Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Another hour after that I’ve been swabbed for strep throat and flu, had my blood and pee tested, and filled out a depression questionnaire that I’m pretty sure I flunked. By the time a doctor comes in I just want to leave.
“Date of your last period?” the doctor asks after introducing himself.
“Uh—” I try to think but my brain is foggy. I take out my phone and check the calendar. It can’t be right. I didn’t have one last month? I scroll back to the previous month and give the date.
“So about eight weeks ago? Right. How long have you had these symptoms?”
“Three days like I told the nurse,” I say.
“Best guess is that you’re around six weeks,” he pronounces.
“Six weeks till what?” I ask.
“You conceived around six weeks ago. Does that sound right?”
I stare at him like he started speaking Japanese to me. “You think I’m pregnant?”
“No, Miss Donahue, I know you’re pregnant. The results are in your digital chart. No strep, no flu, white count is fine, pregnancy test positive. Right here.” He sounds so pleased with himself.
I shake my head as if to clear it. He starts talking about vitamins, drinking plenty of water and setting up an appointment with my gynecologist.
“She’s in LA,” I say. “I’m just here for a short while”
“Getting back sooner is better than later in your condition. Obviously, you can travel into the sixth month, but you’ll be more comfortable if you don’t wait that long. And you’ll need monthly checkups with your OB.”
“Right,” I say flatly. “So can I leave?”
“Of course. Do you have any questions?”
“None that you can answer,” I say and I leave with pamphlets and samples of prenatal vitamins that I’m to start ASAP.
The ride home is icy numbness. I want my mom. I always miss her but this is the moment when losing her hurts all over again. At home I turn on the shower and stand under it until the water goes cold. I don’t know how to handle this.
The practical steps are obvious: make a new patient appointment with a gyno, take prenatal vitamins, get exercise and rest, drink lots of water. Make plans. It’s that last part I get stuck on. I have plans. Pass three more sections of the CPA exam, then apply for jobs in and around LA. Return to California where the weather’s nice and no one has ever pulled a gun on me in a parking lot or anywhere else. It’s a no brainer. Or it would be if I wasn’t in this situation. How did growing a child inside me fit in with all these plans?
I dry off and yank open the drawer with my birth control pills in it. I take them out, count them, and realize I missed a couple last month. I start googling whether taking birth control pills before I knew I was pregnant could have hurt the baby and if the half glass of wine I drank at that fancy restaurant is going to cause developmental problems. Reassured that as long as I don’t ingest any more alcohol or birth control it should be okay, I start down the rabbit hole of what to do when you find out your pregnant by your ‘ex-boyfriend’.
I find a Facebook group for single moms who had kids after a breakup. Most of them ‘co-parent’ and have some kind of schedule they follow where the baby is with mom part of the time and dad part of the time. My stomach drops at that thought. My baby, who is approximately the size of a lima bean right now and who I’ve only known about for a few hours, would be away from me for days at a time. That is if Mickey wants anything to do with this child. Tears spring to my eyes and I dash them away impatiently.
A new terror seizes me and I almost double over with the force of it. My baby will be in danger because of who their father is. Rory and I grew up on the outskirts of the Mob. Our dad was a fence, and he was midlevel, not big enough to be a target. Mickey on the other hand is the boss. There’s no one more powerful. And while the scope of his network can protect him, it wasn’t enough to stop a disgruntled janitor from finding him alone on a parking lot.
His reach, all his men and no one was there but him to protect himself and me. If Oscar had been faster, less talkative, sober, or if Mickey had hesitated then it could have ended up a lot worse. I can’t count on luck to keep my baby out of harm’s way.
Going to the clinic was supposed to put me on the road to recovery, not ruin. I feel worse than I did when I went. Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to cover it.