"How long has it been since you had your monthly visitor?" Nancy asked frantically, her mind racing.
"I … I don't know. Three months maybe?" Shelley whispered, still shocked.
"Three months!" Nancy exclaimed. "THREE?"
Shelley frantically pushed her hair back from her face, suddenly burning hot despite the cold morning air. "I don't know. I just … figured it was because I was stressed. . I was never regular and then towards the end and things were getting rocky. But I've never missed two in a row."
"He threw out my pills." She remembered suddenly.
"The night you left him." Nancy countered. Jesus Christ.
"Who knows if he's messed with them before. He'd been making noises about kids for months." Shelley persisted.
"Do you feel light headed? Nauseous?"
"No. But you didn't feel any of that with Charlie." It was undeniably true. Nancy's pregnancy with Charlie had gone swimmingly well – no swollen ankles or morning sickness.
Shelley felt queasy, her stomach taking a slick dive. "Oh god. Oh dear god."
Nancy grabbed her hand, hauling her back towards the house. "It's okay. It's going to be okay. We'll just go the pharmacy and buy you a test. Two. A dozen."
The last time Shelley had been in that section of the drugstore she'd been fifteen, clenching Nancy's hand as her friend carefully selected a ClearBlue test and smuggled it into her purse. They'd snuck into the staff bathroom and prayed desperately it had been negative.
Now she was the one standing numbly in front of the rows of boxes of First Response and E.P.T. as Nancy frantically read the backs of boxes, hastily shoving the rejects back onto the shelf, tossing the ones she chose into a green shopping basket. But they were still praying for the same result.
When Nancy was satisfied with her selections she guided Shelley towards the checkout, dumping the boxes out, tumbling helter skelter across the conveyor belt. Shelley reached into her bag for her wallet. The grating of the zipper seemed to echo in her ears.
"Well, well." Shelley's blood turned ice cold.
"Bethany Larson." Nancy sneered at the cashier. "I'd say it's a pleasure to see you again but I'd hate to lie."
Bethany took in the mountain of boxes, Shelley's open wallet, glancing up as she began to scan them through. "My my. Somebody's been busy since their separation." She smiled coldly, tossing back her mane of long blonde hair.
"They're mine." Nancy snarled. Probably a little too quickly. "Shelley's just … buying gum." She reached across the conveyor and grabbed a pack of Trident, tossing it on the conveyor behind the pregnancy tests.
"Don't you work fast." Bethany snorted, ringing in the last boxes. "Never could expect a slut like you to keep it in her pants."
"Yeah. Well. My husband seems to be okay with that." She smiled sweetly as she dropped that bombshell. Bethany was the kind of women who was intensely jealous of other women's happy marriages. "He just can't keep his hands off me."
Bethany's face flushed with anger. "Yeah? So that's why he's been coming around sniffing at me like the dog he is." She was grasping at straws, Shelley thought. Brian was madly in love with Nancy.
Nancy laughed, throwing the money for the pregnancy tests down on the conveyor. "As if he'd touch a bitter bitch like you, Beth. He's not some 40 year old math teacher you can seduce with your peroxide hair and skanky clothes." Beth gasped, flustered and unable to respond.
Shelley choked on her laughter, carefully counting out the change for her pack of unwanted gum.
"Bye Beth." Nancy smirked, turning on her heel and striding towards the exit. Shelley hurried after her, stumbling towards Nancy's car illegally parked in front of the PharmaPlus.
She collapsed into the passenger's side, barely registering the sound of Nancy's door slamming shut.
"Shelley?" Nancy asked with concern. Shelley's shoulders were shaking, heaving up and down. Her hair had fallen down around her face, concealing it from view. She reached her hand out tentatively placing it upon her shoulder.
Shelley's head whipped around.
She was … laughing?
Shelley gasped in a breath, trying to calm herself, but to no avail. She couldn't stem the near hysterical laughter.
"Did you see her face? When you brought up her affair with Mr. Freestone?" She doubled over again, bracing a hand on the dashboard as Nancy punched the car into reverse, swinging out it the parking lot, grinning wildly.
Nancy pulled into an Esso Parking lot, plugging five dollars worth of gas into her half-full tank before retrieving the bathroom key from the bored teenaged attendant. As an afterthought she grabbed a jug of cranberry juice and another of Coors Lite.
Grabbing the bag of tests from the floor of the car she tromped around the back of the station to the tiny bathroom. They
She locked the door behind them, dumping the bag of boxes onto the damp counter. She selected two at random, ripping the flimsy cardboard packaging away. Reading the instructions she slid the bottles towards Shelley.
"Beer? Nancy I can't drink this if I'm pregnant."
"That's not for you. That's for me." Nancy said, not looking up from the paper. "The cranberry juice is for you. Natural diuretic. Chug it. It'll make you want to pee like a freaking racehorse."
Shelley obediently cracked the seal on the bottle, lifting it to her lips. She hated cranberry juice.
Nancy ripped open two more boxes, lining up the tests along the counter, discarding the boxes. She cracked the top of her beer, lifting it to her lips and taking a grateful sip.
"You ready?" She asked, nervously. She prayed to god the test was negative.
"No. I still don't have to go." Shelley responded frantically. She was lying. Her bladder was bursting. She wanted to delay this as long as possible. As long as she didn't know she didn't have to face it.
Nancy reached over, wiggling the faucet so water streamed out. Shelley clenched her jaw, urging her body not to respond. Her luck, as it were, had run out.
Nancy passed her a cup from the dispenser above the sink. Shelley faintly wondered if anybody actually drank out of the paper cups dispensed in dirty gas-station bathrooms.
"You going to give me some privacy?" She asked. Nancy rolled her eyes and turned her back.
"Didn't think so." Shelley responded dryly.
Shelley stared down at the flimsy paper cup, brimming with little white sticks. Several of them displayed a little flashing hour glass. She kind of felt like they were the countdown clock on a bomb, slowing ticking away the time until an enormous, earth-shattering explosion.
"What do we do now?" She asked.
"We wait." Nancy said, glancing down at her watch. The second hand dragged round the face reluctantly.
"Please." Shelley murmured. "Please, please, please." Be negative she added silently.
"What will you do if you are …" Nancy could quite bring herself to say the word pregnant.
"I don't know." Shelley answered wearily.
Nancy scuffed a sneakered foot across the uneven tiles of the bathroom floor. "When I was fifteen and I was sure I was knocked up I gave some serious thought to adoption. Give some diabetes-inducingly-sweet couple the family they'd always dreamed of."
Shelley nodded woodenly. A family. A whole, loving family – something she could never give her baby. She'd dreamed of having a child for so long – growing up she'd thought about the family she'd have one day.
She'd always known what she wanted in life. A loving home and children to fill it. Once upon a time she'd thought Blake would help her build both and that dream had taken a sharp detour into a nightmare. Sometimes when she held Charlie she'd think about what it would be like to hold a child of her own, one made in love, and her heart felt a little lighter. She was starting to believe in that dream again. But…
"If I kept the baby Blake would use it as a pawn against me. He'd always be in my life. He'd have parental rights and there would be custody battles." She braced herself against the counters.
The flashing hourglasses of the pregnancy tests continued to pulse.
"No. We wouldn't let that happen. No judge would allow him paternal rights after what he did to you." Nancy insisted, but a cold sweat had taken over her body. A baby would tie Shelley to that bastard for life.
"I'd have to leave." Shelley stated, pushing off the counter once again. "I'd have to leave L'Amoreaux. He'd find me here. I could just leave. And he'd never know where I went or that he had a son or daughter. He'd never know. We'd be safe."
Nancy's heart squeezed in her chest at the thought of losing her best friend. She viciously wiped away a tear. Goddamned Blake.
"I love you Shelley." She grabbed Shelley in a tight hug.
"I love you too." Shelley murmured.
Nancy blinked, hey eyes barely registering what she was seeing.
"They're done!" She shouted, grabbing Shelley's arm. "They're ready." They scrambled for the cup of pregnancy tests, scooping one up at random.
"One line! One line!"
"What does that mean?" Shelley asked, rifling through the tests. They were an array of lines and colours. Christ. Who knew there were so many options.
"You're not pregnant." Shelley was grabbed in a bone-crushing hug.
"They're negative?" Shelley asked, daring to hope.
"They're ALL negative." Nancy responded, spinning her arms in a circle. "All eight. Every single last one of them."
It was like an enormous weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Like she could breath again. Her heart raced a little faster. She laughed manically and, with a sweeping shove, sent the tests and their ripped boxes and instructions hurtling into the garbage can.
Slinging an arm around Nancy's shoulders, she wrenched open the bathroom door and swiped Nancy's forgotten beer from its spot perilously close to the edge of the counter. Tilting it back she finished it off, the cool liquid hitting her dry throat like honey.
"We're going to need more beer." She said, laughing as she kicked the door closed behind them.
..........
...3...
AN: Balancing school and writing is a biznatcho. I'm on break right now, in the Dominican. I had to bring my computer because of essays but now that I'm done I can do fanfiction at night instead! Yessss! Somebody at York at Seneca posted pictures of Flashpoint filming at their campus so I'm getting excited for the new season.
Yeah - for being an actor David Paetkau seems pretty soft-spoken and slightly camera shy.
Anyway, puh-lease review. It kinda sorta makes my day/week/month when I get reviews. It lets me know people are actually reading my stuff, which is always a nice feeling.