THE next day, Lizzie stayed in bed. Her mind hummed and swarmed with a hornet’s nest of thoughts, turning into a tangle she didn’t have the energy to unravel. She rotated from crying, to puking, to sleeping, to staring down at her stomach in disbelief. She’d always felt at the mercy of her hyperactive mind, but now she felt a disconnect from her body too, like she was a passive bystander to what it was doing. What it was creating.
Maybe.
Maybe creating.
Because could you really trust five positive pregnancy tests? Trust those blue plus signs and double pink lines growing darker and stronger each time?
She managed to finally find the presence of mind to call a free clinic and schedule an appointment for the next morning, wanting to make the call before Indira got home.
When Indira walked in the door an hour later, Lizzie told her she still felt like shit and would probably go to bed early. Instead, she stared up at her ceiling for the rest of the night, blue plus signs, Rake’s voice in her ear, and the howl of a crying baby chasing one another around her skull.
AT THE CLINIC the next morning, she sat in the waiting room, her leg jiggling up an earthquake as she filled out the paperwork. After what felt like an eternity, she was ushered into the back by a friendly but efficient nurse named Linda.
The nurse slid behind a computer, typing furiously as she looked between Lizzie’s paperwork and the monitor, the pounding click click clicks filling the room.
“And what brings you in today?” she asked without looking at Lizzie.
“I … uh … I think I need a blood test.”
“A blood test for what?” Click click click.
“For, um.” Lizzie coughed, the words wrapping themselves around her vocal cords and making her choke.
“Let me take your blood pressure,” Nurse Linda continued, seeming to need to use every second to its maximum efficiency. “You were saying?”
“I think I’m, uh, maybe kind of pregnant…” Saying the word out loud was like being punched through the chest and having the fist squeeze her heart.
“Would you like to be tested for STIs too?” Linda asked, oblivious to the avalanche of emotions currently crushing Lizzie.
“Oh fuck, might as well,” Lizzie said, throwing her hands in the air and giving in to the tears.
Nurse Linda finally seemed to pick up on Lizzie’s distress, giving her fingers a moment of rest from their endless clacking. After a brief pause, she handed Lizzie a tissue. Lizzie took it and blew her nose, but all she really wanted from the woman—from anyone—was a hug.
“I just … I just don’t know how this could have happened,” Lizzie said, wiping at another bubble of snot from her nose. “I mean, I know how this happened. Despite the pretty picture I’m painting, I’m not a total fucking idiot. But we did use a condom.”
The nurse gave her a sympathetic shrug. “Condoms break. Or expire. You’re not an idiot.”
“Expire?” The thought had never occurred to Lizzie that she might be toting around expired condoms in the bottomless depths of her purse. She knew it was technically possible, sure, but it seemed like such an improbable outcome that she hadn’t ever given the idea much room in her already-crowded brain.
She dug to the bottom of her purse and fished out the last remaining silver package from the strip she’d used with Rake. She turned it over and over, finally finding those tiny little black numbers. The noise that came from her throat was somewhere between a sob and a laugh. They’d expired three months ago.
“You … keep them in your purse like that? All crinkled?”
Lizzie shot the nurse a pathetic, watery-eyed look before completely crumpling into tears. “Yes, Linda, I keep expired, crinkled condoms at the bottom of my purse—right next to the peanut butter crackers, thank you very much—and then use them to have sex with a random Australian man. I’m. A. Mess.”
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Oh, poor dear.” Linda gently patted Lizzie’s shoulder until she got her sobs under control.
The rest of the appointment was handled with a bit more delicacy, Linda offering Lizzie gentle smiles and painless handling.
“How long until…” Lizzie gestured vaguely at the little vials of her blood on the counter, her voice scratchy.
The nurse gave her a soft smile. “Since you’re one of the first appointments of the day, I imagine we can get you your results by this evening. Is email okay?”
Lizzie nodded.
Linda stared at her for a moment before reaching out and taking Lizzie’s hand. “You have options, dear. Don’t forget that. Whatever the results or whatever you decide, we’ll be here to help you.”
Lizzie choked down a sob and nodded again, pressing her lips together in an attempt at a smile, before heading out the door.
LIZZIE SPENT THE rest of the day taking more pregnancy tests that she’d spent an obscene amount of money on and checking her email every two seconds. Right before five, she decided to take one more test, because the ninth time was sure to show a different result, right? She sat cross-legged on her bed, her knuckles white as she clutched the tiny stick in her fist, when her computer dinged with an email. She clicked it open so fast, she almost tore a muscle in her fingers.
She clicked it open, logged into the health portal, and scanned down the labs, all negative for the various venereal diseases, and the tiniest blossom of relief bloomed in her chest. But, at the bottom, sat the one word that changed everything.
POSITIVE
Her eyes scanned back and forth across the line over and over.
hCG 327 mIU/ml POSITIVE
She somehow managed to unglue her eyes from the screen to look at the stick in her hand. To look at those two pink lines.
Lizzie stared at those two lines. She wished she could shrink her body down and dissolve between those little pink lines, lock herself in a little pink jail so she wouldn’t have to face this reality.
She wanted to cry and she wanted to puke. She wanted to run away and curl up in a ball. Her brain was somersaulting in her skull, so many thoughts tumbling over and over one another.
She didn’t know what to do.
What was she supposed to do?
Objectively, twenty-seven was a perfectly normal age for a woman to have a baby. Subjectively, Lizzie was now unemployed and barely had enough faith in her abilities to care for herself, let alone an innocent life. Yet suddenly she was faced with the reality of motherhood? But could she give the baby up? Or terminate the pregnancy altogether?
She had options. Options many women weren’t fortunate enough to have. But she was overwhelmed by all of them. What did she actually want? Questions built in her chest until the pressure threatened to crack her open, fracture her skull, and pop her heart from her chest.
She could practically see herself fucking up as a mom. Missed appointments, messy apartment, all those small little functional things that felt like mountains to her hyperactive mind.
But, amid all the flickers of failure dancing through her brain, one image kept coming to the forefront. It started off hazy, but as each doubt surfaced, the image grew stronger. Lighter. It practically glowed on a projector in her mind. A tiny chubby fist with dimpled knuckles wrapped around her finger. Squeezing tight. Holding on to her.
She was suddenly so overwhelmed with the need to have that little hand wrapped around her finger, she wanted to howl.
She collapsed back onto her pillows, staring up at her blank white ceiling as she let the idea tumble around her brain. Could she do it? Could she be a mom? Slowly, the thoughts transformed.
Maybe she could?
Lizzie loved children. She’d always had some far-off dream of being a mom, of finally reaching some point in her life when she had her shit together. It had always seemed like a fantasy. Some alternate-universe version of Lizzie that got to be a mom. The alternate Lizzie had a brain with excellent executive functioning and a steady partner who loved her. She remembered to switch out the laundry and kept a color-coded calendar.
A sharp tang of jealousy filled Lizzie’s mouth at the thought of that other version. That couldn’t be her. That would never be her. But why couldn’t Lizzie have at least part of that fantasy?
The longer she stared up at the ceiling, the weaker any other options became, until they didn’t take up any more space in her mind.
Lizzie was pregnant.
There was a tiny bundle of cells dividing inside her that would eventually become a full-blown person.
A start of a little life, and she was responsible for it.
And she wanted to do it.
She wanted to see them grow.
Tears fell from the corners of her eyes, and she let them. She wasn’t sure what emotion they represented; she felt so many all at once. Each little salty drop that rolled down her cheek was filled with fear and anxiety and doubt, but also love and determination and the tiniest bit of hope.