“Before you go off the deep end, let’s check a dipstick. It might be a hundred other things.”
Right.
Except it’s not a hundred other things. Not when you’re staring down at a stick with two pink lines. And three others that match it.
“Have you taken any anticonvulsants in the last forty-eight hours?” Margot questions, standing over my shoulder and eyeing the sticks we have lined up on the gurney, sitting atop of a disposable pad.
For the first time in my life, I wish the answer was yes. “No.”
“So at least it won’t be a false-positive.”
I can’t stop glaring at them. Four tests. All positive. How the hell did this happen?
I look over my shoulder at her. “You realize the irony of this, right? I’m an OB-GYN. Accidentally getting pregnant is like the most ridiculous thing we can do.”
“Not just accidentally pregnant, babe. Accidentally pregnant with your OB-GYN attending man-lover. This is like a Top 40 solid platinum album here. You’re a country ballad waiting to happen.”
“Thanks.” I can’t even manage proper sarcasm at the moment. I turn back to the tests. My heart in my throat suffocating the breath from my lungs. “Just because they’re positive doesn’t mean—”
“Vaginal ultrasound?”
“You gonna do it? Shove something that looks like a lubricated dildo up my vag?”
She laughs. “See one, do one, teach one.” I give her another look. “I can assist. You’ll walk me through it.”
No. I can’t do it. Not yet. I’m just… “I’m not ready yet.” I’m hard and fast in denial town. I mean, how many women have I treated who had positive pregnancy tests and then ended up not being pregnant? Or the pregnancy wasn’t viable?
Or… fuck.
I’m pregnant with Carter’s baby.
How could I have made such a mistake?
And what about my career?
That! My career!!
It’s already shaky with Carter pushing me off his service, keeping me out of the OR. What will this do to it?
I have another almost two years left of my residency. You can’t have a baby during residency. Shit gets all kinds of fucked up. People view you differently. You lose credibility and surgeries, and everyone thinks if you’re assertive, you’re just a hormonal bitch—fucking misogynists. And then you get into breastfeeding and diaper changing and burp cloths and lack of sleep and…
“I can’t do it,” I reiterate.
“Alright,” Margot barks, her voice growing stern. “Cut your drama off here at the bitch. For now, let’s do some blood work. You know we should. I’ll put it under the name Bellatrix Lestrange. No one will know it’s you.”
“No, they’ll think I’m a pregnant psychopathic death eater instead.”
She shifts in beside me. “If you were Amelia, I’d go with Ginny Potter. You know, ‘cause she’s a redhead. You’re blonde.” She tilts her head, studying me before she snaps her fingers in an ah-ha way. “Luna Longbottom. I was always secretly team Luna-Neville. It’s perfect.”
“I can’t believe this is what my night, my life, has turned into. Maybe we should do more tests? Just to be sure I’m consistently getting two pink lines.”
“Only if I can bill your insurance for it, Doctor. Do you have any idea how perpetually strapped the emergency department is for funds?”
“Fine. Blood work it is.”
“And who should I put as the supervising physician to receive the results of all your—”
“Margot?” Drew opens the sliding door and then the curtain and Margot and I both spin around at light speed, closing our ranks so that Drew can’t see what’s on the gurney behind us. He stares at both of us, a suspiciously bemused expression on his face. “What’s going on in here?”
“Nothing,” Margot snaps. “I told you I had menstrual cramps, so I called in a professional.”
Drew’s eyes cast over to me and then back to her. “Uh-huh. What’s really going on in here, Freckles?”
“I’m pregnant,” Margot states, and I choke on my own spit. The fuck?!
Except he must know his girl perfectly because he just rolls his eyes like he doesn’t buy it for a second. “Whatever. If you’re done with your nonexistent menstrual cramps and fake pregnancies, are you available to come out here and do your job? I have like five patients who need a nurse.”
“I’m hurt, Drew. Totally hurt. I could be pregnant. Or heavily menstruating.”
“Not at the same time, you can’t. And we both know you’re not either. You called Grace in here tonight to freak out over the fact that I’m pressing you to set a date for our wedding. I’m shocked you didn’t drag Halle, Aria, and Rina here as well.”
“They were busy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but we do have patients to see.”
“Fine,” she groans, sagging almost exaggeratedly. “Give me five more minutes. But if you mention a wedding date again, I won’t give you after-work morning sex.”
“Liar. It’s your favorite sex.”
She turns to me. “It totally is. Okay, I’m back to work, but thank you, Dr. Hammond for coming down and discussing my cramps with me. I feel much better about them now that I know they’re normal. I just have a couple more very quick questions I’d like you to answer for me if you have a second.”
Drew makes some sort of dismissive sound in the back of this throat before he turns and saunters out of the room, throwing me a wave as he goes.
“Saved your ass, Doctor,” Margot says to me once the door is shut. “Let’s get going on this blood work before he comes back and figures out what we’re really up to. HIPAA or not, your baby news will spread faster than an STI at a fraternity pledge party. I don’t think that’s how you want Carter to find out you’re carrying his spawn.”
Yep. I’m officially screwed.
29
I make it home in a daze. My mind set on an endless loop, rolling from incredulous to bone-shivering petrified to slightly excited to ready to curl up in a ball and never move again. But amidst all that, one universal question remains unchanged. How could this have happened?
To me.
I’m a doctor. An OB-GYN. I am the champion of safe sex and birth control.
If it were any other circumstances, it would be an insufferable embarrassment.
Icy fear lingers on my skin, the heat of the Boston night doing nothing to warm me. My thoughts are frazzled. My body no longer feeling like it’s my own.
But as I enter the condo, Carter’s condo, I’m hit with something else. A deep pang in my gut, twisting uneasily as it seems to burrow into my marrow. There is something bigger, scarier than having a baby at a completely inopportune time in your life. Telling the guy you’ve only been dating a couple of months that you’re knocked up with his kid.
I’m a Lifetime movie cliché without the benefit of this being fiction.
Nerves assault me as I shut and lock the door behind me. The condo is dark and completely silent. “Carter?”