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“Sorry,” he mumbles, arm still over his face, and I laugh out loud.
29
Kate
Aday later the message“When did I last see you?”pops into the WhatsApp group I share with Liss that usually just says things like“Buy tampons”or“Landlord says there’s a leak on the 15th floor.”
I look up, but everything’s quiet in the ward, and I place my thumbs on the phone. Hmmm.
Hello, lovely friend.
My God, she’s alive, hang on, I have to call the missing person’s helpline back.
We were in the apartment last week, Liss.
Yeah—a week ago!—you missed my PMS week. I had no one to drink wine and rage with.
Oh shit, I’m a bad friend. We’ve dealt with our PMS together for a long time, and ever since we started sharing the apartment our periods would turn up at around the same time, so we’ve been downing bottles of wine and getting drunk and testy together for years.
I’m sorry!
Hope Fabian enjoyed your company last week. :-)
I shake my head.
Be great to see you.
Yeah, when?
Tomorrow? I’m on an early shift. You fancy a pizza and wine evening?
Sounds perfect.
I stare at the two blue lines on the stick in front of me. That’s impossible. We’ve not used condoms for a while, but I’ve been on the shot forever, so there’s just no chance. I delve into the package shaking my head—I’ll use the other stick. A tremor in my hand makes me fumble as I try and pull the other package out of the box, and I stop and stare at the back of the toilet door. I only did this because Liss said that thing about PMS, and I couldn’t remember when I’d last had my period. Maybe I won’t think about this now. Maybe I’ll check tomorrow. Can I keep calm until tomorrow? No, no I can’t.
I pull the second stick out. Thoughts buzz through my head like wasps: my internship, Fabian … fuck, my parents. My gut roils—they will flip. Despite how uptight my parents are and our sometimes shaky relationship, my mom has nurtured me through this doctor’s career I’m aiming for. She’s so invested in what I’m doing, so proud I’m following in her footsteps: God knows how she’ll take something like this. I am not the child who does this kind of thing, who messes up their lives with a mistake. My stomach turns sour. I don’t want to think of this as a mistake. No child should start their lives that way. This is how my parents think, for God’s sake.Child. Jesus.
I press my hand to my stomach. Am I really viewing this stick in my hand as a child? Is this real? There’s no thought in my head that I might get rid of it, and I suck in a sharp breath: This is a shock but I’m not desperately searching for the nearest exit. I’m … I’m … My God, Fabian! I’ve no idea how he’ll react to something like this; we’ve been so busy enjoying each other’s company that we’ve hardly talked about what we want for the future, how we feel about this sort of thing.
I look down at my shaking hands, and I bury my head in them. I’ve got to talk to someone. It has to be him. There’s no one else I can tell, no one else who should be the first person to hear about this. I look at the unused stick in my hand and shove it back in my bag. The two blue lines on the other stick look like an accusation, but something warm burns through me nonetheless. I put it in my bag and stand up, pulling up my pants and heading out of the stall to stare at the white-faced, blonde-haired woman in the mirror, giving myself a half-assed smile and a ridiculous thumbs-up before washing my hands and stepping out into the corridor.
The rest of my shift is a blur of nameless faces and reassurance. I’m so distracted imagining small children with dark tumbling curls that I take all the easy cases; it’s a dreadful move and one I wouldn’t normally do, but I’m staring at walls and patients’ bodies like I don’t know what I’m looking at and making no sense of anything anyone tells me. It’s all I can do to fix broken bones and administer drugs, as long as someone else makes the decision about which drug and how much.
By the time I leave, my whole body feels like I’ve been through a car crusher. The hot weather, the grumpy New Yorkers, the guy who shouts at me for taking up too much of his seat on the bus … it all slips off my shoulders like butter. I’m moving underwater, unable to connect properly with anyone. I just need to get to his apartment.
I take a deep breath when I arrive at his door, and everything swings sharply into focus again: I’m here, this is it. My key in the lock, the worn stairs to his apartment, the gray battered door; breathe in, breathe out. I open the door to the familiar tap-tap of keys, which stops as soon as I tap the code into the keypad. Then he appears in the bedroom doorway, and I can’t help the smile that breaks out when I see his tousled hair and clothes that look like he picked them up from where he left them last night on the floor. He grimaces.
“Let me shower,” he says, running a hand down at his crumpled T-shirt, and I laugh. He’s been lost in whatever he’s been doing all day. My eyes scan the tousled curls and scruff on his chin, and I take a few short steps over to him, wrapping myself around his warm body. He feels like home.
“You okay?” he mumbles into my hair.
My stomach is an echoing cavern. It’s now or never.
“I’ve got some news,” I say.
“Good or bad?” he says, and I step back to rub my hands over my face. I want to seehisface when I say this.
“Kate?” he says, taking my hands away from my face. His legs are bent so he’s at my level, and I meet his steady gaze.
