The next twenty minutes are a blur to me as Doctor Callum leaves me to undress from the waist down and goes out, only to come back with an ultrasound machine on wheels. Then she’d used a wand covered in a condom to insert and showed me the image of the baby that is indeed inside me. The shape of it looked like a little blob, one I knew would grow into the form of an infant. One I needed to be prepared to take care of.
“I’m going to be a mom,” I whisper, my breath hitching.
“You are,” Doctor Callum agrees. “Everything looks great, and you’re eight weeks along.”
Eight weeks.
Dagger.
He’s the only one in a long time that I’ve been with.
I was going to have to find him and tell him about the baby.
Unlike my mother, I would give the father of my child that much courtesy. He doesn’t owe me anything. This is just as much on me as it is on him.
“I want you back here in four weeks,” Doctor Callum says, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Okay.” I nod.
She hands me a stack of papers about pregnancy, prenatal vitamins, and what to expect over the next several months. My hands tremble as I take them. I’m going to be someone’s mother. The responsibility of everything hits me like a tidal wave. I struggle to keep the panic at bay and my breathing steady.
I’m going to be a mother. I don’t know how to be someone’s mother. The example I had growing up wasn’t like the ones I saw on TV when I’d watch7th Heavenwhile hiding out in my room, afraid she’d come barging in.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Doctor Callum asks gently.
I have a thousand questions, but they’re all tangled up in my head like Christmas lights stored in an attic for too long. “Not right now,” I manage to say. “I need to process this.”
“Completely understandable. Take your time. My nurse will set up your next appointment, and you can call anytime if questions come up.”
I nod mechanically and get dressed after she leaves. My body feels different now, knowing there’s a life growing inside me. Eight weeks. Two months of being pregnant without realizing it.
I think back over the past months and wonder if I did anything that could have caused any harm. I’ve been pretty much a hermit at the studio that I have. I haven’t drank, though I’m not a big drinker as it were.
The night of tequila shots was a fluke. A rare moment. My friends had convinced me I needed a night out drinking with them. Maggie had broken up with her boyfriend, and we’d all gone out to cheer her up. She’d even been the one to encourage me to talk to Dagger when he approached me.
I shake the thought off for the time being. I don’t need or want to think about him right now. I need to come to terms with all of this before I consider telling him. I will do it, but I need time with this before I do that.
Dressed, I leave the exam room and head for the front desk. The nurse gives me a card with a time already scheduled for me. She knew I wasn’t picky and would take whatever appointment date they picked since I worked flexible hours. Mostly, I enjoyed working through the night for the calmness. Though I wouldwork in the day too. Just depended on when the music decided to flow through me and how much I could accomplish.
I make my way outside the doctor’s office, inhaling the a whiff of the fresh pine air of summer beginning. I love this time of year. I always have. The warmth of the sun on my skin feels Devine even if the rest of me doesn’t.
On the way to my car, I wonder if I should stop by a bookstore and pick up some literature on pregnancy, but I decide that I’ll just order it. The last thing I want right now is to go and find the books I want, only to have one of my friends waltz up to me to see what I’m doing. This isn’t news I’m ready to share yet.
Not until I can wrap my head around it all. I also needed to speak with Dagger before blabbing to anyone else.
* * *
“Come on,Kat, you can do this,” I mutter to myself, driving up to the clubhouse. “Time to stop acting like a chicken and talk to the man.”
In the past two weeks, I’ve done everything humanly possible to think of all the ways to avoid this moment, at the same time finding the courage to speak to Dagger again. I hadn’t seen him since that night we spent together, and I ran out of there before he woke up.
“Can I help you?” the guy at the gate asks as I stop.
“Hi, um, I need to see Dagger,” I tell him with a bright smile.
“He know you’re coming?” he grunts, and I notice on his cut that he’s a prospect.
“Ugh, no, he doesn’t, but it’s important that I speak to him,” I say.
