Page 38 of Savior
She looks back at me, and I don’t miss the sympathetic expression in her light blue eyes. “There’s a lot that can have an effect on your cycle. Stress for one thing. Trauma…” she stops talking for a moment when I avert my eyes, wondering if she saw the news reports about what happened to us. It’s such a small town. I’m sure she did. “Are you sexually active?” she asks, delving right back to business as if she can sense my aversion to the topic of those news reports.
“Yes.”
“On birth control?”
“I was… I stopped taking it after I ran out.”
“How long ago was that?”
Taking a deep breath, I let it out on a sigh as I try to count backwards in my head. It’s almost April, the last time I took it, was sometime in late December… “Umm… it’s been about three months.”
“Do you use some other form of protection?”
My cheeks flush with heat. Why is this always so uncomfortable? “No…” I confess, as if it’s some dirty secret I should be embarrassed or ashamed about. “We’re monogamous.” I feel obligated to note.
“Your symptoms are consistent with pregnancy.” She replies, spinning around on the stool to open a drawer near the sink. She removes a plastic wrapped cup with a teal-blue lid. “Please take this to the bathroom and fill it to the line, here. Then just place the cap on top and bring it back.”
“I can’t be pregnant.” I say, reluctantly taking the cup as she hands it to me. “He… my fiancé, he… he… Well, he can’t get anyone pregnant.” I finally just blurt it out, feeling a bit disloyal. She looks at me as if she’s waiting for further elaboration. “I believe the term he used was… Shooting blanks.”
“A Vasectomy isn’t effective for at least the first three months.”
“It’s… not that...”
“A low sperm count isn’t zero. Stranger things have happened. It’s easy to rule this out as a possibility for your symptoms.” She eyes the cup, then me, then nods towards the door. “Go on.”
My sample is handed off to another nurse to run the test while my doctor goes off to attend to another patient. I sit myself back down on the crinkly paper draped over the vinyl table, and stare at the pale pastel green cinderblock wall of the claustrophobic exam room, and wait. My eyes drift to the little plastic pamphlet holder on the counter beside the stainless-steel sink, and glass jars of cotton swabs and tongue depressors. Health pamphlets ranging from heart disease, to diabetes, to osteoporosis and emphysema. There’s one on pregnancy, too.
I repeat in my mind, not to freak out. Dean and Lucinda tried for years, and couldn’t. She was able to get pregnant by Daniel and have Maddie. So, it had to have been Dean’s issue. Not hers. This test will come back negative, I’m sure. I won’t even have to tell him about this. I’ve got some kind of virus, that’s all. Nothing some rest or a prescription won’t clear up in a few days. Or perhaps this is all a result of skipping meals until dinner in the evenings with Dean.
A soft knock on the door before it opens again, has my heart leaping into my throat. The doctor is smiling knowingly at me, before she closes the door and takes her seat back on that little blueish-gray stool, that oddly matches with the hue of her gray hair.
“I hope this comes as a welcome surprise.” She says, seemingly a little warmer than she had been before. “You are indeed, pregnant, Miss Vettriano.” I can only blink back at her. I don’t have words… “We can set up an appointment for an ultra-sound to see just exactly how far along you are when…”
“There’s no way.” I finally find my voice, somewhat, shaking my head. She gives me another one of those sympathetic looks. “False positives… that can happen? Right? Especially with strip tests… Stranger things have happened.” I repeat her own words back to her.
She shrugs, but reluctantly agrees that it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. “A blood test will tell us for certain.” She adds. “Shall we add that to your work up?”
I nod. I need to be absolutely certain. There’s no way I can breathe a single word of this to Dean, unless I know for absolute sure. If I’m not, I won’t say anything to him about this. It would only hurt him.
We proceed with the blood test, and this is all beginning to feel like an out of body experience. Holding a cotton ball to the crook of my arm, I watch as she presses labels to my vials of blood, handing them off to another nurse.
“We’ll know for certain in a day.” She smiles at me. “The other tests will take another few days to come back. Make sure the front desk has a number where you can be reached. If needed, you can set up that appointment for an ultrasound when they call you with your results.”
I pay my copay at the front desk in a daze, nodding absentmindedly as the woman behind the window rattles off my phone number to confirm.
My car is parked in the middle of the lot, between this medical building and the other clinic for recovering addicts. There’s a group of people outside the front doors of that building, chatting amongst themselves, smoking cigarettes, while they wait for their seven pm group meeting to commence.
As I fish my car keys out of my purse, making my way across the lot, I can’t help but notice that there are quite a lot of people waiting outside. More than I would have expected to see in our little town. Perhaps some are from further away, if anonymity is a concern to them.
I’m distracted from that thought, however.
For some sudden reason, with every step I take, it’s becoming harder to breathe. My vision blurs and my ears are ringing. Before I know it, my legs give out from under me.
When I begin to come to, I realize I’m sitting on the warm pavement, my back propped up against a car door. Someone is stroking my hair, my face… speaking to me softly. They’ve got a plastic bottle of some sort, pressed gently to my lips, coaxing me to take a sip of water. I don’t know who they are, or what it actually is, and so I weakly push it away from my mouth.
“Stubborn girl…” A distinctly male voice, growls. “What’s wrong with you? Can you hear me, Vanna?”
Vanna… Do they know me? I force my eyes to blink open, but my vision is still blurry. The sun has set behind the tree line surrounding the medical complex, and there is a figure crouched before me, dressed in dark clothing.
