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Chapter Twenty-Nine

Eva

T he waiting room is filled with pictures of babies, women's anatomy, and birth control pamphlets. It’s an odd mixture of marketing.

But my eyes home in on the babies. I’ve had five days to sit with the idea. As terrifying as it is, there’s this excitement that I’ve kept inside.

I’ve always wanted to become a mom. The cuddles and soft baby skin are like heaven on earth. Their sweet, innocent smiles and giggles.

I’ve felt nauseous and thrown up every morning since I took the test. If I’m not pregnant, there’s definitely something going on with me.

“Eva,” a nurse dressed in pink scrubs calls at the door.

I smile and pick up my purse, then follow her down the hall until she ushers me into a private room.

“I’m just going to get some of your vitals first.”

I let her take my blood pressure and temperature, then answer some basic questions.

“All right. We’re going to get a urine sample, and then I’ll have you change.”

She leads me to the bathroom, where I pee in a cup before we go back into the room.

“Go ahead and take everything from the waist down off and place this over you. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

“Thank you.” I smile as she slowly backs out.

I take a deep breath.

“You’ve got this,” I whisper to myself.

I strip down and fold my panties and jeans, then place them on the chair. I wonder if it’s weird to fold my clothes in a doctor’s office.

Next, I hop up onto the exam table and place the paper over my lower half. My legs dangle over the sides, making me feel like a kid. I let them swing back and forth as the nervous energy in my body courses through me.

A soft knock sounds at the door.

“Come in,” I shout.

The doctor, a woman who looks to be in her thirties, walks in. She has black hair and is wearing black pants with her white coat over the top.

“Hi, Eva. I’m Dr. Bryant.” She closes the door, holding my file, then extends her hand toward me.

I place my hand in hers and shake. “Nice to meet you.”

She leans against the counter and opens my file. My hands are in my lap, turning red as they clutch each other, while I brace for what comes next.

“Eva, it looks like you’re pregnant. Your test came back positive. I’m going to do an exam to confirm.”

I nod my head in response. Relief. That’s what I feel. My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away. I knew I had conflicting emotions about this, but this confirms it for me. I want this baby. I’m excited about this baby.

“Go ahead and lie down,” she tells me as she washes her hands. “This will just take a minute.”

She grabs two rubber gloves. I watch as she stretches them over her hands. I lie back on the table, the paper below me crinkling underneath my weight.

“Just scoot down a bit. Place your feet here,” she instructs.

It’s such an odd thing to open yourself up like this to a total stranger. Fortunately, she has a very calming presence. It makes this feel a little less awkward.

“I’m going to place two fingers inside of you and feel your uterus.”

“Okay,” I reply softly.

She does the examination, which takes less than twenty seconds.

“All right, you can sit back up.”

She takes the gloves off and tosses them in the trash, then washes her hands. As she dries them off, she turns toward me. “I’d say you are five weeks along.”

I bite my lip as I try not to bawl my eyes out in front of her. “Wow. Okay.”

“Is this a surprise to you?” she asks gently.

“It is,” I tell her honestly. “I was on birth control. I’m pretty strict about taking it too.”

“Hmm. There are some things that can happen that make it less effective.”

“I know the standard things. I didn’t get sick and throw up or take any new medications that would have interacted with it.”

“Is there anything you were doing out of the ordinary five weeks ago?” she asks. “It helps to identify if there was a reason, so you know next time you’re on birth control.”

I try to do the math. Five weeks. That would put me at the end of July, which was … Paris.

“The only thing out of the ordinary was traveling. I was in Paris for a couple of days.”

“Ah, and did you adjust the time you took your birth control, so it was still the same time you took it here?”

My eyebrows rise as I try to understand what she’s saying.

She smiles. “Did you take it at the same time you usually do, but Paris time?”

“Yes.”

“That means you went thirty hours at one point without birth control, which can mess with its effectiveness. Were you sexually active in Paris?”

“My … boyfriend was with me.” That sounds better than my boss, my brother’s best friend.

I can’t believe I didn’t think about the time difference and what that would mean for birth control. I feel like such an idiot.

“It doesn’t happen often. Sometimes, if you’re in a different time zone, especially one that’s so far ahead of your regular time zone, it will make the pill less effective.”

“I should have thought about that.”

“It happens more than you think. Don’t be too hard on yourself. About your due date, it looks like it would be May 10.”

I find my hand going straight to my belly. The realization that there is for sure a baby in there—my baby—feels overwhelming. Immediately, I know I will do anything to protect my baby.

Dr. Bryant goes through prenatal vitamins and general dos and don’ts of pregnancy. Suddenly, I wish someone were here with me. If Roman were here, he would catalog all of this in his brain for me.

Will he ever be here? Am I going to come to all these appointments alone?

I can’t get out of the office fast enough.

Dr. Bryant gives me some pamphlets and tells me to schedule my next visit in a month at the front desk.

The moment I get outside, the tears spill down my cheeks, one after the other. The September weather is still unbearably hot and humid, but I need to walk.

The chaos in the streets of New York City normally helps take me out of my head, but today, nothing can distract me. I picture myself going in for the ultrasound, excited to find out the gender, and having no one to celebrate with but the technician.

Will they look at me with pity in their eyes?

Now that I’ve had my appointment, it’s time to figure out how I’m going to tell Roman. I want to just rip it off like a Band-Aid. Just two words … I’m pregnant . Let him tell me what he thinks.

But I know I need to be gentle. I imagine kids were never in his future, as far as he thought. If he didn’t plan on marriage, it’s unlikely he planned on kids.

When I get home, I grab a snack and plop down on the couch. I’ve found that snacking throughout the day helps with my nausea. I can’t eat big meals right now.

It’s four o’clock on a Saturday, and I’m ready to go to bed. The fatigue just keeps getting worse. No matter how much sleep I get at night, by dinnertime, I’m done.

Tomorrow morning, I have got to get some work done. I did what I could the rest of the week, but mornings made it pretty hard to focus. Luckily, I got through my Zoom calls where needed, and no one seemed to notice I was on the verge of puking.

After I finish my snack, I lie down on the couch and put on a TV show. It’s not long before my eyelids feel heavy and become near impossible to keep open.

They flutter closed as I fall into a restless nap.