Chapter Sixteen
I didn’t say anything to Alayna about the pregnancy test. It didn’t seem fair to talk to her before JC, and as much as I was at a loss as to what I’d say, I was very eager to have that conversation. I was a mess with worry and panic, and the last time I’d felt that way—when Ben had tried to kill himself—it was JC who had calmed me.
I needed that now. Needed him to center me in the way that only he could.
When I got to the condo, I paused outside JC’s office door. I could see him through the French doors, on the phone, one leg bent to rest his foot on his desk. He was so much like a big kid himself, and now he was going to have one of his own.
Yup, I felt sick. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the morning sickness variety of nausea, but it was still a symptom of my pregnancy.
I took several deep breaths and then went in.
JC looked up at me and smiled, but then went back to focusing on his computer screen and talking “delivery dates” and “production costs” on the phone. When I’d texted him that I was leaving Alayna’s, he’d told me to stop by his office when I got home to let him know I’d made it safely. He probably expected that was all I was doing now, and that I’d slip out again to unpack some more boxes.
So when I stayed and took a seat on the office couch to wait for him, he could tell something was up.
As soon as I sat, his eyes darted back to me and remained there. He sat up, putting his feet on the floor. “Uh huh,” he said on the phone a couple of times. Then, finally, “Hey, Hiroko, can I call you back? Something’s come up here.” He was standing up before he’d finished talking, coming over to me.
When he reached me, he threw the phone on the couch and knelt in front of me, placing his hands on my knees. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head for several long seconds, my throat tight and my words missing. There wasn’t really anything that needed to be said, though, except, “I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
It was obvious he’d heard me and that his response was based in shock and not needing clarification. But I clarified anyway. “I took a test at Alayna’s, and it was positive. Pregnant.”
I saw it—the flash of excitement before he put on an unreadable mask. He moved to sit next to me, and for the second time that night, someone wrapped an arm around my shoulder and laid a hand on my knee.
“How do you feel about this?” His tone wasn’t nearly as tentative as mine had been when I’d told him.
“I don’t know.” I wanted to say more, but I’d seen that moment where he’d been happy, and it felt shitty to take it away.
But I wasn’t taking it away, I realized. He was putting it away so that I would be honest with him, and so I owed that to him. “I thought I’d have longer to figure this out,” I said, tears brimming again. “It’s not that I hate the idea of children, you know? I like them well enough. I think. I haven’t been around them much. Just. I don’t even water plants. If I can’t keep a simple philodendron alive, how the hell am I going to take care of something that’s actually important?”
JC pulled me into his shoulder and kissed my head. “Plants don’t talk.”
“Neither do babies!” My words were muffled in his shirt but understandable.
“They don’t use words, at first, but they tell you what they need in other ways. They cry.” He kissed my head again and rubbed his hand up and down my back. “And you won’t be raising this child alone. I’m going to be here for all of it, and if that’s not enough, we’ll hire nannies or nurses or whatever it is you need to make this something you feel like you can do.”
God, he was wonderful. Never once did he suggest that he would support me if I didn’t go through with the pregnancy, and somehow that helped. Took away an option I didn’t want to think that I’d consider.
He brushed the hair from my face. “What are you thinking? Talk to me.”
“I didn’t want this.” I shifted so that I was in his arms, but my face was no longer buried in his clothes. “You know that. Especially not now when we’re just starting our lives together.” I remembered what Laynie had said about people changing. She’d been right, but what was it that made people change in the first place? Usually being confronted by something outside their comfort zone, I’d imagine. Wasn’t that exactly what me being pregnant was? An uncomfortable confrontation?
And now that I was facing it head on, the anxiety of what if was replaced with what now, which was, in some ways, an easier anxiety to manage. Because I could do something concrete about it. It felt more productive than just worrying.
JC wrapped me tighter into him. “I didn’t ever mean for this to happen now.”
“But that’s how it’s always been with us. I didn’t mean to meet you. I didn’t want to be so attracted to you. I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I didn’t want to still love you, even when you left.”
“Does thinking about it that way change how you feel about this?” This. He wouldn’t say “being pregnant” or “a baby,’ and I knew it was himself he was protecting with the avoidance of such tangible terms.
How could he be this selfless? For me? To try to distance himself from something he really wanted for no other reason but to take care of me?
Maybe that deserved some sacrifice on my part as well.
I shifted again, facing him this time. “Tell me how you feel about it, JC. Not what you think I want to hear, but the brutal honest truth. I need to know.”
He twirled a stray piece of my hair around his finger. “Well.” He paused a second longer before dropping his carefully masked expression, his lips morphing into a wide smile. “Honestly, I’m pretty fucking happy.”
More tears came. At least I could blame hormones for being a crybaby. “If you’re really happy, JC, then I am too. Because all I need to be happy is you, and this…” He was scared to say it, but I wouldn’t let myself be. “This baby of ours, it’s half you. And how can I not love that?”
He was cautious. “Are you saying that because it’s what you think I want to hear?”
“Maybe. Partly. But I also think it’s true.” I let out a laugh—a silly half chortle that was just as much a sob as it was laughter. “I’m going to be terrible at mothering. I’m warning you now. I hate things that smell and make messes. I sleep like the dead. You’re going to have to really nudge me to wake up when the baby cries.”
“Or I’ll just get the baby myself.” He reconsidered. “We’ll take turns.”
I scooted into his lap. “And you’ll still love me when I’m fat?”
“That much more of you to love.”
“We might have to cut back on the sex.” I actually had no idea if that would be an issue, and the thought that it might be made my heart sink a little.
“Oh, no,” he assured me. “We’ll still have plenty of sex.”
I tried to laugh again, but it was shaky. “It’s really going to be okay?”
He cupped my face in his hands. “It’s going to be much better than okay. It’s going to be everything.”
“I love you so much. So much.” I would have said it again, explained my affection in more detail, told him how he was the best thing I’d never planned and how I believed it could be possible that I would one day feel the same way about our child.
But I couldn’t say anything at all. Because he was kissing me, his lips wrapping around mine in ways that told me he already knew the things that I wanted to tell him. His tongue stroked against mine—softly, yet with confidence—and I was pretty sure I knew all the things he wanted to tell me too.
***
JC got me in for an appointment with an obstetrician first thing the next morning. I’d suggested waiting until after the wedding, but he was too excited. His enthusiasm was adorable. A turn on, even. Who knew that expectant fathers were a hot button for me?
He also insisted on coming with me to the check-up, which I’d been against at first, but was glad for when I realized that the visit would entail a lot more than an arm poke and a urine dip.
“You know, I think your breasts do seem bigger,” he said, looking up from the pamphlet the doctor had handed him while we waited for the ultrasound technician.
“You would know.” I fluffed the pillow behind me, trying to make myself comfortable on the exam table.
He grinned even though he was already back to reading. “You really haven’t felt any morning sickness?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe it’s too early.”
“Or maybe I’m not the type who gets nauseated. I’m being optimistic.” I didn’t need to read a pamphlet to know that there was a lot about pregnancy that sucked ass. Swollen hands and feet? Varicose veins? Stretch marks? Ugh.
“Oh.” He peered at me tentatively. “It says they may do the ultrasound transvaginally.”
“Uh, what does that mean?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“I’m pretty sure it means that they’ll stick something up your vagina.”
And I was back to wishing he’d stayed home. “Stop saying vagina. It’s weird.”
“Your pussy then. Is that better?” He gave me a naughty grin. Only JC could turn an impending violation into something sexual.
“Not if they’re sticking something up it. I’d prefer anything that goes up there be connected to you.”
“I prefer that as well. But you do realize that that’s where the baby will come out, right?”
“They can’t just unzip the pouch at the bottom of my abdomen and take it out that way?”
He laughed. “Maybe we can have them put one in for next time.”
“Let’s just get through this one first, okay?” It wasn’t that I was still apprehensive about the pregnancy—though I was that too—but the doctor had warned that the rate of miscarriage was higher because of the IUD. Oddly, the idea of losing the baby was worse than the idea of having it. When Laynie had said people could change, I hadn’t expected it would be overnight.
“We’re going to get through it fine,” JC said as his phone started ringing. “Sorry, I’ll reject it.” He glanced at the screen and his brow furrowed, but he pressed a button and put the phone back in his pocket.
I was curious about his call, but too wrapped up in thinking about the creature in my belly. “I wonder if they’ll be able to tell if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Not until twenty weeks.” He held up the pamphlet. “According to this anyway. Do you have a preference? Boy or girl?”
“Right now I’m still trying to grapple with the idea that it’s an actual baby. Gender is going to be a while, I think.”
His phone buzzed again, this time just once, alerting him to a text, I guessed. The crease in his forehead deepened as he read it.
This time his reaction was too severe to ignore. “What is it?”
Just then the door opened, and the tech walked in. “Good morning, Mrs. Anders. Mr. Anders.”
“Nothing that can’t wait,” he said to me as he pocketed his phone again. “It’s Bruzzo. And soon to be Mrs. Bruzzo.” He took my hand, and I fleetingly wondered if that made him as giddy to say as it did for me to hear.
Then I was just glad that he was holding my hand because I was suddenly very nervous. “Is this going to hurt?”
“No, but if we end up going transvaginally, it might be slightly uncomfortable. Since you aren’t having periods, and we have no idea how far along you are, we’re going to see what we can find with a standard ultrasound. Please raise your gown to just under your breasts.” She handed me a blanket while she spoke. “You can use this to cover up below your belly.”
As I adjusted my gown and the blanket, Dr. Wright, the doctor we’d seen earlier, returned.
“I wanted to be in here to see the placement of the IUD,” she explained to the tech.
“What is it that the ultrasound is looking for?” JC asked. She’d already told us, but I suspected that he wanted to hear it again because he was as nervous as I was.
“We want to see how far along the pregnancy is, which we can figure out by measuring the embryo, and we’ll want to be sure that the baby is developing as it should for its age. We’ll also want to locate your IUD. Like I said before, we’ll try to remove that if we can.”
JC tightened his grip on my hand. The IUD removal, she’d explained earlier, was often the cause of miscarriage, but the chances of a successful pregnancy were better with it out.
Please, please, please, I prayed to a god I wasn’t sure was there, let the baby be okay. Let this baby that I didn’t even want be okay.
“Are we ready?” The tech asked, not waiting for answer before she squirted a cold bluish gel on my stomach. “This is a conductive medium that helps the transducer receive the sound waves through the skin.”
She placed the ultrasound wand—the transducer—on my belly and immediately the screen filled with white and black and gray static. Or, at least, that’s what I saw. Then the tech moved the instrument around and a black lima-bean-shaped bubble appeared. Inside that, looking a bit like something out of an alien movie, was the distinct image of a face.
I gasped.
“There’s your baby!” Dr. Wright exclaimed. “She or he is cooperating with us. It’s like she or he is posing for the camera.”
The tech maintained her position, and it was unmistakable, even to an untrained eye, that we were seeing a miniature human being. I could make out its mouth, its nose. Its eyes. An arm lay across its forehead, and below that was another white circle—the baby’s torso, I guessed. And inside there, the small black pulsing shape of what could only be its heart.
JC’s grip on my hand tightened. “Oh my God,” he whispered, his voice full of awe.
Oh. My. God.
Actually seeing it, this creature, this product of the love JC and I had for each other…I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t think of this as a foreign object any longer. Now it was very much a child—my child. Our child.
“But…that’s a baby!” I knew I sounded ridiculous—what else would it be? I’d just expected it to look…different. Not real. Not so…formed. “Isn’t it supposed to look like a jellybean or a peapod?”
Dr. Wright chuckled. “It does at first. You’re further along than we expected.”
“Like how far?” How the hell had I been living with that—that baby—inside me and not known it?
And how did I ever think that it would be something that I wouldn’t want? Because now, having seen it squirm and flip around, having seen the beat of its heart and the fishlike movement of its mouth—I was very much attached.
“We need to wait for the tech to finish her measurements, but I’m going to guess that we’re too far along to remove the device. Nancy,” she leaned into the technician, “can you focus on that flash of white above the legs.”
Nancy moved the transducer, pressing harder on my belly.
“Yep. Right there.” Dr. Wright looked back to me. “That strip above the baby is your IUD. The bad news is that we definitely can’t remove it. The good news is that it’s definitely wedged between the amniotic sac and the placenta. You can see the placenta is starting to grow around it.”
I couldn’t see anything of the sort, but I took her word for it.
“Usually what we worry about with an IUD is that the sharp edges will pierce the amniotic sac, but since the placenta is there, and the baby is firmly implanted in your uterus, I’m not that concerned about it. We’ll still want to have an ultrasound once a month to watch it. If all goes as it should, we’ll get the device out at birth.”
“Then the risk of miscarriage…?” JC asked tentatively.
“I’d say it’s about normal for anyone in the second trimester. Unless the device dislodges, but it really doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.”
I hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen, but I hadn’t realized how relieved I’d feel to hear that nothing likely would. Tears gathered in my vision.
JC met my gaze with glossy eyes. “This is good. This is good, Gwen.”
“It’s excellent,” Dr. Wright concurred. “The heart rate is 161, which is excellent. The sac looks great. And you’re measuring at,” she waited until the technician finished drawing her lines on the screen. “Fourteen weeks, one day. That puts your due date at March twentieth.”
A spring baby. Wasn’t that absolutely perfect?
Except…
“Fourteen weeks? When does that mean I conceived?” I didn’t know what fourteen weeks ago was without a calendar in front of me, but I was pretty sure it had to be June.
And I hadn’t slept with JC until July.
“Since most people don’t know the exact day they conceived, pregnancy is dated from the day of the mother’s last period. It’s funny, I know, but that means we consider you two weeks pregnant at the time of conception.”
I let out a sigh. “Good. That’s better.”
Dr. Wright adjusted the wheel of her calendar tool. “Looks like your estimated conception date was June twenty-eighth.”
June. Still June.
I was speechless as the life that I’d begun to build up in my mind threatened to crash down around me.
No. Not June. It couldn’t have been June. There was no way this was Chandler’s baby.
JC remembered the timing of our reunion, too. “It’s not mine,” he said quietly.
I shook my head, adamant. “It is yours. I know it.”
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Wright said, understanding the situation. “I didn’t realize.” She turned to Nancy. “You can go. I’ll finish up here.”
I sensed she’d sent the technician away to protect the awkward nature of our discussion. I appreciated it.
But I didn’t wait for Nancy to shut the door before turning to JC. “We used condoms. You’re the only one that I didn’t use additional protection with.”
“No method of birth control is one hundred percent effective,” Dr. Wright reminded us.
Uh, obviously. Since I had an IUD and was still very much pregnant.
“Isn’t it more likely that I conceived when I wasn’t using a condom too?” I didn’t wait for her answer, which I presumed would be canned. “It can’t be right.” I tried to recall what was going on back then. When I’d last been with Chandler. “JC, do you remember the day that I came to court? What day was that?”
“Uh.” He thought for a moment. “The twenty-third. I think.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Then this can’t be right. I’d broken up with Chandler before that. And that’s before the twenty-eighth.” I turned back to Dr. Wright. “I didn’t have sex that week. With anyone. These measurements can be off, right? Is it possible that I really got pregnant on July fourth? Or fifth?”
“Ultrasounds are slightly less accurate in the second trimester. It’s generally not off more than a week at this point.” Dr. Wright spun the dial of the calendar. “So it does seem that July fourth would be a possible conception date.”
“See?” I looked at JC, pleadingly. “It’s yours. It has to be yours.”
“The dating can also be off in the other direction,” Dr. Wright said. “Which would put you at June twenty-first.”
“And that’s…” I trailed off. I had broken up with Chandler before the day I went to court, but it had only been a couple of days before. I felt the blood drain from my face. My heart sank lower, lower, and I couldn’t look at the image of the baby on the screen any longer. Couldn’t look anywhere but straight ahead at the plain white wall of the room. Go cold, I thought instinctively. Be numb.
JC understood without me saying anything. “Dr. Wright, is there a way to get a paternity test during pregnancy?”
He was the one who should be upset, yet he was the one keeping it together.
“There are a couple of ways we can find out paternity. The traditional way is an amniocentesis. I don’t recommend that. There’s no other health data suggesting we need that test, and it’s invasive and there’s a slight chance for a miscarriage. There’s a newer test that analyzes the fetal matter in the mother’s blood. It would just be a blood sample needed from all the parties involved. Is it only two possible fathers?” Dr. Wright looked toward me questioningly.
The part that killed me, though, was that JC looked as well.
“Yes. Only two possible fathers,” I said weakly. At another time, I might have felt offended by the question. But I was too heartbroken. JC had every right to assume there may have been other men besides Chandler. He’d never asked, and I’d never offered. Yet it still felt like a blow that he hadn’t automatically known that I would have already told him.
“I can order the draw from the lab downstairs. As soon as all the samples are collected, the data will be sent out. Results should be back in five to seven business days.”
In other words, we might know next Friday, two days before our wedding. Or we might not find out until the day after we’d tied the knot.
Bile gathered in my throat as I wondered if JC would want to postpone.
“Thank you,” he said to her. “If there’s any way we can speed it up, it would be better.” He’d done the math too. He wanted the results before the wedding as well. How could he not? “Do we need to have the other possible father’s blood drawn as well? Since there are only two of us, shouldn’t just mine be enough?”
I hadn’t even thought about involving Chandler. Of course, I was trying not to think at all.
“It would provide the most conclusive results to have it, yes,” Dr. Wright said. “If contacting him is not a possibility, then they can go with just the one. I do recommend you get his as well if you can.”
I looked at JC, but he didn’t meet my gaze.
“I’ll send the nurse in with the lab request. Do you have any other questions for me before I step out?” She addressed it to me, but I’d checked out.
Once again, JC was the responsible party. “Are there any restrictions on activity?”
“Not many. No skiing, saunas, hot tubs, or contact sports. Otherwise Gwen should be able to continue her daily routine.”
“What about sex?”
At another time, I would have been embarrassed and secretly grateful that he’d asked. Now, I felt nothing.
Dr. Wright smiled knowingly. “No restrictions there either.”
“That’s all I got. Gwen?”
I shook my head numbly.
“Great. Both baby and mother look healthy. I’ll want to see you in four weeks for another exam and ultrasound. The nurse will bring you paperwork for the paternity test when she comes in to take your blood.”
The minute she left, JC stood and put both hands on mine. “The baby’s healthy, Gwen. You’re healthy. And whatever else doesn’t matter. I’m going to love it just like I love you. Because it’s half you. How could I not love that?”
They were the words I’d said to him the night before. I recognized that they should touch me. I was just too numb for them to move me like they should.
“You’re both healthy,” he said again. “It’s all that matters.”
I nodded, but I didn’t believe him. Our health wasn’t all that mattered. I wanted this baby if it belonged to JC and me. I wanted to love it and muster through taking care of it and raise it with the man that meant the world to me.
And if it was Chandler’s…
Well, then that changed everything.