Summary: Three minutes of Kirsten's life, a bathroom stall and a pregnancy test. You do the math…

Disclaimer: It might be over but I haven't managed to somehow steal it!

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There I was mid-exams again and what happens…wham bam fic-attack! I only just managed to get round to finishing it. Just a little thing but enjoy.
For those lovely people who ask me 'when are you gonna write something else?' particularly SandyKirsten and also for Trinity Is God to welcome her back to the fold!

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180

Three Minutes

One

She figured it probably was their own fault. They had what jealous people called far too much sex (if such a thing were possible). True their sex life was the envy of their friends, and they didn't know the half of it, but they'd been careful; there hadn't been any mishaps, so how did she end up here. Here being (another) three minutes of her life wasted waiting in that particular type of agony that comes with uncertainty and fear. There was no way this was happening again.

Leaving it as long as she could was the wrong way to deal, Kirsten knew that. But it was easy to keep pretending, find a hundred and one other reasons for things. Please God let it be paranoia. But little things, nagging, set off shrill alarms in her head, her denial tactics only acting as a snooze function for increasingly short amounts of time. It was too difficult to tell if she was jumping to conclusion, once bitten, twice shy. She was never regular, something that drove someone as methodical and organised as her up the wall. Plus she was mid-finals and stressed far more than a freshman should be. Even Sandy, the finalist, was calmer than she was, but then he did have an acceptance to Berkeley Law in the bag. He was already well established on his path while she was yet to make hers. And this could change everything. There was only one way of knowing.

Sixty

She took the test alone in the third stall of a row of eight in the bathrooms of the local mall. Either side of her doors banged and feet shuffled as people went in and out, people blissfully ignorant that someone's fate was being decided behind the locked door. The test was from the Student Support Centre, free and anonymous. Kirsten didn't think she could ever simply buy one from the drugstore. Not at nineteen anyway. Sure the cashiers saw them every day, didn't remember faces, didn't care, were no doubt too tired of the monotony to judge but Kirsten judged herself. She'd felt strangely calm as she went for it, separate from herself, as though watching the action unfold from the other side of the tv set. Then she'd drifted, mind out of body, across campus to the mall. She couldn't take it at the dorm; have the memory forever ingrained in the bathroom she had to visit every day for the rest of the year. Although the end of the year wasn't so far away she was reminded with a sick, sinking feeling. And then there was Newport, her father and Jimmy and a whole load of things she didn't want to think about on top of this.

One Twenty

It was a stupid test, primitive. Hadn't they come up with anything better yet? Peeing on a stick was one special kind of humiliation. And harder than you'd expect. She read the instructions over and over, praying she hadn't screwed it up. What kind of girl couldn't manage to take a pregnancy test? Perhaps the one who had been (potentially) pregnant twice before she turned twenty.

She'd been too young last time and she didn't feel much older. Jimmy had been too young. Sandy however… Sandy was graduating, he was going to law school; God forbid she be the one to mess all that up. But still, for all his mail-truck-living, pot-smoking habits he was a good guy, a man, a man who would always do the right thing. Abortion didn't really figure in his vocabulary whereas it did in hers. Oh far too vividly. She wished for the thousandth time that it didn't; would make this so much easier. Kirsten's thoughts strayed back to Sandy again, as they were wont to do lately; in class, on the phone to her father, while the watch on her left wrist silently counted down to destiny.

Sandy could never, never know she'd done this. Even if came to nothing. Just never, period. She knew enough from his jokes and throwaway comments that this was something he'd take seriously, something he'd half thought of but wasn't on the cards for a long while. Nevertheless, he wouldn't appreciate the deception, would never forgive her if she took his child's life without his consent. His views had been evident that one drunken night it had come up.

'You watch it,' he'd slurred, still a little drunk, 'or I'll get you pregnant.'

'Oh really?' Kirsten teased back. 'Do you not see several flaws in that plan?'

'Hmm…might kinda spoil my fun,' he mused.

'Yeah, would rather, especially since I'd kill you.'

'But then I wouldn't be able to look after the baby.'

Kirsten presumed her face must have looked aghast because he quickly continued, his matter-of-fact tone suddenly stumbling, 'I mean…that's rather presumptuous of me…of course, it would...depend and we would, I just meant…if…well, I just thought…'

She didn't respond, staring at the duvet awkwardly.

Sandy swallowed in the silence. 'So…if…if…well, you'd think about, you know…not?'

She shrugged.

'It would be a life Kirsten, a child…'

She'd sighed and closed her eyes. 'Sandy…'

'I can't believe you're so blasé about the idea of abortion.'

That got her. Not that he knew, but that hurt. He didn't know what it was like to feel terrified of carrying a life. To feel like you have no choice. He would never know. How could he ever understand? Some secrets are best kept hidden.

'I am not,' she spat, sitting up. 'Sometimes…things happen…you can't rule anything out. Ethics are very different on paper.'

'O-kay...' His tone sounded injured and was he eyeing her suspiciously?

There was another silence as she awkwardly lay back down.

'Would you even tell me?'

His eyes were intense; she couldn't avoid the question, wondering desperately how their jokey post-coital chat had derailed so spectacularly. 'I…I don't know,' she answered haltingly and now those eyes just looked hurt, disbelieving.

'Kirsten…'

'I don't know,' she said again and copping out; 'I'm tired.'

He'd backed down, sighed and turned off the light.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbled into the darkness, tentatively sliding her hand into his. 'I just...'
Sandy hugged her towards him. 'S'okay, what do either of us know?'

'Mmm,' was all she could muster. She knew but she'd rather not think about that.

'Love you.'

'Love you too.'

'Five years…' he began drowsily. 'Five years time, if you haven't pissed me off, I'll get you pregnant!'

Kirsten half-smiled at the memory. The pot must really have been getting to him. And five years? Five weeks more like.

One Hundred and Eighty

The second hand of her watch, the sweet sixteen present from a father who had missed another birthday, crawled to complete its third circuit. One of three thousand six hundred it would make that day, but the last that she would watch. It flicked past the XII as time sped up again. Another circle purred round unnoticed before she summoned the courage to look. She didn't want to, didn't want to read her fate in a thin blue line.

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And that's it. I've no idea whether it's negative or positive! Is it Seth or a false alarm? I'll let you decide! R&R and I might hopefully get onto some bigger things…

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