Page 2 of Grumpy Santa

“How’s your knee?” Jared asks.

I shrug. “It still hurts, but it’s fine. All of this seems like overkill for just a small tumble. It’s not the first time I’ve fallen, probably won’t be—”

The door opens and someone pushes in some sort of fancy looking laptop on a rolling cart. A guy wearing pale green scrubs appears. He looks like he’s barely eighteen with reddish hair and face full of freckles. He rolls the machine right next to my bed.

“I’m Quinton and I’ll be your ultrasound technician today,” he says. “Can you pull up your shirt and lower your pants and underwear enough to expose your stomach?”

Jared growls.

The tech takes a nervous step back, looking like he’s swallowed his tongue.

Again the door opens and the nurse reappears. “Well, Ms. Briggs, it appears as if you are pregnant.” She nods to the ultrasound tech. “Quinton, you can begin.”

I hear the nurse’s words, but this just can’t be happening. Wait. I need everything to slow down. I can’t be pregnant. Doctors have told me since I started puberty that my odds were low. The man-boy looks up at Jared as if waiting for permission.

“I’m sorry, can we go back a step, please. You said I’m pregnant?” I ask.

Jared hasn’t moved or made a sound. He’s just staring at my stomach. Considering I don’t recall a time in my life when my belly has been flat and not squishy with rolls, I don’t particularly relish attention in that area.

“Here, let me help.” The nurse comes over, holding something that looks like a hospital gown, but unfolds like a thin blanket.

My heart is beating so loud and fast that I think maybe they can all hear it too.

The nurse lifts my shirt to just below my bra and then using the blanket, tucks my leggings and panties down below the bottom curve of my stomach.

Awesome. So now it’s like accentuating my fat. I exhale slowly.

Yeah, now is probably not the time to be worried about how my belly looks, because … um … how the hell am I supposed to process all of this?

Part of me wants to jump up and down, waving my hands like a referee calling a time out. Because what in the name of cookies and cream ice cream is happening here?

I’m … what now?

Pregnant?

But I don’t have time to rewind the conversation or even pause it, because the nurse is looking at Quinton and me as she asks, “Are you sure you don’t want to call anyone else? The father, perhaps?”

But by now, Quinton has the jellied-up wand pressed to my stomach and he’s poking around.

I can’t even catch my breath to ask all the questions that are reeling through my mind. All I can do is stare at the blurry grey screen. Flashes of red and blue appear in random splotches. He clicks a few times with his other hand and then there’s the rapid whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound echoing in the room.

“That’s the baby’s heartbeat,” he says.

Tears roll from one eye to the next with the angle of my head. My vision blurs.

Quinton says more words about measurements and weeks, but it’s like he’s speaking a foreign language.

The thought that keeps running through my mind is that this has to be the very worst way to find out you’re pregnant.

chapter two

Jared

I think I might be hyperventilating.

I force myself to remain still though. If I move, I might strangle that skinny fucker who’s running that wand thing over Audrey’s stomach.

Right now Audrey is freaking out a little. And who the fuck could blame her? Our lives are about to change forever.