It was only once I pulled up to the hospital that I realized that had been where I was heading.

I parked my car in a daze and strode into the lobby in the same thoughtlessness.

I asked the kind-faced woman at the counter where the walk-in clinic was.

She swept pink-glossed nails to the left, smiled, and said, “Second floor on your left.” And I was off.

The clinic was nightmarishly full, nearly every seat occupied by another wan-faced somebody. At the walk-in clinic front counter, I went through the motions, got an appointment for who knew when, and slumped into the only empty seat, the scratched-armrest one at the far end of the room.

There, I tried to distract myself by flipping through glossy magazines and looking at celebrity couples who glowed with wealth and good humor. Everywhere I turned, however, were babies.

Baby shampoo, happy babies, fat celebrity babies, celebrities as babies, silly babies, baby purses, baby cats, baby, baby, BABIES.

Even flinging the magazine aside did no good; the waiting room itself was filled with babies. Babies crying, babies cooing, babies still inside mothers’ tummies, and even, just maybe, my own baby in my own tummy. God, how was I going to stand waiting for hours?

The answer came as a tormented belly groan of inspiration: eat. I leaped out of my seat and hurried past the other patients. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

By the time I returned to the first floor and got to the gray-carpeted, airy oasis of food, I was ravenous. I could hardly wait in line without nearly grabbing a passing pigtailed little girl’s chocolate ice cream cone.

When I got to the counter, I was practically speechless with the enormity of what I wanted, something like a pizza ice cream hot dog taco brownie delight. For appearance’s sake, however, I only timidly asked for pizza, going as far as to request two slices of pepperoni when asked.

After unsteadily making my way up onto the sky-high chairs, I dug in. The two pepperoni pizza slices were a good before-meal snack, so I soon returned to the counter to request one mint ice cream sundae. This too proved to be a good appetizer, so I returned to the counter a few minutes later to get a real meal: a hot dog and a steak taco. After a few minutes of rather contented devouring, I returned to the counter a final time for three brownies. I polished those off soon enough, the largeness of what I had just consumed finally catching up with me; I could barely get down from the stool I was perched on.

Once I did, however, my stomach seemed so full that it would bring me to my knees. Instead, I stumbled back to the elevator and then into the waiting room. It had cleared out a bit, enough for me to sink into a closer, comfier chair.

So there I slumped, regretting everything: the food and the entire past week.

I only realized I had fallen asleep when I was shaken awake.

“Miss. Excuse me, miss.”

Opening my eyes to a bulbous nose, I managed an “mmmf?” before I was shaken again.

“Miss, it’s your turn,” a low voice said, and I jumped up as if electrocuted.

A burly woman with a flyaway bun stared at me, and I tried a smile.

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Okay. Right this way,” she said.

I followed her out of the now half-empty room, past all the other people who’d have to wait who knew how long.

Inside a white and clean-looking room, she instructed me to sit down.

“So, Miss Combs, you say you are pregnant?”

I shook my head.

“The two tests I took said I am, but they’re wrong. I can’t be.”

She arched one bushy brow.

“So you haven’t been sexually active?”

My face reddened as I shook my head once more. “Well, no. I mean, I have been, but it’s just… I can’t be pregnant.”

Her brow fell as a knowing look came into her eyes.

“So I just want you—a doctor—to confirm that I’m not pregnant.”

Another nod and she disappeared out the door.

She returned with an irritated-looking doctor I recognized immediately.

“Frank!”

At the sight of me, his thin-lipped scowl became an open-mouthed smile.

“Alex! Didn’t think I’d be running into you like this of all things.”

I felt myself reddening once more. Frank was an old school friend I hadn’t seen for years. I would have bet he was sure surprised to see me there, worried about being pregnant, when I had been the most driven girl at school.

“Yeah… It’s a long story. It’s just…I’m worried I might be pregnant.”

I hung my head, and next thing I knew, Frank was beside me, his hand on my belly.

“Don’t worry,” the gruff nurse said. “Frank’s hands are magic. Word round the ward is that he can detect just about anything.”

Frank laughed but didn’t argue with her. His touch on my belly was firm yet gentle.

Then, after a minute of slow, gentle feeling, he turned to the nurse and said, “Linda, can you get Alex ready for an ultrasound?”

“Sure thing.”

The door closed behind her with a sharp click, and I glanced at Frank, my heart falling.

“Really?”

Moving away from me, he nodded.

“Afraid so, Alex. You said you just missed your period, right? And that your…encounter was a little over a month ago?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded again.

“Right. Usually four weeks is way too early for an ultrasound, but…I don’t know, I’ve got a feeling about this one. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong and we can do the more standard urine or blood test. But if I’m right…”

I said nothing, just stared at the white-tiled floor. He didn’t have to say it. If he was right, I was pregnant. If he was right, then my life as I knew it was over.

The next second the door was opening. Linda, the nurse, bustled in, a water bottle in hand.

“Go to the bathroom,” she instructed me, “and then drink this. Then, after an hour, we’ll see you and do the ultrasound.”

I took the bottle without a word. Halfway out the door, Frank stopped me.

“Hey, Alex? It’s going to be okay.”

With a nod, I tried to smile.

“Thanks.”

Then I headed to the bathroom. I went through the motions fast enough, emptied my bladder, went back into the waiting room, gulped down the entire water bottle, and then filled it up again. The numberless line clock on the wall ticked extra slowly for me, but, after a while, it had no choice but to admit that an hour had passed. And, sure enough, a few minutes later Linda poked her frizzy head out the door and said, “Alex Combs, please.”

I trudged behind her like a prisoner on death row heading to the electric chair. As I passed through one door after another, I thought, This is it.

And it was.

The tall white machine with the screen on top was already all hooked up and ready to go. I stared at the black screen as I climbed onto the bed.

So, that was what was going to decide my fate.

“I’ll leave you with our sonographer, Dr. Bailey,” Linda said.

I turned to see a well-mustached man in the corner I hadn’t even noticed when coming in. He nodded to me, I nodded back, and Linda disappeared.

After instructing me to lay down and pull up my shirt so my belly was exposed, Dr. Bailey got out a bottle of clear gel.

“This gel is going to help the machine do its job,” Dr. Bailey said.

He squirted some cold, clear goo onto my belly. Then he placed a hand-held device attached to the ultrasound machine over it and started rubbing it around.

I strained to look over at the screen, but from where I was lying down, it was difficult to see anything; the screen was tilted away from me.

“Hmm,” Dr. Bailey murmured.

Then, a few seconds later, he laid the hand-held device to the side and picked up a phone on the wall.

“Yes, Linda? Can you have Dr. Somnabellus come here? There’s something I think he needs to see.”

Another minute passed, then Frank strode into the room.

“Hello again, Alex. This should just take a minute,” he said in a soothing tone that terrified me.

What had Dr. Bailey seen?

Next thing I knew, Dr. Bailey was rubbing the hand-held device over my belly once more while Frank clucked approval.

“Yes. Yes, just as I thought. Alex, can you see this?”

He tilted the screen toward me, and I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

There, in the sonic picture of my uterus, it was unmistakable: three black blobs.

“Triplets,” Frank said, his voice a hush. “You’re pregnant with triplets.”

As he and Dr. Bailey spoke, I lay there, the word “triplets” ping-ponging around my head. Then I let my horrified gaze stop on Frank a moment before I tore myself off the hospital bed and ran out of the room.

As I ran, calls of my first and last name dogged me. It was all footsteps behind me and turned heads before me and nurses dodging out of the way just in time. This, however, was all background noise to the real soundtrack, the refrain playing in my head, appropriately in threes: triplets, triplets, triplets.

The waiting room was empty now except for a woman in the corner who looked like me but couldn’t be. She couldn’t be because I was me, though not anymore, not really. I was a vessel for three other lives, and I was hopelessly alone.

Even finally making it to my car in the parking garage offered no relief; that which was chasing me was inside me. There would be no escaping this. With a strangled cry, I slammed my palm into the horn, enjoying the blaring as it mingled with my scream—my howl of rage and injustice and despair. There were now three sweet little heads to which I would have to explain how I had put their daddy away for good, had gotten him killed. Three little needy mouths to feed when I couldn’t even feed my own stupid one.

I beat the steering wheel over and over again until my fists were red and stinging.

My phone rang. It was Tiffany.

“Alex, hey. Are you okay?”

I pulled down the sun visor, looked in the mirror at the teary, red-faced wreck staring back at me, and gave the only answer I could: “No. No, Tiff, I’m really not.”

It took a minute before she answered. “Come home, Alex. Come home. I’ve got a burrito with your name on it from your favorite, Cotijas.”

My laugh ended in another series of tears, but nonetheless, I said okay.

I went back to Tiffany. I drove until I saw the familiar black garage door, until I was at the lion door-knockered house I knew so well. I got one foot in the door and Tiffany swept me into the Yellow Room. It was hard to cry when surrounded by canary yellow curtains, a pineapple rug, some decorative butter pillows, and a yellow china chickadee that stared insolently at me, but I managed.

I cried and cried and ate Mexican food when it was offered to me, and then I cried some more. At some point amid the crying and the burrito, I told her. Her eyes went grave and she nodded. She hugged me and said, “I know you know, but I have to say it. It’s your decision, and I’ll love you no matter what and all that, but, Alex, I’ve never regretted anything in my life, but that—that I will regret as long as I live.”

I nodded dully and took my biggest bite of burrito yet. I didn’t need to be reminded of Tiffany’s abortion. I had been there. It hadn’t mattered, somehow, that she was only in college with her whole life ahead of her, or that her on-again-off-again boyfriend, James, had skipped town. It hadn’t even mattered that it was the only practical thing she could’ve done. All that mattered was that, after it, she had lost a child.

She had lost a child and a year. It had been a year of black. Black clothes, black hair, black, dark, sobbing isolation. I had done for her what I could, even gotten a therapist to come to our apartment. But the loss had still nearly killed her.

No, I couldn’t undergo what she had. I couldn’t kill a part of him, a part of myself. I would just have to endure this, for better or worse.