“My name is Charlie Lease, and I’ll be your guest speaker today. Thank you all—wow, all of you—for showing up today. I gotta say, I’ve done a lot of lectures in the last couple months, and this is the biggest crowd I’ve ever had. Thank you, Stanford.

“Anyhow, on to the topic at hand. I’m here to teach you the day-to-day, nitty-gritty, nine-to-five—or six, or eight—grind of making a museum work. Now…”

My eyes suddenly couldn’t focus on the guest speaker. A case of tinnitus cropped up out of nowhere, giving me vertigo at the top of the slanted lecture hall. I had the overwhelming desire for flat floors and ice water.

Closing my eyes, I lay my head on the desk. I had been feeling a bit weak, a little tired, and a touch shaky over the last week or so, but nothing like this. I felt like I was on a boat in the middle of a choppy ocean.

“So, when curating, you have to know two things: first, who your customer base is. Are you going to have a bunch of middle-class parents trying to put their kid on an upward trajectory, or are you going to have a bunch of upper-class nannies going through the motions at the parents’ request, or are you going to have a bunch of lower-class couples looking for a cheap way to pass an afternoon? Are you going to be showing to journalists, art critics, or historians? What’s the local art or science scene like, who already has what you’re offering…”

This was gold. I needed all of this information. Can’t miss the lecture…can’t miss the lecture…

Hot chills coursing over my skin disagreed with me. I put it off as long as I could, barely gleaning anything from the man’s meticulously organized presentation, before my mouth began to fill with saliva. Abandoning my bag on the floor, I raced out of the room, down the long hallway, and into the bathroom. I barely made it.

“Hey!” a startled man shouted as I burst in.

Couldn’t be helped. The ladies’ room was three yards farther, and there was no way I could have got there without a very messy, very public sort of mortification. As it was, I was re-gifting my breakfast to the porcelain throne in front of a row of urinals.

Sweat poured into my eyes as my whole body shook. It had never been like this. It was worse than the flu. Worse than food poisoning. It was as if my body was trying to get rid of everything in it, whether it belonged there or not.

I don’t know how many men came into the bathroom in the ten minutes it took for me to stop heaving, but I do know that none of them stuck around to make sure I was all right. I heard two of them laughing about freshmen and their hangovers. I wanted to spin around and tell them they were wrong on both counts, but I was sort of incapacitated.

I took the time to wash my face. It was only polite. Deciding to leave my bag—complete with enough textbooks to take out a mortgage and my laptop—to the mercy of basic human decency, I turned left out the door and stumbled to the campus medical center. Sweat and saliva still flowed freely, making me afraid to open my mouth. Swallowing hard, I whispered to the receptionist that I needed to see a nurse.

“All right, honey, d’you have your student ID? Perfect. Have a seat; a nurse will be right out.”

The receptionist’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She looked like someone who was watching her child get their seventeenth piercing. Who disappointed you, receptionist? The question floated lazily back and forth through my head, unanswered and unanswerable, utterly inconsequential but a distraction all the same.

“Shelley Smith?” a short, pink woman called from the doorway.

I had never seen anyone so pink. Her skin was flushed pink, her hair was dyed electric pink, and she wore pink candy-striped scrubs. I wanted to make a witty comment, but I couldn’t seem to come up with one even if I’d been brave enough to open my mouth.

“Your intake slip says sudden vertigo and tinnitus followed by excessive vomiting. Are you still experiencing the vertigo and tinnitus?”

I shook my head.

“Nausea?”

I nodded, and immediately regretted it.

The nurse offered me a trash can. I made use of it, and felt better almost immediately. Not just better. I was starving.

“Better out than in,” she said kindly.

“Thank you.”

“Oh, you do speak! That’s wonderful. All right, Shelley, are you sexually active?”

“Not currently,” I said with a sigh.

I wanted to be over him; I really did. It had been a month and a half already, and he had been a one-night stand. I knew I should really go on a few palette-cleansing dates, but I couldn’t seem to work up the interest.

“When were you last sexually active?”

I could feel the flush creep up my neck to my cheeks, and reminded myself that hers was a purely professional interest.

“About six weeks ago.”

“And the date of your last menstrual cycle? The first day, or as near as you can remember.”

“Not too long ago, I don’t think. Let’s see…it was before school started, so it should be close…oh, wait.”

My heart thudded hard against my chest as it skipped a beat. I looked up at the pink nurse with a mortifying realization.

“August,” I said in stunned monotone.

She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at me.

“First things first, then.”

She handed me a cup and sent me off to fill it. I brought it back full, anxiety wracking my every nerve.

Silence fell thick and heavy in the room as she performed the test. She set the timer for three minutes, but the result came back in forty-five seconds.

“Well, that explains that,” she said decisively. “You’re pregnant, my dear.”

The room spun around me, sucking my oxygen away. I gripped the edge of the table to keep from tumbling off, sucking breath into my lungs as if I’d run a marathon. The nurse’s hands were on my shoulders and she was saying something, but I couldn’t process it.

Pregnant. I was pregnant. With a baby. A tiny human. Oh, God, I was growing a person.

“Inhale on three. One, two, three.”

I sucked in and my mouth filled with a chemical taste.

“Again. One, two, three.”

I inhaled again, and the room came back into focus. I could breathe.

“How long have you had asthma?” she asked.

“Asthma? I don’t have asthma.”

“You do now. Happens sometimes—bodies go wacky when you’re pregnant. I’ve seen girls develop allergies, diabetes, acne…you name it. I’m writing you a prescription for a rescue inhaler. Use it. Last thing you or the baby needs is to be deprived of oxygen.

“Now, we can manage your pregnancy here in the clinic in a pinch, but if you have insurance, I suggest getting yourself a good OB/GYN. First babies are wild cards; you don’t know what to expect and neither do your doctors.”

She tore off a slip of paper and handed it to me. “If the nausea gets debilitating—as in, you can’t keep down six meals in a row, you lose more than five pounds, or you can’t stomach water—come back and I’ll give you something for the nausea. I prefer not to, because those drugs always seem to get recalled ten years after they’re put out there, but I will if you absolutely cannot nourish yourself. Understood?”

“Yes,” I said, still dazed. “Thank you.”

She nodded briskly. “You’ll need to see someone as soon as you can for your initial ultrasound. You can make the appointment up front now, or with your regular doctor if you have one. Either way, make sure you get seen in a timely fashion. Most problems can be detected and accounted for so long as you catch them early. That is, of course, if you decide to keep the baby. The choice is yours; make a good one for you.”

“I will,” I promised.

Still dazed, I left the clinic to go retrieve my bag. To my surprise, it was still there in the bathroom, untouched. The lecture was wrapping up and I had missed all of the important points, but somehow, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Suddenly feeling that I couldn’t bear to be around so many people and their curious eyes, I collected my things and left.

It was a cool day. The briny breeze blowing off the bay calmed my nerves and woke my brain from its stunned trance. I walked figure eights around an abandoned pavilion, and I thought about my life. Up in the morning for class, school all day. Get off school, go to work, and work well into the night. That was it.

And I’m barely getting by, all by myself. Babies cost a ton of money. How am I going to afford this kid?

School would be out before the baby would. I could get a second job, I reasoned. But then, who would take care of the baby, and when would I see my child? No, that wouldn’t do. If I were going to go that route, I might as well just give the baby up for adoption.

The thought made me gasp as a shard of sheer pain pierced my heart. I couldn’t do that. Giving up the baby in any way, shape, or form was out of the question. I had already developed some kind of primal bond with it before I even knew it was there. I didn’t know how that was possible, but I knew it was true. This baby was mine, and I was going to do everything in my power to keep it that way.

“Takes two to make a baby,” I told my anxious heart. “He has the right to know.”

I argued with myself for several minutes. He had never called again after the night he’d canceled the date. No calls, no texts; he’d ghosted me. Money had transformed Miles from a kind, humorous, rough-around-the-edges dreamer to a cold, distant, heartless drone overnight. I would hate to see him now…except that all I wanted was to see him.

“That’s your hormones talking,” I told myself wryly. “You don’t really want to see him. He ghosted you, remember?”

Steeled by the armor I had built around my hurt feelings, I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. A monotone beeping interrupted the first ring, then an equally monotone voice told me that the number was no longer in service.

“Not just ghosted,” I realized out loud. “Completely cut out.”

Angry now, I decided that something as little as a changed phone number wasn’t going to stop me. He was a big deal now, right? The internet would know how to find him.

A quick search of his name brought up the contact information for his office in San Bravado. I hit the call button before I could talk myself out of it, and focused on nothing but my breathing as the phone rang.

“Dunn and Lane Enterprises. This is Nate Dunn; how may I help you?”

My heart dropped to my toes. All that, and I still didn’t get him on the phone.

“Hi Nate, may I speak with Miles please?”

“Mr. Lane is unavailable right now; is there something I can help you with?”

“Um…no, it’s personal. Extremely personal, and extremely urgent. Can you tell me when he’ll be available?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give out that information, but if you can tell me what this is regarding, I can get a message to him.”

“I would really rather just talk to Miles.” My voice shook and whined like a child’s, and I took a breath in a futile attempt to relax.

“Mr. Lane is a very busy man these days. What did you say your name was?”

“Shelley Smith.”

“That name sounds familiar. Have we met?”

“No, not officially, but I did see you pick him up after work one night, back when he worked at Finnegan’s? I worked with him there.”

“Ah,” Nate said with sudden warmth. “You’re Shelley Smith! He used to talk about you all the time. How are you? How’ve you been?”

“Oh.” My voice quivered, and I couldn’t keep it inside anymore. “I’m actually pretty shaken up. And nauseated, and pregnant, and I haven’t heard from him in weeks—almost months—and now it’s super important that he gets back to me because I don’t know what to do, and it’s his baby too, and he deserves to have a say in what happens, even if we aren’t together…” I trailed off, sobbing.

I didn’t even know why I was sobbing, but it felt like a pressure valve had been released somewhere in my chest. The tears continued to fall as I regained control of my breathing.

“I see,” Nate said sympathetically. “I believe that Miles will be back within the next few hours. I promise I will give him this message and your number, and he’ll get back to you as soon as he can.”

“Thank you,” I said, shocked at how eerily calm he was being about the whole thing. “And, um, thank you for listening without freaking out.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Nate said, sounding for all the world as if it really was. “Here’s hoping your day gets better.”

“It will,” I said. “As soon as he calls.”

But Nate had already said goodbye and hung up. He was as brisk and professional as Miles was warm and absent-minded. Maybe opposites really did attract.

Satisfied that I had done all I could do for the moment, and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a single thing until Miles got back to me, I made tracks for home. I could use a good three-hour nap before work, anyway.

I slept with the phone by my ear, but the only sound to wake me was my alarm. I hauled myself out of bed with a groan, feeling groggier after the nap than I had before the nap. Groggier, and grumpier.

I checked for missed calls and texts, but there was nothing. As I got ready for work, I imagined what a work day for Miles must look like now. Some coding, some management, maybe a conference or two. He was the boss, right? He should be able to find time to call me, especially for something this important.

“Maybe he just doesn’t do phone calls anymore,” I mused as I slipped into my work shoes. “He’s a tech guy; maybe he emails first. Crappy way to deal with the situation, but he hasn’t exactly been un-crappy.”

His behavior made me angrier than it should have. I’d really thought he was a better person than that. I figured that money changed people into the worst versions of themselves, and wondered briefly what my worst version would be. I shuddered and pushed the thought away. There were some things I didn’t want to know, even about myself.

Feeling more than a little pathetic, I opened my email on the off-chance that he had tried to contact me there. To my utter annoyance, he had.

Apprehensively, I opened the message.

Shelley,

I’m sorry to hear about your condition. As of now, I cannot make room in my life for you or a child. I won’t tell you what to do, but I want it understood that I will not be participating in the child’s life.

I ask that you keep news of the child and my involvement in its creation out of the media. To that end, I am willing to pay you support as a means of insurance against public embarrassment in the amount of $5,000 per month. That should be enough for you to care for yourself and the child. If you agree, please reply with your banking information so I may set up automatic payments. I would prefer to spend as little time as possible involved in this situation.

Sincerely,

Miles Lane

I felt like I had been punched in the gut. This was worse than ghosting. This was the worst thing anybody had ever said to me, and I’d heard some pretty rotten things flung in my direction—my mom, sister and I had gotten into some crazy screaming matches in our time. This response made me question everything I knew about humans in general, and Miles specifically. I hadn’t known he was capable of being that cold.

I put on what I thought was a brave face then cried myself to sleep when I got home from work. It seemed like the only thing to do.