The next few days go by in a blur. I’m stuck here in the hospital, eating and sleeping here. I call out of work.

I think of Dan often, but only with anger. I don’t quite understand my own reaction. I just know what I’m choosing my dad’s side of the situation right now. After all, he’s dying, right? Can’t I just do what he wants for now?

He doesn’t approve of me hanging out with a guy like Dan. For one thing, Dan’s reputation precedes him even around these parts. And who knows what’ll happen when his college reputation gets back here.

Even in high school, he was too bad, too much of a rowdy troublemaker for someone like my dad to approve of. Now that Dan is older and muscled, with a deep commanding voice, a real man, my dad approves of him even less. That’s why he gave him that trick with the plumbing, to try to confound him. My dad knew why Dan was there. He knew he was there to see me, and he wanted to distract him, to try to discourage him with a complex and unsolvable plumbing problem.

I still don’t know how Dan managed to fix that plumbing…

He sure knew how to work mine.

Shut up, I tell myself. Now isn’t the time for stupid dirty jokes. Your dad is dying.

I have this voice that runs through my head, my conscience, I guess. But all it tells me over and over is that my dad is dying. It’s not the most helpful thing in a situation like this, because I obviously already know that my dad is dying.

They cart him into the dialysis room a couple times a week and he sits there for hours staring at the wall, refusing all forms of entertainment. I go with him at first, but now he doesn’t even want me to go with him. He doesn’t like me to see him in this weak state, hooked up to a machine that he depends on for survival.

I call out of work and my boss is pissed enough to fire me over the phone. She knows my dad is sick and she knows I always cover for other people when she needs it. Well, fuck. Screw her.

She completely screwed me financially. But I can’t worry about things like that now.

The days are drifting by.

I got a couple of text messages and even a call from Dan. I didn’t pick up the phone. He left me a long voicemail about how much fun he had with me, and how much I meant to him.

I want nothing more than to tell him all the same things, but this isn’t the time for that. Can’t he see that? Can’t he see that my dad needs me, and I need him? He’s the last family I’ve got left, except for my Aunt Donna, who’s got to be in her 80s now, and I haven’t seen her since I was a little kid.

I don’t respond to anything Dan writes. Can’t he see I don’t have time for that now?

Eventually, he stops writing.

The days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into one month. The days have gotten colder and the strongest of the oak trees have dropped all their leaves. (There’s a species around here that holds onto their dead leaves for a long, long time).

The days are shorter and there’s less light. My car is having problems starting up, and I have to jam my foot into the gas pedal as I crank the engine in order to get it to run. There’s a problem with my power steering, and I have to keep filling it up with steering fluid every day, since it leaks out overnight. Eventually, the cost of the steering fluid is too great, and I just stop putting the fluid in, losing power steering altogether.

Losing power steering is like a metaphor for my life right now. I have no direction, and I can’t afford to get any. I have to be there for my dad.

I’m no longer spending all my time at the hospital, and neither is my dad. I drive him in for his dialysis appointments. I wait in the waiting room as the machine filters his blood, removing it from his body and replacing it over the course of a few hours.

I feel like I’m losing him. I feel like I’m losing everything.

There’s no one to talk to.

Dan’s stopped writing me or calling me, and who can blame him. After all, I was the one to never respond to him.

It’s all my fault, and it always has been. At least that’s how I feel. I start blaming myself for everything, falling deeper and deeper into some sort of depression.

I don’t notice when my period doesn’t come, but one day, I wake up feeling sick to my stomach.

Strange, I think to myself, before the pain suddenly increases, the nausea overtaking me.

I sprint to the bathroom, before my dad’s even woken up, and thrust my head into the toilet bowl.

The vomit pours out of me.

And I never vomit.

This is weird, I think, as the urge takes me again and I stick my head back into the toilet, letting out another stream of strange colored vomit.

Feeling better, I brush my teeth.

How disgusting, I think to myself, looking to the toilet bowl before flushing it.

Wait a second…

I suddenly think of my period. This is when I realize I didn’t have it last month.

Oh shit.

That’s not good.

My mind goes into hyper drive, trying to remember if maybe, just maybe, I’d somehow gotten my period and forgotten about it.

But, no, I definitely didn’t get it. I’m fairly regular, with it usually coming around the same day each month.

Oh shit.

Could I be pregnant?

Would the timing make sense? I was with Dan, what, a month ago, a month and a half ago? Was it three weeks ago?

I try to count back in my head to Thanksgiving weekend but I give up. Calendars and dates and times have never been my strong suit. I’m more of a literature person than a math or science person, and I knew this would come back to bite me in the ass someday.

When you think you’re pregnant in the movies, there’s always a helpful but sarcastic friend to help you out, to go buy the pregnancy test with you.

But this is real life, and I’m all alone. There’s only my dad, and I’m certainly not going to tell him. I’m not talking to Dan, and anyway, he’s hours away at college.

I pull out my phone and start searching the internet for answers. It turns out “Am I pregnant?” and “How do I tell if I’m pregnant?” are some of the most common searches there are.

In the end, after half an hour of frantic internet research, I decide to go get a blood test, paying for it with my own money, rather than using a home test kit. The home test kits apparently aren’t very accurate.

So I drive myself to the lab after first ordering the test myself on the internet.

I’m squeamish about blood, which is one of the reasons that my dad’s dialysis bothers me so much.

But it goes off without a hitch, and by the end of the day I have the answer, which pops up in my email.

“POSITIVE,” says the email. I don’t even read the rest of the words. They just swim before me in a blur.

All I know is I’m pregnant with Dan’s child, and I don’t even talk to him anymore.

I feel an affection for the child that will be. It’s combined with something I still feel for Dan, despite what happened between us. And, honestly, I’m not even sure what happened between us.

There’s no one to tell. No friend to commiserate with.

It’s just me, all alone, with my dying father at the other end of the house.