“Nope.”
“That’s what I thought. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Straight to the restroom. I picked up a little something for you on the way in.”
“Not coffee,” Sarah said.
“Uh, no, babe. A pregnancy test.”
Sarah shook her head. “I can’t be pregnant. We always use protection.”
“Then if it’s negative we’re going straight to the nearest gastroenterologist. If you keep coming to work looking like death recycled, you can kiss that promotion good-bye.”
“I didn’t see that on the list,” Sarah said.
The only person in the restroom was Audrey, hurrying out of a stall when they arrived.
“Are you still here, girl?” Megan said, and then pretended to inspect her makeup while Audrey washed her hands.
“I’ll be here until I go into labor. My due date’s the twenty-fifth.” Audrey smiled her endearing overbite smile. “I’m not getting that much done, though. It seems like all I do is pee.”
“Mmmm. Can’t relate.”
If Audrey sensed Megan’s voice was devoid of sincerity, she didn’t let on, but Sarah winced. She was suddenly cold all over.
“Speaking of peeing,” Megan said when Audrey had waddled out, “have at it.” She handed Sarah a thing that looked like a thermometer with a Q-tip at the end.
“I’m telling you,” Sarah said, “I can’t be—”
“So go in there and prove me wrong.”
”It’s probably just a waste of money.”
“I hope so. Now pee on the part that looks like a sponge. You’ll know in a matter of minutes.”
Megan’s eyes went through her. Sarah slipped into a stall.
It was just a little short of humiliating to have Megan standing out there waiting for her urine to splash into the toilet. All thoughts of embarrassment were chased out when she saw the word that came up and pointed its digital finger at her.
No.
Nononononono.
But what did pregnant mean besides yes? One flat, stone-hard yes.
“Well?” Megan said.
Sarah leaned her forehead against the metal door and let the cold shiver through her. Beyond that she felt nothing at all.
“I’m going to take that as an affirmative.”
“Are these things ever wrong?” Sarah said.
She heard the door bang, followed by Megan slicing someone with “Occupado!”
That someone tried to say, “I just need to—” but Megan was obviously shoving the door closed. “I said, occupied!”
Sarah’s first thought was, “I hope that wasn’t poor Audrey.” Her second was, “Now I’m poor Audrey.”
“You can come out,” Megan said.
Sarah forced herself to emerge, still holding the stick. “What’s the accuracy of these things? They can’t always be right.”
Megan took it from her and shook her head. She suddenly seemed far more than just four years older than Sarah. And a whole lot smarter.
“Should I see a doctor or something?”
“Or something. You get to work. I’ll set it up.” Megan’s eyes went through her again. “Don’t make any lunch plans.”
Sarah managed to get herself to her office with her game face on, but she tossed that mask the minute she could sit down with her back to the doorway—that same minute that she found herself face-to-face with the photo of her and Matt. Justin had snapped it at Thanksgiving when she and Matt had stolen five minutes in the hallway by the stairs at her mom’s house. He’d caught them with their arms around each other, their faces bright with wonderful surprise.
I’ve got a real surprise for you now, Matt. But you’re not going to think it’s wonderful.
“Sarah?”
She jumped, knocking over the frame and a stack of folders. When she twirled her chair around, her foot caught on her briefcase, which she had unceremoniously dumped on the floor on her way in. Nice moves to make in front of Jennifer Nolte.
Jennifer’s large hazel eyes were bemused. “You okay there?”
“Cramped quarters,” Sarah said.
“You may not have to be saddled with this much longer.”
Jennifer tucked one side of the chestnut bob behind her ear and whispered like she was passing on gossip in the girls’ locker room. As she’d always done in middle-school days, Sarah leaned forward to take it in.
“I just came by to see if you have lunch plans. I’d like to take you out, discuss a few things with you.” One eyebrow twitched. “Strictly off the record.”
Really? Really?
Sarah dug up the wherewithal to pretend to look at her calendar on her phone. Then she frowned, which didn’t take any pretending. “I hate that,” she said. “I have an appointment at lunch. I could change it—”
“Don’t do that. I know how long it can take to get in to see people.” Jennifer squeezed Sarah’s forearm. “I’ll catch you another day.”
Any day before now, Sarah would have pounced on that, suggested they set a date right then. But for the first time since she saw the word pregnant come into accusing view, it hit her.
This would change everything.
“You feeling okay?” Jennifer said.
“I haven’t had any coffee yet,” Sarah said.
“For heaven’s sake. You better go fix that.”
She gave Sarah a wry look and tapped away on three-inch heels. Sarah sagged in the chair. Yeah. She better go fix that.
Cherie didn’t bother with calling Matt on the phone this time. She just croaked over the top of her cubicle: “Evans! Your father’s on line one.”
“I’m not here,” Matt said.
“I’m running out of excuses, Evans.”
“Tell him I’m trapped under something heavy. No, tell him I’m with an associate.”
That was basically true. Wes was perched on the edge of Matt’s desk, smirking.
“I’m keeping track of what you owe me,” Cherie said.
“You know I’m good for it.”
Her “Huh!” shook the cubicle wall.
Wes picked up Matt’s rubber band ball and tossed it from hand to hand. “Man, I never turn down a call from my dad. We get to the end of the conversation and he always says, ‘How’s your cash flow, son? Do you need money?’ ”
The imitation of a doting father didn’t work, not with Wes’s spiky hair and his baby face. Matt shook his head.
“If my father ever said that to me, you’d have to call the paramedics because I’d go into cardiac arrest.” It would be more like: You decide to talk to me and I know you need money. “All right, let’s get serious. You got the thing I told you to get?”
“Borrowed it from my brother’s garage.”
“Then it is on.” Matt lowered his voice to a rasp. “I’m snagging the keys right after lunch.”
“You’re a genius. So what time?”
“He usually leaves about six so—”
“Evans! It’s your girlfriend. You want me to tell her you’re trapped under something heavy?”
“No, Cherie. Put her on.”
Matt nodded Wes toward the doorway and picked up the phone midway through the ring. Hand on the mouthpiece, he hissed, “See you at five.”
“I can’t see you at five, Matt. I don’t get off until five.”
Sarah’s voice verged on testy. Matt sat up in the chair.
“I was talking to Wes. But I’d rather talk to you. What’s up?”
“Breakfast.”
“Again? Listen, you want me to take you to a doctor?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sar?”
“I’m going to see one at lunch.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No!”
Matt felt stung.
“Sorry,” she said, though she sounded less than contrite. “Megan’s taking me.”
Matt bit back his impulse to say, Oh, then it must be a designer doctor you’re seeing.
Somebody with a foreign accent, no doubt. Dispensing snake oil. Sarah obviously wasn’t in the mood. And suddenly neither was he.
“Are you scared of what he’ll say, Sar? Because you sound funky.”
Actually she sounded like she wanted to pinch his head off.
“I don’t know what I am, okay? I don’t even know why I called.”
“You called because you know I’m here for you. Okay, look, after work we’ll go to the Fourth Street Grill. Whatever the doc says, that’ll cheer you up.”
“Cheer me up. Right.” She let out a sigh so heavy Matt could feel it weighing down the phone.
“Are we on?” he said.
“I’ll meet you there. Six thirty.”
“Call me when you finish at the doctor, okay?”
Nothing. She’d hung up.
Matt sat there for a minute, the receiver pressed to his forehead. What just happened? That wasn’t Sarah’s witty edge he’d heard. That was something bordering on homicide. Except what had he done . . . besides watch the end of the game last night instead of studying for his Series Sixty-Five exam? That warranted a Ma-att, not an I don’t even know why I called.
He replaced the phone and picked up the bag of sunflower seeds he was calling breakfast. She said she’d thrown up her breakfast. That had been going on since Friday. Matt dismissed that with his hand. He’d be cranky, too, if he puked everything he ate. This doctor of Megan’s would probably tell Sarah she was just under too much stress. Matt finally felt himself grin. He was the guru of avoiding stress. Which meant he was just what Designer Doctor was going to order.
Yeah. It was still okay.
Megan turned on the windshield wipers as the Beemer crawled from the parking garage into the snow. “We’re going to a clinic in Lincolnwood,” she said. “We shouldn’t run into anybody we know there.”
“I feel like a fugitive,” Sarah said.
“We just don’t want anybody knowing about this. It’s none of their business.”
Sarah tried not to squirm as Megan glanced at her.
“You didn’t call Matt, did you?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell him?”
The right answer to that was clearly no. Sarah was glad she could truthfully shake her head.
“I was going to, but he just wanted to cheer me up.”
“You can’t tell him.” Megan’s voice invited no argument. “At least not until you’ve decided what to do. It’s your body, your choice. He’ll only complicate things.”
That last part was probably true.
“Anyway, if you decide not to have it, it’s best he never even knows about it. Especially if you want to continue the relationship.”
Sarah was having enough trouble believing this was happening herself. How could she expect sunny-side-up Matt to take it in? She flashed on an image of him staring at her from the latest swing set, slack-jawed and dumbfounded.
Too late. It was already complicated.
Chapter Nine
Sarah tried to uncomplicate it as she sat on the examining table in room 2 in a gown too flimsy for the cold room and her ragged nerves, waiting for someone to come in with the test results. Her legs dangled like a kid on a swing. She felt about that young and about that stupid. The poster above her head singing the praises of the morning-after pill didn’t help.
If it was taking this long the results of their urine test must not match hers, right? And they were trying to figure out why she’d missed a period? That was why she’d come to the clinic anyway, to prove that state-of-the-art pregnancy test—and Megan—wrong, so she could get back to the life she’d had six hours ago.
Sarah folded her hands against her forehead. She was practically a visionary when it came to shaping the future in her mind, but whoever-it-was coming back to tell her she wasn’t pregnant after all just wasn’t coming into view. It got stuck somewhere between reality and the icy numbness.
“Hi, there.”
A fiftyish woman pressed the door closed behind her and carried her clipboard to the stool facing Sarah. She wore a stiff white lab coat that matched a few streaks in her otherwise gray hair, but there was nothing else crisp about her. A warm, rounded face invited the sharing of angst.
“I’m Michelle,” she said. Her name tag said she was a nurse practitioner.
The hand she put in Sarah’s was as cozy as her smile.
“You a little tense?”
Sarah nodded.
“Well, you are seven weeks pregnant. I don’t think that comes as a surprise.” Her lips formed a pout. “And certainly not a happy one, I take it.”
Sarah shook her head and willed herself not to curl into a ball.
Michelle hugged the clipboard. “Any idea what you’re going to do?”
“I can’t have an abortion.”
Now—that was a surprise. How could she say it when she hadn’t even thought it?
Michelle appeared unfazed. “No one is saying you should. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? Have you told the father?”
The father. How much did that title not fit Matt?
“If you don’t mind my asking, are you in a committed relationship?”
That depended on what she meant by committed.
“Have you discussed marriage and children?”
Sarah locked her hands at the back of her neck. All these questions with all the same answers. No. No. And no.
Michelle set the clipboard on the examining table and folded her own hands around her knees. Her voice went softer. “Okay, it’s a lot to consider. Would you mind if I walked you through it?”
What Sarah wanted to walk through was the door, but she shrugged. Shrugged. Who was this clueless Sarah who had somehow moved into her body?
Michelle nodded as if Sarah had wholeheartedly agreed. “You have the adoption option, of course, and we have literature on that if you’re interested. A lot of women have trouble letting go of their babies once they see them, so I won’t minimize the emotional trauma of that choice.”
What was she even talking about?
“Or you can keep your baby and raise it on your own. I can give you some understanding of what you’ll face there.” She waited. When Sarah didn’t—couldn’t—respond she went on. “There’s the financial aspect to consider. The average first-year cost of having a baby is sixteen thousand dollars. Now, that includes medical care, and I see that you have good health insurance.”
“I do.”
“So let’s subtract the medical, which leaves you with about eight thousand dollars in expenses.”
Sarah’s head spun.
“Is your health insurance through your employer?”
“Yes.”
“So you’ll be able to keep that if you can maintain your job and take care of your child.”
Your child—
“Do you think you can manage that?”
“I don’t know, but I just know that I can’t have an abortion.”
Michelle had prodded the words from her this time, and now they hung in front of Sarah, clearer than before. But she still had no idea where they came from.
“May I ask why you’re opposed to the procedure? Is it on religious grounds?”
“Yes,” Sarah said.
Was someone else now speaking for her? Had she just agreed to religious grounds?
Michelle nodded, sage as a crone. “I understand. I was raised in a faith environment too . . .”
Sarah wasn’t even on speaking terms with God—
“ . . . but there’s one thing you have to remember about the Bible: it’s not a science textbook . . .”
Sarah hardened to plastic every time Agnes tried to push her back to those beliefs that had gotten her nowhere—
“. . . we know now that the fetus undergoes the entire evolutionary process, from single-cell organism to complex life form . . .”
She’d given up trying to stand on any religious grounds—
“Right now,” Michelle said, pencil in
hand, “the fetus is no larger than this eraser. It’s just a little clump of cells.” She tucked the pencil inside clasped hands and filled the air between herself and Sarah with a sympathetic sigh. “Is it alive? Of course it is. But no more alive than . . . a wart.” She patted Sarah’s knee. “Just something to consider as you make your decision.”
Suddenly the warm, have-a-cookie smile left Sarah cold, and for the first time in the course of the conversation, she lied.
“You’ve been very helpful,” she said.
Whatever else the woman said before Sarah got to the door morphed into empty noise. She said something about your direction. Sarah’s only direction right now was out.
She passed the reception area where she’d checked in on a computer outside the thick glass that separated the staff from the patients. It had struck her as overkill on the way in. Now it was somehow horrifying. She got as far as the end of the hall when Megan caught up with her. She handed Sarah her coat and steered her to a corner near the elevator.
“You look like you’re about to pass out,” Megan said. “What—”
“A wart.”
Megan searched her face. “Okay, listen to me. You’ve been cool ever since this morning. You don’t have to lose it.”
That ship had already sailed. Sarah groped for the shore. “She compared a baby to a wart.”
“I’m sure she compared a fetus to a wart.”
“Are you serious?”
“Okay, it was a bad analogy on her part. But—”
“And she kept calling it a procedure—like it was a tummy tuck.” Sarah pressed her hands to her face. “It’s not a procedure, it’s a . . . horrible operation.”
“Sarah. Sarah!” Megan curled her fingers around Sarah’s sleeve. “You can’t let this get to you. Open heart surgery’s horrible, too, but some people have to have it.”
Have to? Was that what they thought: it was something she had to do? She always knew what she had to do, and she wasn’t feeling that right now. What she was feeling was . . . far more than she was used to feeling. And she didn’t know what to do with it.
“Let me just breathe for a minute,” she said. “I need to get my head straight.”
Megan bore her eyes into Sarah’s. “We’ll get you through this, okay? Let’s go.”
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