Page 15

‘You look really pale. I think I should call someone,’ Jesse says, pulling out his phone.

I have no idea who ‘someone’ is in this context. I have no one in the city to call. Dad? The very thought is a joke. The idea of him helping me in a medical crisis involving my pelvis is… no. It’s taking all my optimism to picture us having a pleasant dinner together tonight. Mum? She’s away with her two best friends for a weekend in Daylesford, a long-overdue birthday present that she’s been saving for and planning for months. I am not ruining her weekend and asking her to drive two hours to me for what might be a weird flash of period pain, or bad gas, or simply my body violently rejecting the idea of being a runner.

I’m writhing a little in the grass now, which sounds like it could be sexy, but it’s most definitely not. I can’t get comfortable. I shimmy around until I’m holding myself at an odd angle, grimacing.

‘Don’t call anyone,’ I say.

A new thought hits me. A nightmarish thought. What if I’m one of those people who got pregnant without realising it and now I’m about to give birth? No, not possible. Tristan and I had sex a total of four times last year, and each time we did, we were incredibly careful. We were so careful we were smug about it. I even took pregnancy tests to be doubly sure. And I’ve gotten my period every month, heavy and unpleasant and like clockwork, for the past year. But, but, but. All those horror stories they told us in school. That one video I saw online. That you can get pregnant even when using a condom, you can get pregnant even if they pull out, even if you’re on the Pill. You can somehow be pregnant and not have a single symptom or gain any weight or notice anything different or lose your period or get a positive pregnancy test. Yes, all of those things at once are extremely unlikely but not impossible. I could be the outlier. Someone must be the one in a million, and it’s me and it’s now and my life is over.

I look up at Jesse and try to imagine saying the words I’m giving birth. Or worse. I’m giving birth and there’s no time, you’ll have to deliver the baby, here, at the Tan, with attractive runners passing us in their matching bike shorts and crop tops—please limit the number of people who will see my vagina. I can feel a rising hysteria, which might flow out of me as laughter or tears, I’m not sure which. I’ll be the girl who gave birth at the Tan. My child will be known as the Tan Baby. The story will go viral, and worst of all, Jesse will be the hero.

Stop. Calm down. Think rationally. This is not labour. I know I am not pregnant. I know this isn’t labour.

‘Where exactly is the pain?’ Jesse is kneeling down beside me.

‘Here,’ I say, pointing to the right side of my pelvis. ‘And also my whole stomach, I guess. It’s kind of radiating out.’

‘Hmmm. Okay.’ Jesse pulls out his phone and starts typing.

‘What are you doing?’ I look up at him pathetically.

‘Googling all the major organs,’ he says.

I lie back a little and close my eyes. I picture myself dying, ascending to the clouds. Except I can’t die right now. I am the least popular and least successful I have ever been. I need to hold on until I get that big assignment back so I can see if I get a HD. And I bought that new mascara online that had its delivery delayed.

‘Well?’ I say, looking up at him. ‘Which organs are we worried about?’

‘Well, there’s your heart.’

‘My heart is up here, you have no idea what you’re doing, give me that phone,’ I say, holding out my hand and groaning a little. I do not have the patience for his incompetence.

‘Yes, I know where your heart is, but my aunt had a heart attack, and her only symptoms were a sore arm and stomach pain,’ Jesse says. ‘We can’t rule anything out yet.’

Jesse zooms in on something on his phone, squints, looks at me, zooms in again. What is he looking at? Then he squats next to me and takes my wrist in his hand.

‘I’m going to check your pulse.’

‘Okay.’ That seems proactive at least.

We sit in silence as he counts my heartbeats. A little concentration line appears between his eyes. It’s very intimate, I realise, the counting of heartbeats. His hand on my wrist. His lips move slightly, as he counts. I smother a little whimper of pain.

‘Is it too fast?’ I say.

‘I don’t know yet.’

We wait, and then he looks up.

‘It’s fine. Beating at a normal speed. Normalish.’

‘Normal-ish?’

‘Well, you’ve been running. So, it’s going pretty fast.’

‘So it could still be a heart attack?’

‘Technically, yes.’

‘Look, I think it’s just really bad period pain or something,’ I say, turning away from him. It’s not that the words period pain are inherently that embarrassing, but it’s humiliating to say them to Jesse while lying out dramatically on a bit of grass during the first run I have ever attempted. Being in pain, in public, feels intensely personal and revealing. I don’t have control of my body. I am trapped inside something that is malfunctioning. And that is scary as hell.