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“Do you have a pregnancy test?” I say quickly, like I’m ripping off a Band-Aid.

Dr. Ferrante pauses and one eyebrow goes up again. He opens his mouth as if to say something and I desperately hope he doesn’t.

Thankfully, he closes his mouth, sets the stethoscope down and crosses to a cabinet where he opens a drawer and pulls out a box. He sets it on the exam table in front of me without another word.

I could kiss him for that. I dip my hand into the box and pull out two wrapped pregnancy tests before I stuff them in the waistband of my leggings.

I leave Dr. Ferrante’s office without another word, jogging upstairs to my room. Logic dictates that I should take the tests now but that isn’t happening.

I was brave enough to get the tests, but I haven’t plucked up the courage to actually take them.

So instead, I take the coward’s way out. I shove the tests in my underwear drawer and head downstairs to find Seraphina, because apparently when faced with a life-altering question, my move is to go build a block tower with a toddler and pretend the tests don’t exist.

For two hours, I play with Seraphina. We build block towers and I read book after book to her.

We play princesses and watch a Disney movie. I’m not really present for any of it, but Seraphina doesn’t notice, because she’s too enraptured with Cinderella.

At one point, sitting on the couch while she’s snuggled into me, I try to picture myself as a mother.

I can’t. Not even a little.

It’s not the idea that repulses me. It’s that I’ve never even considered it. I had always told myself that a family would come once I was established at work, so I busied myself with my career and never looked back.

My life had no room for anyone who needed me at three in the morning for anything other than a gunshot wound. And dating was out of the question considering I was rarely ever home. Someday, I would think to myself.

But the years flew by and then I was thirty.

Then thirty-two with no husband or even a boyfriend. I had a job that ate every spare hour I had.

I knew that even if I found a boyfriend, I would at least want to date for a year and live together for a year before we even considered marriage.

By then, I would be pushing mid to high thirties at minimum and my chances of conceiving would start to dwindle.

Someday quietly stopped being a plan and turned into something that probably wasn’t happening to me.

I made peace with that a while ago. I am not at peace with it right now.

Seraphina goes down for a nap at one-thirty, fighting it for a few minutes before losing completely, and the second her door clicks shut I’m rushing back up to my room.

I take the steps two at a time, my heart in my throat before I’ve even reached my own room.

Once I get there, I lock the door and grab the two tests out of my underwear drawer.

Disappearing into my bathroom, I lock that door too and read the instructions twice, even though this isn’t my first rodeo taking a pregnancy test.

I take a test, sit on the edge of the tub, and let the three minutes on the timer run. Then I let myself spiral, because I have nothing else to do.

Could I do this? Could I actually be somebody’s mother?

Could I actually keep another human being alive outside of a hospital, without a set task and a clear endpoint and somebody else waiting to take my shift?

Hell, I don’t even have a cat.

I’ve never owned an animal in my life. I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby beyond the medical side.

And if it’s real—what does that make Nico?

He’s been my captor and then…a lover, I guess, even though the word lover makes me want to gag.