I’m too old for a baby. I’ll be over fifty when she starts school, her pudgy hand holding tightly onto mine as I escort her along to her classroom. The blue eyes she inherited from her father widening because it’s much bigger than the kindergarten. So much scarier that she clings on like a limpet no matter how many times I say her friends will be there.
Where the fuck is your head? It’s just a stomach bug and old age.
Or it’s a baby whose father is on the run from police and the moment he’s not, will be dead or in prison. A man who abandoned me to the cops like I was a crazy stalker who wouldn’t leave him alone.
Tears erupt out of nowhere to stream down my face, falling faster than my sleeve can catch up to them.
“Sorry,” I mumble, handing the bin back to the lovely officer who holds her hands up and refuses to take it. Can’t blame her.
“Just leave it by the desk,” she says in a soft voice. “I’ll show you to the bathroom to clean up.”
Better late than never, I suppose.
“I guess we’ll have to make that new interview for a time that suits better,” I say with a small laugh. Not that I have anything to laugh about. “Perhaps next week. There’s been a stomach bug going around.”
Which there hasn’t because I haven’t been anywhere where a stomach bug would hang out. Even my grocery shopping moved online as my reluctance to meet or talk with any person in real life grew.
It’s a bigger relief than usual to get out of the station. I stop by the mall, ducking into the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy kit, then using the opportunity to pick up a few treats at the supermarket on the off-chance I can keep any of them down.
The test says it works best in the morning but who has the patience for that? There are two inside, so if I want, I can try again at the optimal time, but I need to know now.
I set it on the corner of the vanity, averting my eyes as I wash my hands, trying to remember what it felt like back when Josh was first making himself known. There’d been a bit of sickness, but I’d hidden the nausea as best I could.
It wasn’t as though Rod would give me sympathy and I was scared Josh would go the same way as my first pregnancy. Terminated with a few well-aimed punches when Rod got scared of how it would eat into his personal finances and hijack his chance at promotion.
Shit. I don’t want to think of that now.
I don’t want to think of that again, ever.
Instead of thinking, I stare at my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. My hair needs a trim, the grey continues to win its battle for domination. I touch my fingertips to the hard joint where a pin holds my jaw together. Just another part of me broken for all these years.
Argh. Maudlin self-pity. I twist around with a flare of anger and grab the test from the bench.
Pregnant.
I sink to the floor, barely feeling the hard tiles against my knees. I lock my hands behind my head, eyes screwed tightly shut, then move them to hug my abdomen, keeping whatever passenger I have tucked away in there extra safe.
Emotions flow through me, wash away, then surge back to claim me for another turn.
The sadness that Kai isn’t here with me, his face ecstatic as he reads the news printed in that tiny window. Fear that I’m too old, my body too worn, to do its job properly.
A radiant glow I remember from last time, with Joshua. My body getting into a groove where it’ll listen to the two captains now in charge of the ship.
Then loneliness swamps me. How did I fuck this up so badly for the second time? The two men I love are in prison or will soon be back there.
Underpinning it all is the fantasy. That I get to raise a kid with a man who wants one, who wants me, who’ll love our child as much as I do. Who’ll be there every step of the way.
A man I can’t stop thinking about. The man I love.
And we all live happily ever after behind the prison gates.
I stand, washing my face in the sink, picking up the test to examine it again in case I was wrong and the last few minutes were born of pure hysteria.
No. No mistake.
I press the pedal and toss the test in the bin, the lid sealing when I move my foot away.
A geriatric pregnancy. That’s what it’s called. As if I needed another reminder of my advancing age.
