Chapter 20
The sound of Jenna hurling up everything she’d eaten in an attempt to settle her stomach echoed around the house. Paul stood outside of her bathroom door with his hand on it as if he could touch her, soothe her, make her feel better.
“I don’t think you should go on this trip, Jenna,” he told her through the door.
She yanked the door open, her face even paler than the night before. “Dad, I have to go. You were right, I’ve been making a mess out of things since I’ve been back home. I just need to go back to school so I can feel like a normal student again. It’s too much crying and worrying when I’m home.”
“I was just saying that you shouldn’t leave today. You should wait until whatever bug this is passes. You don’t want to be on the road and sick as a dog. You’ll be miserable, and you’ll make a bad impression on the schools if you show up like that. You can’t let them see you sick until you’re already enrolled. Then it’s too late,” he smiled.
She hugged him tight. “Daddy, they already accepted me. But I don’t think I’m going. I honestly feel like I’ve made my decision. I don’t need to go all the way across the state for grad school when Pitt is only a couple of hours away.”
“Don’t let getting sick scare you into staying near home!” he warned her.
“It’s not. They have an amazing master’s program, and I’d get the opportunity to possibly work with the Steelers after I graduate.”
“Now that’s the way to win your old man over, bribe him with free football tickets. Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“Listen to me, Daddy, if I’m not feeling better by Tuesday I will go to the doctor. I promise.”
Jenna spent the next few days tethered to the bathroom. She was constantly nauseous. She could barely eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t even think about leaving on her trip. While she wasn’t running a fever, everything her father brought her seemed to make her nauseous.
“That’s it! You promised!” he told her as she clutched the toilet yet again. “Let’s go.”
“Daddy, I can’t,” she whined. “Everything moves when I move.”
“That’s why you have to,” he told her. He put a bucket in her hand and picked her up off the floor, cradling her in his arms. After he put her in his truck, across the back seat of the cabin, he got in and floored it to her doctor. He drove the truck so fast that Jenna didn’t have a chance to get sick. He rushed her into the doctor’s office where a few people were already waiting.
Jenna sat down far away from everyone, keeping a kung fu grip on her bucket. The other patients contorted their faces in disgust as Paul spoke with the receptionist. Luckily for them, Jenna didn’t have to wait long; unbeknownst to her, Paul had made an appointment the previous day.
Jenna walked into the office by herself. While she wanted her father in there for support, he opted to stay outside. She sat there, looking as green as the ugly pastel walls, waiting for the doctor to come in.
A nurse was the first to enter. For some reason her white lab coat triggered Jenna’s nausea, and she reached hurriedly for the bucket.
The doctor walked in just as she began to vomit again. “My goodness, I hope that’s not because of my face,” he joked when she’d finished. “How ya doing, Jenna? I haven’t seen you since your physical last year. This doesn’t look good at all.”
“Yeah, you think?” she replied sarcastically.
“Nasty bug with a nasty attitude. Aren’t we lucky today, Nancy?” he laughed with the nurse.
“Please, I don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t stopped throwing up since Saturday night. I just need to figure out what’s wrong with me so I can head to school. The semester starts in a few weeks.”
“Well, if this is anything contagious, a university campus is the last place I’d advise you to go… don’t want to start an epidemic and have the CDC quarantine the place, now do we? Ha-ha. Um, okay Nancy, let’s just run the gamut here. We’ll take blood, temp, fluids, everything, urine too just in case, and as soon as we get the results I’ll be back in.” He smiled and left, still chuckling to himself.
“Urine for what?” Jenna asked Nancy. “Since when do you need urine to tell me if I have a cold or the flu?”
“No, that’s to check if you’re pregnant,” the nurse laughed.
Jenna’s face dropped. She was mortified at the thought. “Nooooo, no, no, no, no, no. I can’t be. I’d better not be! I have so many plans and so many places to go and so many things to do.”
Jenna began sobbing into the bucket.
Nancy patted her on the back. “Let’s just calm down. Take a deep breath, outside of the vomit bucket so we don’t make ourselves throw up again. How about we get the urine and blood samples out of the way first and we’ll take it from there?”
“Okaaaaaayy,” Jenna sobbed. It wasn’t long before she was getting pricked, poked, prodded, and cuffed. While the nurse did everything she was supposed to, Jenna was wishing she’d done everything she was supposed to do—like making Tanner wear a condom.
As she sat there waiting for the doctor to come back she did the math. She started with trying to remember the first day of her last period. The summer flashed through her mind in a blur as she began running it down out loud. “Okay, I came home and threw a party. Brandy and Tanner broke up at that party. Tanner kissed me that night, but we didn’t…”
She took a few deep breaths to curb her nausea before continuing. “We kept going back and forth, yada, yada, yada. We did the thing in his office and the thing at his house. Ooh! His house was the first time. And that was how many weeks ago? And my last period was right after I got home in that first week of June, this is now August… Holy crap, I’m pregnant!”
“Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” the doctor announced as he entered the room.
“Stop it! Stop it now!”
“Um, you would have to go somewhere else to discuss that kind of procedure. There are several options available to you this early, but personally I recommend waiting. First, false positives aren’t unheard of, especially for the urine test, and we only have urine so far. We’re still waiting for blood, and then I want to schedule an ultrasound. But if it’s confirmed—and I expect it will be—you should really give this some thought. After the morning sickness passes. Sit down, talk it over with your partner and perhaps your father. Don’t make any rash decisions you may regret later. Because what you’re talking about is something that can’t be undone.”
They talked through every possible scenario, but the end result was still the same as when he’d walked in: She was pregnant. Jenna wanted to cry. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to run away to school and never see anyone ever again. But she settled on walking out of the doctor’s office with her dad.
“So what is it? The flu? You know where you caught it, or who gave it to you?” Paul posed question after question in the truck.
“Oh yeah,” Jenna laughed, “I know who gave it to me, alright.”
They drove around for a while with the windows open; the fresh air seemed to help, and it was as if the dark cloud of sea sickness had lifted away from her. Paul had to stop at The Wheel, but Jenna elected to wait outside, afraid that the nausea would return in the barroom fug. She didn’t want to stay in the car, though. She had far too much on her mind, and besides, it was the first time in days she’d been able to walk around without the bucket.
She found herself standing in front of Tanner’s building. Just as she was about to go inside to talk to him, out he walked with a familiar blonde who she really didn’t want to see. Jenna was frozen in her tracks, and her heart ripped into pieces when she saw them embrace. A soft kiss from Brandy too close to his mouth solidified her fears. Neither of them had seen her yet, and she didn’t want to be seen. She rounded the corner to hide before making her way back toward The Wheel.
Having Brandy as her child’s stepmother just didn’t have a good ring to it. Raising her child with a father who was constantly lying to her didn’t sound any better. She still didn’t know what to believe, but she knew when enough was enough. She was done with both of them.
Paul was perplexed as he watched Jenna slump towards the truck, get inside and slam the door behind her. “Daddy, can you just take me home?”
“Sure, Jenna, whatever you want.”
Once they got back, she sifted through her mother’s letters, looking for affirmation. Scattering the letters around her bed, she finally found the one she was searching for:
August 20th, 2014
Dearest Jenna-Marie,
The soft sobs coming from your room was a sound I’d hoped I’d never have to hear: the sound of my daughter’s heart breaking. I wish there was something I could do. But heartache is one of those guaranteed things in life. It’s right up there with mistakes, and breathing. When you find a love so pure that losing it does this to you, just know you’ve found one of the rarest things in life.
It’s funny that way, isn’t it? Heartbreak is guaranteed, but a love worthy of it isn’t. I hate that you have to go through this right before you take off to school, but your father and I are both sure it’s the right decision. Tanner mentioned asking you to marry him. That didn’t go over well with Daddy. He was ready to strangle him, but I didn’t let him. I told him that I know you. You’re a good girl with a good head on your shoulders. You wouldn’t throw away your future for a love that was uncertain. And from the sounds emanating from your room, I have a feeling I was right.
I’m so sorry, Jenna. I know how much you two cared about each other, but marriage isn’t the answer. Cementing yourselves together in the hope that the other won’t move on while you’re apart is a recipe for disaster. If this love between you two is true, it will come back to you. It may not be anytime soon, or it could be tomorrow.
Just know that when it does come, with whomever you find it, it will be beautiful. It will mean hard work and compromise. You need to strive every day to love yourself as much as you love your significant other. And keep your love alive by trying to fall in love with him all over again with every passing day. Be sweet, be kind, and be stern with your love, because if it’s true it will be one of the most important treasures of your lifetime. Choose your happiness.
Love always and forever,
Mom