AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good. Thank you.”
After a moment, he put out a hand, palm up. When she covered it with her own, he cursed. A couple of times.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You can trust me.”
Eight p.m. Showtime was early, and the fact that Gus had decided not to wait until midnight was just fine with C.P.
As she took the elevator down to what she thought of as the highway to the lab, she was in a trance. And when she started the long walk to the main access point, she was going against thegrain—and causing a stir. Many staff were leaving for the night, and a lot of the lab techs and researchers tripped up as they passed her.
She thought of Daniel as she nodded at them regally, like she was dressed as her usual self.
Battle-ax, huh. At the moment, she was feeling more like a thumbtack.
When she got to the checkpoint, she watched from a vast distance as her hand reached out and put her forefinger on the reader. The steel panel retracted to reveal a bald hallway with one-way mirrors running down the long sides, the bulletproof glass obscuring the security detail that would hit the nerve gas if there was any kind of infiltration.
She thought of Rob again.
She was still thinking of him as the panel ahead of her slid back and she stepped through. Out in the lab proper, there were a whole lot of vacancies at the workstations, but a few stragglers remained hard at work in their white coats and their goggles and their computers. She was struck by an absurd desire to go over and hug them, one by one.
“No more battle-ax,” she murmured.
The clinic area, where Gus was going to treat her, was way down the line, the patient rooms and nuclear medicine equipment set away from the open area as well as the negative pressure labs. Gus’s office was also among this lineup, and she stoppedat his door first. After her knock wasn’t answered, she went farther along, rounded the corner, and came to the treatment space she was going to be in.
Looking down at her thick socks, she felt as though she were stepping over a barrier, and once she was on the other side, there would be no returning.
She had rolled so many dice over so many years, and this was her final throw.
“Luck be a lady tonight,” she murmured as she pushed the door wide.
Gus was there, sitting at the built-in desk across from the hospital bed, the glow from the computer monitor casting blue light over the face she had come to rely on when she was feeling at loose ends. As usual, there was a lab report up on the screen, and she dreaded more testing.
Maybe he’d changed his mind about the results from the other facility and reversed his decision about not doing any more scans.
At this point, she was prepared to just consent away any risks and move on with it.
“I’m ready,” she said when he didn’t look over at her. “Hello? Gus. Are we starting or what?”
When he just shook his head at his screen, and then rubbed his eyes, a pit bottomed out in her stomach. In a hollow voice, she demanded, “What’s going on.”
“I need you to take a seat.”
“Okay.”
She started in his direction, but he shook his head. “Over there. Please.”
“Okaaaay.” Rerouting, she went across and sidled up onto the hospital bed. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
As her heart started to pound, she put her hand at the base of her throat and reminded herself that as far as bad news went, she’d maxed out on dire straits. There were no more breaking stories that could be worse than what she had already heard.
“I swear to God, St. Claire,” she snapped, “if you don’t start talkingrightnow, I’m going to put my head through the wall.”
He turned around on his swivel chair and almost met her eyes. “You’re pregnant.”
C.P. blinked. Then shifted herself a little farther back on the mattress. “I’m sorry, what did you say.”
“You are pregnant.”
The words were spoken crisply, with enunciation worthy of an English professor. And yet she still didn’t understand them.
