A Life More Complete

---Chapter 22---

Just over four weeks have passed since our blow out. I haven’t spoken to Tyler nor did he try to contact me. It’s all very reminiscent of our original disgusting mess of a break up. The worst part is that I’m not even nearly as upset as I feel I should be. I’ve been spending my not so lonely nights living it up with Melinda. The two of us picked up right where we left off. She’s hell bent on finding me someone new and if not someone new just someone to bed for the night. I’ve never been one to take home random guys from a bar and sleep with them, yet her promiscuous behavior seems somewhat appealing given my current single situation. Yet I still can’t do it. She’s all for me staying single since we spent the last couple of weeks drinking at all of her favorite local hot spots. It’s starting to catch up with me. My exhaustion is off the charts and my waistline is beginning to take a hit, something I’ve never once struggled with. Coupled with eating out, drinking and my lack of exercise my pants are beginning to create a lovely mini muffin top and I fear for anyone within shooting distance of the weak button on my pants. Today is no exception. The skirt I’m wearing is leaving a button imprint on my stomach as I sit through an incredibly boring meeting at work.

Bored and annoyed, my conscience, now my new best friend, has been telling me I made the best possible choice to walk away from Tyler. Alone or not, it didn’t matter anymore.

Ellie begins babbling incessantly about something I could care less about and when I yawn for what feels like the hundredth time in an hour she gives me the stink eye. I widen my eyes and stretch my arms above my head to orientate myself back into reality. But within seconds I’m yawning again and mulling over my grocery list and what bikini to buy from the latest Betsey Johnson line when a little blip goes off jolting me from my previous thoughts. Another yawn escapes my mouth. Melinda slaps my leg under the table and leans in close to me.

“Stop yawning. Shit, you look like a damn fly trap.” I barely hear her as I grab my BlackBerry from where it lies in front of me. The blip I can’t ignore, but Melinda I can. I scroll through my calendar and there it is sitting directly in front of my face—my missed period.

“Excuse me,” I say with too much force as I push back from the table and head for the door. My fingers tap as I seek refuge in the bathroom. I line the toilet with at least fifty sheets of toilet paper each one tearing off the roll one sheet at a time causing me to curse them every time. I hike my skirt up and pray that the cotton crotch of my underwear is stained with that tell tale sign, but it’s not.

I pull out my phone and calculate exactly how late I really am. Between the break up, work and being totally exhausted I haven’t even noticed that I’m late. I’m never late. I’m one of those set-your-watch-by-it-every-twenty-eight-days people. But somehow it slipped my mind. According to the little red “P” marked on my phone’s calendar I’m almost exactly four weeks late. Four weeks? Holy shit. I really am oblivious and this now explains the extreme exhaustion. I’m pregnant!

Last Friday I even fell asleep at my desk waking a half an hour later with a small puddle of drool under me and the imprint of my mouse pad on the side of my face.

I can’t be pregnant. You have to have unprotected sex to get pregnant and that I know I didn’t do. I try to remember all the times Tyler and I had sex over the last few months and it’s too many to count, but I do know a condom was used every time.

Kicking the nine million tiny single sheets of toilet paper into the toilet with the tip of my shoe, I try to process exactly what is going on. I finally chalk my late period up to the stress of the break up, but that thought just isn’t cutting it. Something is off and I know it. I run into Melinda in the hallway while I’m walking back to the conference room in a stupor.

“You okay?” she asks. “You’re being totally weird.” The pause between her speaking and my first word is unusually long and she begins to look annoyed.

“Uh, yeah. No. I don’t feel good,” I say shaking my head. “Tell Ellie I went home sick.” I brush past her and grab my things from my office. I need to get out of here.

I pull into the Rite Aid parking lot and put the car in park. I’m going to end the suspense right now. I try to think back to the last time my period was late and all I can recall is when I was a freshman in high school and I began running on the cross-country team. The intense workouts caused my period to go into hiding for a few months. After that it remained the only constant I ever had in my life. Like a barnacle it was shackled to me forever or at least until menopause.

I’m deep breathing in the Rite Aid parking lot trying to figure out what would make my reproductive organs decide that now would be the perfect time to hate me, but nothing pertinent comes to mind. Resigned I leave the car.

I scan the signs hanging from the ceiling as I try to locate the aisle I’m looking for, but the signs don’t say anything like “Aisle for possibly knocked up single twenty-eight year old”. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, a sales person asks if I need help finding anything.

“Pregnancy tests?” I ask using only those two words.

“Aisle two with baby items,” she says smiling as if she knows my secret and is somehow thrilled for me. I guess the look of disbelief on my face isn’t as apparent as I think. My palms begin to sweat and I can feel the perspiration building under my arms as I head down the aisle. Baby items, really? It’s like the whole aisle is saying, “Welcome to your future”. Diapers, formula, pacifiers, diaper rash cream, and wipes, it’s all here neatly wedged and perfectly faced next to the condoms and pregnancy tests. It’s all overwhelmingly ironic.

I never thought there would be at least ten different types of tests to choose from. I grab a nice assortment, since I have it firmly rooted in my head that a false positive is entirely possible and I need more than one test to confirm what I know to already be untrue. There is no way I’m pregnant, but just to be on the safe side I choose three different tests.

I toss the three tests onto the counter in front of a teenage boy with acne-riddled skin and the smell of patchouli radiating from his clothes. He rings them up without a word and I tell him I don’t need a bag. He hands me the three tests and says, “Good luck, lady.” He has no idea how much I need that right now.

I drop the tests on the seat of my car and stare at them with an intense longing to go back in time and figure out exactly how I ended up in this situation. Well, I know how I ended up in this situation; I wasn’t fifteen anymore.

Arriving home, I put the tests on the kitchen table and choose the least offensive looking one. They’re all offensive at this point, but I make my choice based on the fact that the box is unassuming and plain. I pull the Rite Aid brand test from the box, unfold the directions that are now the size of a map of United States and begin to read. Step one: Pee on stick. Step two: Wait three minutes. Step three: Read results. That’s the condensed version. So I open the other two packages and find very little modifications to the rocket science process. I take the foil wrapped stick into the bathroom and commence peeing on the little absorbent tab.

I set the test on the toilet tank and close my eyes. When I open them back up my eyes focus on the pee stream moving slowly down the stick and through the little plastic window. First a light blue line appears and then, as I feel my heartbeat quicken and my stomach churn, a second blue line much darker than the first. Three minutes, my ass! That was more like three seconds. A series of irrational, but totally rational thoughts fly through my head. Maybe it’s too soon to read the results. I should wait the recommended three minutes and that blue line will disappear. I retreat to the kitchen and chug a full glass of water.

I decide not to bother reading the original test until I’ve peed on the last two, this way I’ll have a full reading and the false positive in the bathroom, that is currently beating like the “Tell Tale Heart”, will look like a funny joke.

Grabbing the last two tests, I head to my guest bathroom. I figure a change of scenery will allow my body to stop hating on me and produce the results I’m seeking. I double fist the two tests and pee on them simultaneously placing them on the toilet tank. My eyes sink into them as the urine soaks the tab and bleeds down the stick, through the plastic window and stops to reveal the results, again in record time. Both tests...positive. At least I think the EPT test is positive, the results are rather complicated.

I grab all three tests, place them in a Ziplock bag and shove them into the linen closet under the perfectly folded sheets for my guest bed, because I know there will come a time when I’ll want them again. I toss all the leftover trash into the garbage, except the crumpled up directions for the EPT test. I scan it once again for confirmation to what has already been proven by two other tests and find the results the same, even though their plus minus method is rather confusing. Regardless, the answer is still the same. I am undeniably, unequivocally and irreversibly pregnant.