Page 83 of Omega's Formula

“I think I’m good.”

The room is small. Smaller than Mrs. Kay’s, which I didn’t think was possible. There’s a single bed pushed against one wall, a desk under the window, a wardrobe that looks like it came from a thrift store in 1987. The mattress sags in the middle and the window sticks when I try to open it.

It’s perfect.

I unpack what little I brought. Clothes in the wardrobe. Ellie’s photos on the desk. The pregnancy vitamins I picked up at a pharmacy during a rest stop, tucked into the drawer where no one will see them.

I lie down on the bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about another bed in another city, one that smelled like someone I’m trying very hard to forget.

I fail.

The ache hits without warning—this hollow, desperate longing that starts in my chest and spreads outward until my whole body feels like it’s reaching for something that isn’t there. Prime match withdrawal. I knew it would be bad. I didn’t know it would feel like drowning in slow motion.

I curl onto my side and press my hand against my stomach, where something impossibly small is growing. Something that’s half him.

“It’s just us now,” I whisper to the empty room. “We’re going to be okay.”

I almost believe it.

The first week is survival mode.

I learn the bus routes. I find the cheapest grocery store. I locate the nearest clinic that takes walk-ins and doesn’t ask too many questions, because I need prenatal care and I can’t exactly use my old insurance without leaving a trail.

The nausea hits me like a freight train on day three.

I’m in the shared kitchen, trying to make toast, when the smell of someone else’s eggs sends me sprinting for the bathroom. I barely make it. Mich finds me there twenty minutes later, still clutching the toilet like it’s the only solid thing in the universe.

“Food poisoning?” she asks from the doorway.

“Something like that.”

She doesn’t push. Just leaves a glass of water outside the door and disappears.

The nausea doesn’t stop. It’s morning sickness, except it doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo about mornings. It hits me at breakfast, at lunch, at three in the afternoon, at midnight. Everything smells wrong. Everything tastes wrong. I lose five pounds in the first week just from not being able to keep anything down.

At the clinic, a tired-looking nurse practitioner tells me it’s normal. “Some people get it worse than others,” she says, handing me a pamphlet. “It usually eases up around week fourteen. In the meantime, try ginger. Small meals. Stay hydrated.”

I’m at week nine. Five more weeks of this feels impossible.

She also does an ultrasound. I watch the screen without really seeing it at first—just grey static and shapes that don’t mean anything. Then she points to a flicker at the center of the image.

“There’s the heartbeat.”

Everything stops.

That tiny pulse on the screen. That impossible, miraculous flutter. It’s real. This is real. There’s a person growing inside me, a person with a heartbeat, a person who exists because of one heat-drunk week when I let myself believe things might work out.

I don’t realize I’m crying until the nurse hands me tissues.

“First baby?” she asks gently.

I nod, not trusting my voice.

“The father in the picture?”

“No.” The word comes out steadier than I feel. “It’s just me.”

She doesn’t judge. Just nods and makes a note in my file. “We have resources if you need them. Support groups for single parents. Financial assistance programs. You don’t have to do this alone.”