fingers had
already hit the SEND button.
Nauseous?
Might have eaten something bad.
Okay, that was a lie, but not
really because until today, she had attributed the nausea to an upset stomach.
You need to rest. See you soon.
If she hadn’t discovered she was pregnant, she would be
talking to him right now, laughing and flirting over the phone. Her fingers tapped on the screen of her iPhone.
I
can’t wait to see you. Good night, Adam.
Sweet
dreams, Liliana.
Lily studied the words for a few seconds, and smiled
slightly with mixed emotions. Like it or not, she’d soon be someone’s mother.
Maybe trade in her skinny jeans for high- waisted pants, drive a minivan to soccer games
in last season’s clothes smeared with dirt.
She released a deep breath. There was no time to retreat
and go somewhere quiet to think. She’d have to face this head on. In two days,
she’d be on that ferry crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Woods Hole and come
face to face with her baby daddy. Overwhelme d with
emotions, she rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. And then closed her eyes with hope to shut the world out,
at least until tomorrow.
Chapter Five
“ Sex is like math— You add the bed, subtract the clothes,
divide the legs
and pray you don’t multiply.”
Anonymous
Lily fought back the nausea that bubbled up in her stomach
and entered the quaint little house that doubled as a doctor’s office. As luck would have it, the
waiting area was filled with pregnant women all sitting with hands on their round bellies. The men responsible for
putting them there sat idle beside their significant other flipping blindly
through magazines or playing whatever game on their smart phone.
She glanced around the room. Some of the women’s faces were brimming with happiness, but most looked
uncomfortable, their eyes tired, breasts swollen, and stomach protruding in
various sizes of growing bumps. She took in their restless movement of tapping
feet, tipping of water bottles, adjusting clothes. It seemed the bigger the bump, the more fidgety they appeared.
Women
were supposed to glow; at least that was the myth. A lie. Instead, across from Lily sat a woman
with her shirt falling in folds around the watermelon-sized bump where her
stomach should be, her palms cradling the baby within. She looked as if she was
read y to pop at any second. With the exception of one or two w ith clear, even-toned skin, the waiting room was filled
with distressed-looking women sporting a nice case of acne or spotty skin.
Whatever
happened to the contours of the body becoming more rounded and feminine with
pregnancy? Another myth, she supposed. The pregnancy
god had tricked all of these women to believe their bodies would gently swell
and produce cute little babies. Instead, their skin stretched with a promissory
note to never regain its elasticity.
Great, just great. This was what she had to
loo k forward to. Swollen hands and feet and a watermelon for a stomach. One day, she’d have a
conversation with the pregnancy god and confront him on the deception, that
pregnancy was a beautiful phase in a woman’s life. Because so far, based on the
nausea al one, it was all false advertisement .
The
revolving door swung open and Paige, the pretty nurse with Lily’s chart in
hand, greeted Lily with her usual welcoming smile. “Hi, Lily, good to see you again. Come in.”
Lily
returned the smile and quietly followed Paige down
the hall where she was led to a patient room.
“Is
everything okay? You said it was an emergency, so Dr. Mason will see you right
away.”
You
better believe it. I got knocked up. Under normal circumstances, Lily would
consider Paige a friend. Not on the same level as her
friendship with Minka but close enough. Only one barrier stood between their
friendships — Paige’s close relationship with her brothers. As the head
nurse of the OB-GYN who prescribed her birth