AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The air felt heavier than it should in mid-May. New York had been having a warm spat for the last week and it seemed like all the heat in the house had risen into my room overnight. A drop of sweat ran down my brow, slid down my cheek, and landed on the top of my collarbone, bare under the strap of my camisole. The feel of it caused my stomach to heave again, this time more violently.
"Just get it over with, Crosby," I muttered as I reached down for the plastic basin next to the bed.
Once I emptied my stomach, both of food and painful emotions, I'd feel better, at least for a little while. It would give me enough energy to go to my doctor's appointment, where I'd find out just exactly how far gone I was. Then I'd finally have to face just what was happening to my life.
~
"Well, you're definitely pregnant, hon. As if the constant yakking hadn't already clued you in on that one, am I right?"
The doctor's voice was annoyingly cheerful. I sat sullenly atop the paper-covered vinyl table, shivering in a flimsy hospital gown. When she took a seat on her stool, Dr. Brown's face dropped at my glowering face. She was a lot more cheerful than I'd expected the staff at a free clinic to be, but I was also her first patient of the day.
"I take it that's not good news," she said more sedately.
"Not really," I said, keeping my hands clasped on my lap and willing both the nausea and the welling tears to subside.
Neither obeyed. It was like pregnancy caused everything to come out of me, emotionally and otherwise. I had literally no power to censor anymore. Whereas I had always had a hard time keeping emotions off my glass face, now they seemed to run rampant through every other part of me as well.
I closed my eyes against the tidal wave of grief. I was tired. So, so tired.
"Oh, dear," Dr. Brown said, and immediately scooted over and grasped my clenched fists. "I'm sorry."
She had the good sense to wait a moment while I calmed down. I had to give her credit for her bedside manner. I probably wasn't the only one who walked through her doors with an unexpected pregnancy.
"It's not that..." I trailed off, choking up more. I didn't have to say anything; I knew that. Still, I felt the need to justify my confusion to this woman. "I...the father, he's just not around..."
"Of course, of course," soothed the doctor.
She gave me another squeeze on the hand before scooting back to the small sink to get me a tissue. I took it gratefully and dabbed at my eyes until finally the tears subsided. With a small sniff, I looked to her.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm...well, you can see I'm a mess right now. And I'm supposed to be studying for the bar exam, and I have to start my new job in two months. And the guy, he's...gone. There's...no one else."
It wasn't completely true, but I couldn't ask my seventy-six-year-old grandmother and my father, a newly recovering addict with a maimed hand, to help me bring up an infant while I left to work the eighty-hour weeks of a new associate. They had enough to deal with just getting their shit together. Theirs was no world in which to bring a new baby, and my life certainly couldn't handle it.
It was a thought that just about killed me. It was easier to push away the image of what that baby might look like, but only because I didn't know what it would look like. I hadn't even permitted myself to think about whether it would be a boy or a girl, whether he would be blond or if she would have my red hair. Whether he would have his father's bright blue eyes, or whether she might have my slanted green. Would the baby be ruddy or fair? Tall or dainty?
Because thoughts like that inevitably led to imagining the life that baby might have had, one where Brandon would hold it close, the tiny body so small that he could cradle its head in the center of his broad palm. He would coo, shelter it with his big shoulders, shelter us both...
I choked down a sob and pressed my face into my hands.
"You really don't need to justify your emotions, honey," the doctor said, offering a kind hand on my shoulder while I got myself under control. "Not to me or anyone. Now, have you decided what you want to do?"
I hiccupped back the remaining sobs, somehow managing to keep my emotions in check. The tears were still threatening to fall, but I looked away from the doctor's kind face and focused on the gray steel trellis from the construction outside the office. I needed to remember where I was. Not in a kind, loving relationship with a man I desperately loved, but a single, jobless, daughter of a disabled garbage collector, the previous mistress of a man who couldn't really be mine. More than one future depended on my choice here today. I needed to take care of the people who were already in the world first.
"I have," I whispered. My voice sounded weak and insubstantial. "I want to...but I can't have this baby right now."
Dr. Brown waited a moment before nodding.
"Are you sure about that?" she asked gently.
Was I? Blue eyes––or were they green?––bloomed inside my mind. I shook them away.
Unable to look at the doctor directly, I just clutched at the edge of my hospital gown and nodded shakily. "Yes. I think so."
Smoothing a professional yet kind expression over her plain features, the doctor nodded and stood up. "All right. Let's talk about all of your options. Then you can decide."
I nodded again. "Okay," I whispered. "Okay."
~
