I hang up out of shear frustration, I know it’s childish and I know that I will call him later when I’ve calmed down but for now he’s driving me mad with his issues and I refuse to let him get away with talking to me like that. And where the fuck is Woy Woy?
I have a productive day, the carpets are laid, the plantation shutters fitted and the rest of the windows fitted with roman and stacker blinds. The beds that Karen ordered are delivered at lunch time, I have the bedding in the car that I’ve picked for each room, Gabe’s cleaner washed and ironed it all for me last week for an extra hundred dollars in her wages; I have new doonas and pillows stored in a cupboard and will set to dressing the place when Wendy and Ally get here, they are my dream team, they help me dress any of the places I work on and they do the big clean before I present to my clients. While I wait for them to arrive I check my phone, I’ve turned it back to silent and turned off vibrate because I just knew he would keep ringing me and he has, fourteen times and left countless texts, the first of which tells me that I’m a child and need to grow up. Well telling me that is going to make really me want to call him – not! I can’t help but smile as I scroll through each of his messages, he starts pissed off and gradually gets to begging me to answer because he misses me and wants to hear my voice. There’s only one thing missing from his messages, an apology, and I will not be taking his calls until I get one, despite the fact that I really want to talk to him and find out how his meeting went and if they won the contract.
I finally make it home just after six, I’m exhausted as I head for a quick shower before my girls arrive; we are just getting Chinese takeout so I don’t need to dress up or prepare anything; Lu can’t make it tonight so it’s just myself, Jo and Jemma, they arrive with food, promptly at seven, great, because I am starving. Instead of sitting up the bench top, I cover the coffee table and put the food containers on there; we dish the food onto our plates and curl up on various parts of the sofa. The girls drink wine, while I have vitamin water, which I seem to have become addicted to lately, best not tell Gabe that though, he will be sure to find something in the ingredients that I shouldn’t be drinking. Although I have already actually googled everything listed on the bottle and we’re all good. What pisses me off more than anything is that he thinks that I’m so irresponsible, like I don’t care about the health of these babies, when nothing could be further from the truth, I’m actually worried sick about them and the fact that if there are any issues, it will be my fault because before finding out I was pregnant, I smoked, I drank, excessively sometimes, I got stoned, more than once, I’ve had a concussion and was out cold for a couple of days, I’ve even had an x-ray. I can feel myself start to hyperventilate as I think about all that could potentially go wrong with this pregnancy. I put my fork down. Jo is talking but all I can hear is air rushing through my ears.
“Lauren. You okay Loz?”
I’m aware of Jemma taking my plate out of lap and holding my hand. “Hey Loza, you’re freaking me out, what’s wrong?”
Noise rushes into my ears and I gasp to get my breath. “What if there’s something wrong and it’s all my fault. With the babies I mean, what if there’s something wrong, he’ll be devastated, would we survive that? So much has gone wrong, shit, everything’s gone wrong so far, I don’t know what… I don’t know if I could go through with it. Am I a bad person, just for thinking that, am I bad?”
“Calm down Lauren. No, of course you’re not bad. Have you discussed this, you and Gabe I mean, have talked about the possibilities of Downs Syndrome and the like because of your age?”
I start to calm myself down and get my breathing under control. “We haven’t discussed specifics. We just decided we would have the CVS test done as opposed to the amnio. The CVS can be carried out after the tenth week, amnio not until after the fifteenth; that would make me four months pregnant by the time we got results, I couldn’t terminate then. If I could do it at all.”
“What’s a CVS? It’s a long time since I had a baby.” Jo asks.
“Chorionic Villus Sampling. They pass a thin needle through my belly and take a sample of my placenta and test it for any chromosomal defects and the like. I have mine done next Friday.”
“Shit Loz. Does it hurt?”
“No idea but we need to know what we are in for. What if there is something catastrophically wrong?”