“Okay, so condoms are only ninety-eight percent effective, so that means two in every hundred people get pregnant using them. To be fair, though, no contraceptive is one hundred percent effective. There’s always going to be a small number of people that it fails for.”
Turning my head to look at Elijah, I saw him frowning at the information. “So, that means if a guy had sex with a hundred women, two of them would get pregnant?”
This question rubbed me up the wrong way. “Doing the math in your head, are you?”
“No,” he sighed. “I’m just trying to figure it out. And I haven’t had sex with a hundred women.”
Before I could reply, Parker answered his previous question. “Statistically speaking, yes. But statistics don’t technically work that way. What they mean is two women out of one hundred in the world get pregnant. Then again, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. That’s why the safest form of contraception is abstinence.”
Neither of us knew what to say to this, so we stayed quiet. For years I’d played the Lottery and EuroMillions every week. I’d won different amounts, but I’d begged for a more significant win so that I could set up a charitable foundation of some sort. The statistics for winning one of those was probably lower than a condom failing. Did this mean I needed to play the lottery again?
“And the problems you’re having right now aren’t uncommon. Quite a few women have excessive nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, but not quite to this degree. Once we have the measurements from the scan, we’ll be able to give you more answers. However, I’m going to admit you for one more night so that we can up your sugar levels and stabilize you, then you’ll need to make an appointment with an OB/GYN.” Looking at Elijah, he frowned and muttered, “Although, it might be better if we get one to come and speak to you while you’re here, just to make sure they’re happy with us releasing you. We’re giving you an antinausea medication that’s safe to take while you’re pregnant, so don’t panic.”
“Is Sadie at risk with it?” Elijah asked, sounding worried.
“It’s not uncommon for first-time mothers or ones whose own mothers suffered with it to have Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Now, we’ve also been going on the details helpfully supplied by your insurance card, Sadie. Have you lost weight since the one that’s written on the card?”
It took me a moment to find the answer because my brain felt like it’d shrunk to the size of an amoeba, but eventually, I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Excellent. Elijah, your brother was able to fill us in on what she’d eaten in the last forty-eight hours, too, so we’ll need you to be as aware as he was in case we have to admit Sadie again during the pregnancy.”
Anything else that was going to be said was drowned out by the door banging open and my brother helping a young lady through with a weird looking machine on wheels.
“Don’t hurt yourself, love,” he schmoozed, making me feel nauseous again. “But I’ll kiss it better if that helps?”
Definitely nauseous.
Blushing prettily—the lucky wench—she wheeled it over to where Parker was and smiled widely at me. “I’m here to introduce you to your baby. Are you ready to fall head over heels in love?”
Those words turned everything upside down. Suddenly I wanted to meet him or her. I wanted to make sure that the tests were right. And I desperately needed to know that it was okay.
Trying not to cry, I nodded and grabbed Elijah’s hand, hoping it would give me strength.
Seeing how badly I was struggling, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “He’s got the best of both of us in him, and we’re both stronger than the average person, pixie. There’s nothing to worry about, yeah?”
Breathing in a shuddering breath—that fucking, fucking tremble in my chin, making it embarrassingly loud—I nodded and leaned back. “Let’s do this.”
Pulling the blanket down, she lifted the ugly hospital gown I had on up.
“Whoa, whoa, how far up does it go? I mean, I want to meet my niece or nephew, but I don’t want to do it seeing her…” Craig pointed at his chest. “You know?”
“That’s as far as it goes, man. You might want to let your grandmother in before she kicks the door down, though,” Parker snickered, pointing at the little glass window where MeeMee was glaring in and mouthing something at my brother.
While he let her in and she hissed something at him, the woman with the machine squeezed something freezing onto my stomach. Before I could say anything about it, she plopped a weird thing with a cable on it right in the gel and started moving it around as she pressed in slightly.
“Is it a bad time to say I need to go to the bathroom?” I asked, not joking at all. I hadn’t realized it until she’d pressed a particular area, and now it was a pressing matter.
“That’s what we need at this stage to get the best image of baby,” she murmured, her eyes on the screen. All I could see was something out of a sci-fi movie on it until she stopped and squealed, “Gotcha!”
That one word had even Parker leaning around to look at the screen, but it was Elijah’s big shoulders that blocked my view.
“Okay, so here we have—” the girl said, stopping suddenly. “Uh, sir, Mommy can’t see the screen.”
Mommy.
I was an ugly crier. I’d always looked like a constipated bulldog with conjunctivitis when I did it. But silent crying was a whole new issue for me, and I had zero doubts that it made me look like a constipated and conjunctivitis-ridden bulldog trying to hold back a sneeze. And it was all because of that one word—my first mommy.
Swearing quietly, Elijah moved out of the way by getting on the bed and leaning back next to me, giving me his strength and support the only way he could at that moment. I was still hurt by what he’d done, but I could’ve kissed him for it.
“So, as I was saying, this is baby’s head right here, then you’ve got a nose…” she continued pointing out parts to us. “Baby’s got long legs,” she giggled. “Obviously takes after Daddy.”
Well, given that I made my grandmother look like a giant, it was hardly taking after me.
She did some clicking and weird stuff with the screen, with lines and numbers coming up on different parts of the baby, then hummed and looked at Parker. “Looks like fourteen weeks and three days gestation.”
I almost hit Elijah in the chin with my hand. “That’s not possible. We only did it—” I looked at my brother, who was glaring at me now. “Um, roughly twelve weeks ago for the first time.”
“That adds up, Sadie,” Parker explained for her. “We go by the date of the last period, which would’ve been two weeks before the twelve weeks, so we add those weeks onto the pregnancy, and it works out at fourteen plus three days.”
Chewing my lip, I nodded and accepted the response. What did I know about medical stuff?
“Is the baby okay after how sick she’s been?” Elijah asked.
“Everything looks perfect. I’ll print you off some pictures and put some with the measurements on it in your new pretty pregnancy file.” She held up a pretty yellow folder to show me what she meant. “We like to have a backup at this hospital, so you get a copy to carry with you in case you’re somewhere else when you go into labor, and we save the information on a file in the hospital, too. Depending on where your OB/GYN is, they’ll do the same thing.”