so much money. “He says you can’t come back to the gym. He’s getting there with me too, I think. Or close enough.”
“He’s an asshole. We’ve got our own plans, Joshie. We’ll figure it out. You’ll win the fight, and we’ll have the money. The owner has the earnest money to hold the new place for us.” Even as I say the words, my heart leaps in my chest just a little.
It might not work out. That’s the thought at the edge of my mind.
Josh and I are at my shit gym again, the one that got closed down by the health inspector back in May. I can’t help thinking that I won’t be able to bring in enough money to be any kind of a husband to anyone. Now that she’s said yes—now that we’ve shared everything—I have nothing. Her mother—Linda—is getting her business back together, but there’s no revenue to speak of yet.
She said she’ll pay me back, but I’m not expecting it.
I lost my job with Frank now that I told him to go fuck the hell off. So even that slow trickle of income is no longer a part of my paycheck.
I’m Jonathan Ash. A solution always comes through.
But I do hope Summer enjoys living at her place. Because it’s not real certain that I’ll be able to pay my rent next month, not with every penny going to supporting Josh so he can make more—and not with every bit of money I did have tied up in the new gym.
Josh practices his knee strikes, narrowly missing my side. “Oh yeah man, I forgot to tell you. There was some issue with the inspection. We’ll need a new HVAC unit or some shit. And maybe one other thing. A supporting beam needs replacing. Some shit like that.”
Josh is many things, but he’s not specific on important details about buying property.
“What do you mean there are problems with the inspection? That’s the place—the place where you get out from under that criminal’s thumb—the place where I establish my business?” I’m about ready to burst open—there are so many things that hang in the mix right now.
Summer, most of all. She knew I was working for a criminal at a nasty fight club, that I had my own gym that’s condemned and falling apart, that I wanted to open a new place—and that I gave her mother every penny I had.
Josh shrugs at me. “Just that there are a few problems with the inspection. With the money I was able to put down on it—”
“What was that like? Five hundred bucks?”
“Five thousand, from one of my fights last year. We were supposed to have twenty-five thousand, but you went and gave it to Linda Colington.” Josh punches the bag again. His big fight is coming soon, and he’s not as prepared as he should be. “Good news is no one’s going to buy the place out from under us while we get the down payment together. No one’s gonna want a fucked up HVAC.” He strikes me again. “It’s almost as bad as your fucking shithole y
ou’ve got here. ‘Gym Ash,’ what kind of name was that anyway? How long was it popular? Six weeks?”
I give him a wicked smile and shuffle to the side so he strikes air when he hits. Then I catch him unaware and cuff him on one ear and then the other.
“You little asshole. I was doing my best to compete with Frank.”
“Best to get actually buy a place that people can work out in without fear of asbestos or crumbling walls full of mold.” He strikes the bag once, twice, and then a third time. I own this place, in all of it’s tumbling down glory. Josh was exaggerating some—but Gym Ash did have a short heyday. This new place would be breathing room from worrying about it for so long, from wishing we could succeed without Frank, from the ties that hold us to the criminal world in North Carolina.
I’m done with that shit, with all the anxiety, all the difficulty, all the wondering if we’ll make it to tomorrow.
For the past three years, everything in my life has been about preparing for Summer to come back—and now that she’s here, I’m failing.
She told me she doesn’t see it that way, that she knows what I did to save her mother.
As Josh cleans up and heads out to his truck, I still feel useless.
There’s been something strange about her for the past week, something off. I can’t put my finger on it, and I can’t place what it is.
This is the time in my life when I should be happiest, and here I am, strolling through the gym I’ll forfeit to the bank next week and wondering how in the fuck I’ll pay for my next failing business venture.
Maybe I should have taken my ass back to New York when I had the chance. At least the money was steady.
I’ll have to tell Summer that there’s no money, and that will make everything in both of our lives that much worse.
It occurs to me that there might be a point she wises up and figures out no doctor—no woman—should be with a man who can’t succeed. I know what she’d tell me—I sacrificed for her family. I made her a priority.
And now it seems I have nothing—no plan to make it better, no plan to break free. I imagine myself telling her to go one day, that she deserves better.
But fuck. I’m Jonathan Ash. I might not be able to marry her again, but something will come through in the end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Present Day
My eyes are shut tight. The gel touches my body, and the machine turns on. I can hear the heartbeat of the hospital—lights and machines and people walking, talking, breathing. The world flutters on around us like there’s nothing wrong or unusual or anxiety-inducing about today. Like there isn’t a trillion tons of hormones flooding my body and making me feel like shit.
“Though we weren’t going to be able to see it—but—” Zelda whispers in the darkened room, and I feel a light flick onto the screen in front of me, even though my eyes are still closed. Slowly, I open them. On the video screen are a perfect dark circle, the smudge of a yolk sac, and the a tiny flickering white smudge that looks more like a sea monkey or a jelly bean than a baby.
The sound reaches me from a long way off.
Tiny and quick, the tap tap tap of a heartbeat.
“Strong and healthy—it’s 152 beats per minute, on the nose!” Zelda moves the ultrasound wand and takes pictures of each angle. I just stare at the screen and watch the tiniest human heart beat on and on, miraculously and unquestionably healthy. “Looks like you’re five weeks, six days. You usually don’t see a heartbeat at this point, and sometimes not even an embryo. But there it is.”
“There it is,” I repeat. All at once, my heart starts to beat fast, and a faint sheen of sweat makes its way over my body. I’ve had so much trouble—and so many doctors telling me a pregnancy would be incredibly dangerous—it feels like this can’t be it. I lean forward and squint at the screen—three dark spots encircle the amniotic sac, dark fluid moving within them.
Zelda gives me a look. “That’s nothing to be worried about.”
“It’s a—” I lean in closer. “God, that’s big. A fucking hemorrhage.”
“Hematoma—those dark spots aren’t hemorrhages yet. They doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Summer. The embryo looks really healthy, and there’s a strong heartbeat. Sac is the right shape, looks like your lining is thick.”
“But a hematoma like that--there’s blood circling around the whole sac—it’s—I’m not an OB, Zelda. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s not good.”
“Well,” she says, pausing. “It’s not fantastic. But with everything else—your hormone levels are great, everything inside looks great--you’re probably fine. Just don’t go lifting a bunch of heavy stuff.” She bites her lips and looks away. “You know the diagnosis, Summer. It is what it is—”
“Threatened miscarriage. With the blood and all that around the sac. Jesus.”
“Do you want me to call anyone? Your friend Debbie? Or?”
“No. No one needs to know about this until we’re sure it’s going to stick.” I clench my teeth and hold back tears as Zelda hands me a wipe for the gel and turns off the machine.
“You sure about that? Most of the time a subchorionic hematoma doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s very rare that anything is really wrong. Like three percent?” Zelda scrunches up her face as if she’s trying to recall the particular study that tells her I shouldn’t worry, that there’s nothing wrong. “You might have some—”
“Spotting. I know. But come in if there’s cramps or fever or lots of blood.”
“You got it.” She looks at me with big eyes, like she’s about to draw me into a hug. Instead, I just hang my head in my hands and look down at the floor. Still, she walks over to me, and she takes my hands. “Summer, I know your left ovary is gone, and there are some striations on that side on that side of your uterus. Scar tissue, right?”
I nod. There’s so much more to it than that, and the new life inside of me draws it all to the surface, making it pulse and pound and bring back pain I’m no longer used to feeling. Ash started to dredge it up when he appeared again, but here it is again, all of it.
“Just because your body is different—just because it’s been through a lot—doesn’t mean you’ll lose this baby.” I hang my head lower, and I can’t prevent the tears from coming. “Summer, tell me you hear me.”
“I hear you,” I mumble, hot tears rushing down my face. I look up at her, face wet, nose running—far less beautiful and delicate than I thought I was when I first met Jonathan Ash. I’m grown now, and this shit sits heavy on my chest.
“Tell me,” Zelda says. “Tell me you know. I don’t know exactly what you went through, but I do know it wasn’t fun. And I know it makes this worse. But tell me you understand this isn’t a death sentence. Not for you—not for your baby.”
“Embryo,” I correct.
She shrugs. “Baby, soon enough. Maybe you should talk to him and tell him you’re scared. It’s okay if you are. You just need to know it’s not doomed.”
“Him who? I should talk to who and tell him I’m scared?” I raise an eyebrow and look at her in confusion.
“The baby,” she says simply. “He needs to know you’re thinking about him.”
“No—he doesn’t. It’s not even a he—this is nonsense.” I pull on my leggings beneath the hospital robe and hop down from the table. “No offense. I just don’t subscribe to that stuff. The spirits of the universe and the ‘everything happens for a reason’ fate stuff.”
Zelda gives me a bemused smile. “I don’t either. But I’ve done this enough to know that I believe in the resilience of the human body. Even if you had surgery before—” She pauses and looks me directly in the eye. “Even if your body lost a pregnancy before, it doesn’t mean it will happen again. Just rest for a while. Sex is okay, but no lifting heavy things. Just lie on the sofa and binge watch some Grey’s Anatomy or something.”
“Okay,” I say. That doctor’s voice echoes in my head again, even though it was such a long time ago
that it all happened. I don’t even remember the doctor’s name, just the words he left me with--that it would be too hard for me to have a baby on my own. Even as a doctor—a woman of science—it doesn’t seem like anything could be fine with this.
Even though the embryo is right where it’s supposed to be.
Even if it’s healthy and strong and has a strong heartbeat.
Any gynecologist would have told me it’s a threatened miscarriage, that it could all go south in the blink of an eye.
And the fact remains--I don’t trust my body to hold onto anything, let alone something this important.
No, I’ll keep my secret for now. And later, when there’s something more to see—maybe then.
The tiny spec of hope seems like it’s gone—out the door, fleeing far, far away.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Present Day
Dr. Summer Colington is acting weird as fuck. Not that she’s ever really normal. She’s a mess, leaving keys all over the apartment and absentmindedly rearranging my spice rack so it’s not alphabetical. She’s taken to eating noodles with butter as her sole source of nutrition, and she rushes out of the apartment in the mornings like an absolute madwoman, like the hospital might disappear and vanish if she’s not there at least an hour early.
When she walks in the door in the evenings, she’s quiet, absorbed in looking at her phone or studying her textbooks.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was keeping something from me. But that’s all over now—isn’t it? I know we’re fucking broke, and we know the whole history, both of us.
This night is no different.
My phone is buzzing in my pocket when she opens the door, and I ignore it again. The woman standing in front of me takes my full attention. There are dark circles under her eyes, and the space beneath her cheekbones looks hollow. She’s as skinny as when I met her in New York, jeans hanging off of her body. She glances at me and then averts her eyes like she’s ashamed. She’s worse tonight, worse than she has been. It’s like someone has taken the light inside of her and snuffed it out, replacing her enthusiasm and charm with dark gray worry.