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“Oh, honey, don’t think you’re getting out of it now.”
An hour later, we sat in the waiting room. Dr. Flannigan, who turned out to be a she, called my name. Gran offered to wait in the waiting room, so I walked in unsure of what exactly I was being tested for.
“Miss Mason.”
“Charlie, please.”
“Charlie. Your grandmother tells me you haven’t been sleeping well, and you’ve been vomiting.”
“Well, the sleeping thing was due to other circumstances, and the vomiting only happened once.”
“Charlie, have you been having unprotected sex?”
“Um, no… I haven’t even been having sex.”
“When was the last time you had intercourse?”
Oh shit, were we really going there?
I didn’t want to drudge up the memory. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, trying to block out the memory of our last time on the cliff top.
“I don’t know… like two months ago.”
“Did you use protection?”
“Uh yeah, I was on the pill back then.”
“Back then?”
“Yes, I stopped sometime after that.”
I didn’t like where this was going. My heart was beating fast, and I wanted nothing more than to stop speaking. I placed my clammy hands on my thighs, rubbing the palms of my hands along my jeans with a slight tremble.
Where was she going with this?
“Charlie, would you mind urinating into the cup?”
Dr. Flannigan placed a cup in front of me. I grabbed hold of it, barely making my way to the restroom just outside her office. The anxiety had consumed me as I struggled to pee. This cannot be happening. Sitting on the toilet, I knew I only had moments before she would check up on me.
I wracked my brain. I was always on the pill back then. No, we didn’t use condoms, but I was on the pill. Teen pregnancy was the hottest topic in high school. I wasn’t stupid. I was always mindful of taking the fucking pill every night before bed, except that one night—the night that I found out about the baby.
Back inside her office, I handed the specimen to her as she dipped a thin cardboard strip into it. I couldn’t look, instead staring at a herpes chart that hung on the wall.
Oh my God, STDs?
I was so fucking stupid.
No, Charlie, don’t do this to yourself.
He said he wasn’t sleeping with her, and you believed him.
God knows how many other people he had slept with. I realized in that moment it was almost like I knew nothing about him. I was so naïve. I would never ever make this mistake again. Just breathe, everything was going to be okay. It had to be okay.
It felt like hours later when she pulled the stick out, her face showing no emotion. She drew her chair back to her table and reached out to a shelf beside her desk and removed some pamphlets, laying them before me.
“Lex, I took a test and it was positive… I was pregnant,” she cries softly.
I sit still, shell-shocked at the revelation. Not only had I left her without saying goodbye, I left her pregnant with my child. Everything made sense now, why she was holding back, why she couldn’t forgive me, recalling the clues she gave me about leaving us. But the baby, what happened to our baby? I close my eyes knowing the next part to this story is probably something I don’t want to hear, something that will bring my mistakes to the surface to be laid out in front of me, a big red marker pointing out where I failed and how I failed Charlie and our baby.
