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“God, I hate throwing up,” Rena said, talking into the toilet bowl. Her voice echoed off the ceramic.
“Me too,” I said. “What can I get you?” I was willing to run to the pharmacy to get something to make her feel better.
“Bed,” I said.
“Coming right up.”
She wiped her face with the washcloth and sipped some water before I scooped her up and carried her to bed. Under any other circumstance, I didn’t think Rena would have let me do this for her, but she was vulnerable and her guard was down. I would take advantage of that and be the man I wanted to be for her while I could.
When she was tucked in, her eyes fluttering shut, I sat down next to her and watched her. Her eyelashes were long on her cheekbones, her lips naturally pouting, and she looked so much younger than she already was.
I tried to think what she could have eaten to be this sick, or where she could have picked up a stomach bug. I didn’t remember anyone at the office being sick lately.
Then it hit me. The broken condom. Was it possible she was pregnant?
I tried to calculate when we had done it last, and I anchored the date along with when we’d flown home from Boston. That had been ten days ago. It was enough time for her to get sick from it, wasn’t it? I didn’t know much about pregnancy, but I did understand morning sickness and I was starting to think that this was what was happening.
What was I going to do if Rena was pregnant? I waited for the panic to come. I waited to freak out and head for the hills, promising money but nothing else. I watched Rena and envisioned a life where everything had to change for the sake of a baby and waited for me to realize how much I hated it.
But it didn’t come. I wasn’t freaking out, and I didn’t hate the idea at all. Was I ready to be a father? Was I ready to commit being in this woman’s life in one way or another for the rest of my life? I had no idea. The thought had come up a few times since the condom had broken, but never so completely.
This was a whole different story, and I didn’t understand it. My whole life, I had run away from commitment, from women who wanted everything for me and didn’t care about what I felt. I had been married to my work so that I didn’t have to fill a void with something like a relationship. But now, everything was different. Rena was in a space where she might change my life forever. And I didn’t hate the idea of it. I didn’t hate it at all.
There was a chance Rena wasn’t pregnant, of course. But I didn’t know if that was a chance I wanted to take. I wanted to know for sure. I wanted to find out what was real so I could figure out how I felt about it. And if I didn’t feel rotten about it, I wanted to know why.
I made sure Rena had everything she needed. I put a glass of water on the nightstand, along with her phone and a note that I was running to the store.
Before I left her apartment, I found her house keys so I could let myself back in again. I had never done something like this, but there was a first time for everything. I walked through the aisles until I found the baby aisle. Condoms, pregnancy tests, and diapers were all next to each other. How ironic. Either it was grouped that way for convenience, or it was a warning.
Why were there so many tests to choose from? They ranged in prices and ink color, and I had no idea what I was looking for. I wanted something that would work. I wanted something that would be accurate.
“Can I help you?” someone asked, and I turned to find a shop assistant behind me. I scratched my head, feeling a little out of place.
“I don’t know which one to take,” I said.
“These are pregnancy tests,” the shop assistant said.
“I know that. I’m not stupid. I just don’t know which one to get.”
She nodded slowly. “I find the red-ink tests aren’t so reliable. The blue ones are better, but it really depends on the brand. These over here are early-detection pregnancy tests.”
“Early detection?”
“They pick up the smallest levels of HCG in the mother’s blood. It gets stronger the further along the pregnancy is. At first, the pregnancy hormone is hard to detect.”
“So I need this one, then.”
The shop assistant shrugged. I would have been pissed off at her if my mind hadn’t been on Rena and what was going on with her. I had left her alone, and I wanted to get back as soon as possible.
