I hadn’t known that you could sleep standing up until the doctor’s voice woke me and my back was against the wall.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Miss Gage.” He was tall man with an East Indian lilt in his voice. He looked around the room and took us all in at the same time as double-checking Bobbie’s identification on her wristband.

My mother sat on a chair beside Bobbie’s bed, a vague mesh pattern from the blanket tattooed on her forehead from where she’d been resting. The plastic-covered reclining chair in the corner looked like it came from Barbie’s Dream House with Aaron’s giant frame wedged into it. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, willing the burning in them to subside.

“Would you like me to speak with you alone?” the doc asked my sister.

“No, it’s okay.” Her voice was tired and her face wan, but we needed news. “This is my family.” Aaron cleared his throat. “And my boyfriend,” she added, making me wince.

Their relationship was still weird for me. I’d walked in on some sorority type going down on Aaron once in his football days, so there was precedent in my memory for awful, bleach-requiring imaginings involving my little sister. Blech.

“Ah.” The doctor nodded at Aaron. “Okay, then. Well, first off, I think the baby is okay.”

“Baby?” my mother squeaked. If it were possible, Bobbie’s complexion paled from wan to paper white.

“Yes. I want to do an ultrasound shortly to confirm dates, but your HCG levels indicate that you’re pregnant.”

Bobbie and Aaron just stared at each other, neither of them paying attention to the laser beams that were probably shooting out of my eyes at the two of them. How could they be so fucking stupid? I shook my head.

“The bleeding? There was so much blood,” Aaron said.

“Sometimes it happens in the first trimester. It could be from implantation, although I think we’re a little late for that. It could be a progesterone drop, which can result in the uterus sloughing off some lining. Sometimes it’s indicative of a molar or ectopic pregnancy—both of which can be very dangerous, which is why we have to do an ultrasound to rule them out. I take it this was unplanned?”

I barked out a laugh. “I sure hope so.”

“Brian!” My mother’s reprimand bounced off me. She wasn’t the one who was invariably going to have to pick up all the pieces.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I asked the doctor, “What do we do now?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “An ultrasound, then I will talk to Roberta about what to expect.”

What to expect when you’re expecting. That was just fucking great. I wanted to kick something. I wanted to punch Aaron in the face. Instead, I slammed the door on my way out and headed for the cafeteria. With any luck it would sell booze.

It didn’t. Two cups of sub-par coffee made me even more edgy by the time I returned to the room half an hour later. I opened the door quietly this time, noticing that the room was dim. Aaron was asleep on the reclining chair by the window, but Mom was gone.

“Where’s Mom?”

“I sent her out to get me some fresh clothes,” Bobbie said quietly, reminding me that hers were headed for the incinerator. “You know how she is with hospitals since Dad died. She was driving me crazy with baby names.”

A snort escaped me. “Yeah, she did a bang up job with ours.” Mom had claimed over the years that Brian and Roberta were family names, but I’d yet to find out what branch of the family tree that fruit had fallen from.

“I’m sorry, Brain.”

My eyes burned, making me blink rapidly. When I pulled my phone out of my pocket, I saw it was almost five in the morning and still dark outside.

“Sorry for what, Pinky?” I said, fighting bone deep exhaustion despite the vertical nap earlier.

She glanced over at Aaron, her face crumpling. “For disappointing you.”

I sighed, not sure what to say. I was angry with her for not using protection and getting pregnant, angry with her for getting involved with my friend in the first place, and now all that anger warred with the pity I felt over her situation and guilt over being angry in the first place. I was officially fucked up, emotionally.

A few months ago people called me a robot. Okay, more like an asshole, but the point was that I didn’t always play well with others. My patience was limited, and so was my capacity for sympathy.

“How could you be so careless?” What about taking over the world?

The look on her face made me want to take back my words, and if Madeline had been there she would have thumped me.

Oh shit, Madeline!

A quick look at my phone confirmed that she’d left a couple of text messages and one voice mail at around midnight. My fingers tightened on the phone as I itched to call her back and hear her voice, but at five in the morning I didn’t think it was the best idea.

Instead I hovered over a text box, but couldn’t figure out what to say. In the end I settled for “I’m okay. Will call you later.”

Straightening up didn’t help my aching back, and I stretched my neck by methodically bending my head from side to side. I shoved the phone back in my pocket, then looked up to see my sister’s face wet with tears. Fuck.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” I moved stiffly to her side and patted the lump of her leg under the hospital blanket.

Her shoulders shook as she tried to cry as quietly as possible, presumably so she didn’t wake up Aaron. If anything her attempt to stifle it made it worse, but at least her face was showing some color now.

“I’m such an i-i-idiot,” she whispered harshly in between sobs.

If I’d felt bad for my thoughtless words, it was nothing compared to how shitty I felt for internally agreeing with her. But she’d made so many mistakes in her life—avoidable, dumb mistakes. Bad decisions leading to bad outcomes. She lived her life like she was playing Minecraft in survival mode—just digging holes and building walls and waiting for random animals to wander through and screw up her environment.

“No, you’re not,” I said haltingly as she sniffled. She raised her swollen, watery gaze to me and burst into tears again.

Aaron groaned as he shifted in his chair. We both stilled and looked over at him. Part of me wanted him to wake up so he could comfort her—which surely he could do better than I could. Another part of me wanted to punch him in the face for putting everyone in this situation, but I knew it wasn’t really his fault.

Too many emotions had built up in me—anxiety, irritation, jealousy, helplessness. By midnight I felt like a pressure cooker and it only took the tears of my mother to blow my valve.

“I should have known,” Bobbie castigated herself in a low voice. “I should have known I was pregnant.” She looked up at me with wide eyes. “But I swear I didn’t. My periods are always so irregu—”

I held up a hand to stop her, not needing that much information. “It’s okay.”

“It’s probably best that this—” She broke off, her voice quavering. “I can’t take care of a baby! I can barely take care of myself.”

I couldn’t argue with that, mostly. “But you’ve been trying really hard,” I reminded her. She’d shown a lot of professionalism and initiative at the resort. And she seemed, well, happy. In her element, with more confidence and self-awareness than I’d seen in her in years. “I’m actually pretty proud of you,” I told her gruffly.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. I’d probably never said those words to her before, or if I had the last time had been when she graduated high school. “Really?” She sniffled again, and I reached for the scrap of paper they called tissues there.

“Yeah. You’ve been doing okay.”

She seemed far too pleased with my damnation with faint praise, which made me feel like even more of a jerk. In between blowing her nose, she asked where our mother was. I’d sent her home to get some sleep about an hour before. I’d told Aaron to do the same, but he flatly refused.

“Is he good to you?” I asked her.

Bobbie nodded. “He’s better than I deserve. I’m such a screw-up.”

“Stop it. You’re not. Okay, maybe you haven’t always made the best decisions, but you’re changing things now, right? Give yourself a break—literally. Sleep. Let yourself heal.” I patted her leg again. “Then you can get back to work and accomplish something, right? Get back on that horse, so to speak.”

She gave me another nod, her chin scrunched tight and her lips pressed together in a thin line.

Just then a woman peeked through a crack in the door, spotted us, then opened the door to push through a monitor on a cart.

“Miss Gage?” Her smile was much too bright for someone at work at dawn. “I’m here to do an ultrasound. Are you ready to take a look at your baby?”