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“Right.” She nodded. “And that’s all there is to it?”
Doctor Anessi nodded. “Please, take a seat.”
Cassie moved to the lounge. Layth, instead of sitting next to her, stood like a sentinel at her side. The doctor opened his briefcase and began to remove equipment.
“This won’t hurt.”
Cassie nodded again. She’d had blood tests before. If she seemed anxious, it wasn’t because of the test. It’s because of what the test would reveal either way. Her smile was tight. “That’s fine.”
The actual process took just minutes.
Layth switched to his own language, something Cassie had never known him to do in front of her before. She felt instantly excluded. The doctor and he spoke earnestly for a few minutes and then Doctor Anessi dredged his professional smile up once more. “You will have results tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She nodded. And something occurred to her. “You’ll call me with them?”
The Doctor’s eyes lifted to Layth.
Layth’s expression was dark. “He will come here, and tell us.”
Layth again switched to his own tongue, but it was obvious that he was dismissing the doctor and downplaying Cassandra’s feelings at the same time.
“I might not be here,” she said stubbornly. “I have a life. Work.” A brief flash of guilt assailed her. She had not worked in days. The spectre of losing Layth had made it impossible to leave him before she was ready. But now? She invoked the spectre of work as a way to keep her own control of the situation.
“Like hell you will be. Do you not understand that this changes everything?”
She bit down on her lip. “What does it change, Layth?”
“If there is a baby, then plans will have to be made.”
Her heart dropped. “I can’t really think about that. In fact, it’s better if we don’t think about it until we know for sure, one way or another.”
Layth scanned her face, and tried to organise his emotions neatly. He tried to think about what Cassandra might be feeling and wanting. He tried to process what would be the right thing to say.
“You do not want a baby?”
She stood up jerkily and rubbed her hands together. “There is not necessarily a baby. In fact, more than likely, there isn’t.”
He pushed her objection aside. “But if you are pregnant, what would you want?”
Cassie stared at him, utterly lost. “What would you want?”
Layth spoke cautiously. He was not willing to impose his thoughts on her. Cassie had experienced far too much of that. What did she want? How did she feel? It was impossible to know from the blank expression she wore.
“You told me from the beginning that you don’t want marriage. You don’t want a baby. You were emphatic. Nothing has altered. Has it?”
Cassie felt a strange splintering in her chest. Not for him, perhaps, but for her? Everything had altered. The world no longer made sense as it had done weeks earlier, before meeting Layth Sati. “This is a moot point; a conversation not worth having until we know what we’re dealing with. We just have to wait.”
Layth nodded slowly, his mind throbbing with everything that remained unsaid between them.
“Fine. And so we wait.”
11
She’d hardly slept. Cassie hadn’t tossed and turned though. She didn’t want Layth to realise that her mind was racing faster than a brumby in a storm.
Instead, she’d stared across at the pale wall of his bedroom, without seeing a thing, and had pretended to be settled. To be calm, when she was anything but.
The revelations of the day before were sponging through her brain; her mind was saturated with possibilities she didn’t want to contemplate.
