“Alright,” I said, taking the folder and sitting back.
She kept her eyes on me expectantly, and I sighed, putting the coffee down and opening the folder. My face screwed up in confusion as I looked at what was in there. Papers with a doctor’s name on the top. Test results from bloodwork and urine analysis.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What am I looking at here?”
“Turn to the second page,” she said.
I did, and it only took about three lines to know why. I stared blankly at it, blinking a few times. Then I raised my head and my eyes met hers. She had a pensive look, like she was just waiting for my reaction to gauge how she would react.
“You’re—” I stuttered. It was all I could get out. I kept feeling other words follow it into my throat and then just die there. She nodded. “But I—we—”
“I mean, it’s right there,” she said, pointing at the papers.
I looked down at them and then back at her. “We used protection, though.”
She shrugged. “Not the first couple of times.”
She was right. In the passion of the moment, the first couple of times we had gone at it with no precautions at all. It was only after she stayed at my place overnight that I started wearing protection. We didn’t even talk about it. It just became part of the process. We certainly didn’t talk about how we hadn’t used any before.
I stared at the results for a few more moments. It explained so much. It explained why she suddenly got sick. Why she ignored me as she tried to figure it all out.
“I thought I was sick like my dad,” she said. “But I went and got looked at. Turns out, I’m going to have a baby.”
That hit me like a gut punch. She had spent the entire week thinking she had an illness like her father’s. That was why she didn’t have the ability to talk about it. Why she didn’t want me babying her. She didn’t think it was a cold or flu. She thought she was dying. Suddenly, I understood, and I knew we would have to come back to that eventually.
But for now, I just needed to hold her.
28
HELEN
I had been so scared of how this whole situation was going to go that I bought a box of donuts to bring him and then left them in the car. As he sat there staring at the papers, I had an incredible urge to stand up, say I forgot something, and run out to the car to fetch them. I barely stopped myself as my knees braced for the quick stand and only barely lifted my butt off the couch, scooting closer to the edge in an attempt to cover the movement.
He didn’t seem to notice.
Then, with a suddenness that almost made me jump, he came over to the couch and crouched in front of me. There was only a split second where our eyes met, and I could see the emotion in them before he threw his arms around me and pulled me tight. Tears formed in my eyes, and I let them out, softly sobbing into his shoulder for reasons I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t exactly happy either. I was still waiting to know how he felt before I decided anything.
But the tears came anyway. I could swear there were ones from him too. Finally, I started to gain some measure of control over myself, and I moved my face, so my lips weren’t pressing into his shoulder anymore.
“I brought you donuts,” I said between hitching breaths.
“What?” he asked after a moment’s silence.
“Donuts,” I said, pulling away so I could look at him. There were tears in the corners of his eyes too, but his face was a mask of confusion.
“Did you say donuts?” he asked.
I nodded and a new wave of tears fell down my cheeks. “I brought you donuts as an apology, but I left them in the car,” I said, elongating the last vowel as I fell into his arms and cried some more.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, rubbing my back and trying to stifle laughter. “Do you want me to go get them?”
“Yes,” I mumbled.
“Okay, I’ll be right back. Did you leave the car unlocked?”
I nodded and he stood, kissing me on the top of my head. A smile was stretching across his lips, and he quickly went out to the car and grabbed the box of donuts. For a second, I was extremely excited. The entire ride over, I had smelled them in the passenger’s seat and marveled at the fact that for once I felt like I could eat them. My hunger had returned. But I refused to eat any of them until I brought them to him.