TWO
SLOANE
SIX WEEKS LATER
“Ice chips?”
“No.”
“Cucumber?”
“No.”
“Milk?”
“No!”
I’m holding a box of tissues in my hand. I consider hurling it at Zeth’s head, but he’s quick on his feet, the projectile would never actually hit him, and the effort involved in throwing the box would probably make me throw up again. My mouth fills with saliva, my stomach rolling heavily. I groan, leaning my forehead against the side of the bathtub.
“I’m not doing it,” Zeth says quietly. “No fucking way.”
I allow my eyes to close, trying to swallow down my urgent need to vomit. When I’m sick with a stomach bug, I will always just stick my fingers down my throat and get it over with. I know throwing up and getting it out of the way will actually make me feel better, if only for a short time, but this is different. I have an interloper setting up camp inside my uterus, and it won’t matter if I’m sick or not. I’ll feel shitty either way, so why put myself through the actual act?
“If you love me, you’ll do it,” I say. God, I sound so pathetic. How many women have I seen suffering from severe morning sickness at the hospital? At least twenty or thirty, I’m guessing. And every single time I’ve treated one of them, I’ve always thought they were being melodramatic. You get pregnant, you throw up. That’s life. That’s how it goes. Surely it can’t be that bad.
But it can. It really can be that bad, and I’m learning just how bad right now. This is karma, teaching me a brutal lesson for not believing my patients.
Zeth leans against the doorjamb, his arms folded across his chest. His lips are pressed together into a disapproving line. There are two vertical creases between his eyebrows, underlining the fact that he’s really not impressed by what I’m requesting of him right now.
“You’re a doctor, Sloane. You know better than anyone on the face of this planet what is and is not good for a growing baby.”
“I know.”
“So explain to me how a MacDonald’s thick shake is going to make anything better right now.”
“It just is, okay! It’s what I want. It’s what I need. It is what the baby needs. Just go and get me the goddamn thick shake, Zeth Mayfair, or by hell’s teeth I will make your life so miserable, you’ll wish you’d never laid eyes on me.”
He blinks. He blinks again. Without saying another word, he spins on the balls of his feet and walks off down the hallway. His boots thump as he makes his way down the stairs. The front door slams.
It’s three-thirty in the morning, and the baddest motherfucker in the state of Washington has just gone out to get me MacDonald’s.
He comes home forty-five minutes later, and I’m exactly where he left me, moping on the bathroom floor. He sinks down beside me, placing a brown paper bag between his legs, then he snakes his arm around me and pulls me to him so that I’m leaning against him.
“You’re fucking impossible,” he informs me, opening up the bag with one hand.
“I know. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
He smirks. It’s one of those oh-my-god-you’re-so-fucking-hot, this-is-how-I-ended-up-pregnant-in-the-first-place smirks. I want to slap it right off his perfect, handsome face. He’s being so kind to me right now, even though I’m acting like I’m fucking possessed. He doesn’t deserve a face slap. He deserves kisses and back rubs. He deserves showering with affection. He deserves the fucking Purple Heart for putting up with my crazy ass. My eyes begin to sting. Zeth takes one look at me and pulls the thick shake he’s just driven down a mountain in the dark to get for me, handing it over as quickly as he can.
“Don’t cry,” he says gruffly. “Please do not fucking cry.”
“I’m not going to. I just feel so bad. I can’t sleep for more than an hour without getting up and puking. I can’t smell bacon without wanting to burn the house down, and I keep snapping at you like a grade-A bitch. I’m a hot mess.” I stick the straw in my mouth and pull. It’s a miracle; as soon as the thick strawberry deliciousness hits my tongue, my body stops freaking out. My stomach quits its incessant heaving and pitching, and my desperate need to cry simply ups and vanishes in smoke.
Ahhhh, MacDonald’s strawberry thick shake. Fixer of all problems. How I love thee. Zeth laughs down his nose when he sees the look of sheer bliss on my face.
“You are a hot mess. But the very best thing about you is that you’re my hot mess. Besides. This is temporary. You’re not always going to be on the verge of stabbing me in the neck with a toothbrush. Are you?” He looks slightly worried.
“No, baby. This, too, shall pass.” The old adage seems appropriate right now. Zeth doesn’t look completely reassured, but his smile does widen.
In some ways, this is all still so foreign to me. Him, being able to kiss me. Him, being able to tell me that he loves me. Having him actually being able to share a bed with me and not try and kill me when he wakes up. The thing is, it’s just so easy to forget how things used to be. He makes this feel normal, when it’s anything but. We met under such dangerous circumstances. We went through so many perilous ordeals together. And now I’m having his baby, and he’s willing to leave the house in the small hours of the morning to do something he doesn’t particularly agree with, because he knows it will make me happy.
“We just have to get through the next few months. Everything will be fine,” he says.
“Hmm.” I take another draw on the thick shake, the cold penetrating my brain, throbbing at my temples in the very best way. “We have to get through telling my super religious parents you knocked me up first. If we survive that, we’ll be able to survive anything.”