The doctor's office is awkward as I imagine it to be. It's not my usual family doctor I had since I was a child but a new lady. Given the reason for this appointment, it made sense to see a new doctor.

"Definitely pregnant," she said as my lab results came in from the test she had me take. "But we already knew that didn't we?"

I nod my head shyly.

"Look it's just us right now, Marilla" she tried to make me feel more comfortable. "How far along do you think you are?"

"It's Rilla, about eight or nine weeks give or take?" I tell her. "Dad said ten weeks when I told them."

"Rilla, that is a nice short form of your name," She said smiling. "Why did you wait so long to admit it to them?" She asked kindly looking at me. I shrug my shoulders.

"I grew up in a household that had one rule, don't get pregnant before graduating high school. Don't be like them, don't have a baby senior year of high school and struggle? I missed some memo's along the way and well here I am?"

The doctor nodded. "Where is the father?"

"Not around here," I say. "I tried to message him, telling him to call me but it looks like he ignored it."

The doctor nods sympathetically. "Was he your first time?"

"No, that happened last spring," I tell her honestly.

"So two sexual partners? What sort of protection did you use?" I nod my head blushing at the partner's question.

"Condoms? I know Fred used a condom for sure. The other guy said we did but who really knows considering. We were drunk in a tent on a foam mattress topper.?" I wave my hands up in the air for extra flair.

I sigh sobering slightly.

"Well, it could have been faulty, or it tore during intercourse. I'll have to do a general pap test. With all pregnancy's we generally screen for any STI's which will be good for you as well to know about. Have you ever had a pap test before?"

I only shook my head, I knew about them but not had the honour of one yet.

"There's nothing to be afraid of, really it's smaller than your average penis," she told me holding up the clear plastic device that was for show only. "We put some lube on it for ease of insertion, take two different swabs and you're good to go."

I nod my head shyly.

"Do you know about the options available to you?" She asked me as she got things ready.

I nod my head. "I'm keeping it," I told her. "I mean I know they wouldn't care if I took the easy way out, hell they even would drive me there happily, I am sure. Dad just gave me some prenatal's and told me that I had a choice to make and I had to make it soon?" I say. I can barely admit and say the words pregnant. Saying abortion out loud was just as hard for me.

"Of course," She said. "You're Doctor Blythes, daughter," she came into realization of my last name. "Hop up on the scale for me?" She asked. I kicked off my shoes and took a deep breath and stepped on. I waited for it to balance and she looked me over for a split second.

"Do you do any sports?" She asked.

"I dance ballet," I say quietly.

"Tell me about your diet?" She asked me.

"I don't eat meat, dairy here and there but it's rare. I like salad and fresh fruit and vegetables. Dad likes to keep tracking of my iron and b-12 levels for me." I explain quietly. "I eat a fair bit," I stress to her, which is most definitely a lie in itself.

"This isn't going to be easy on you is it?" She said looking at me. "Gaining baby weight? What was your pre-pregnancy weight?"

"115 pounds," I tell her quietly. I weighed in at 117 today.

She nodded her head. "We're going to have to get you at least up to 130," she tells me. "I go by the rule of the less you weigh the more a mother should gain. 15-20 pounds is what I would say the minimum for a girl your height and weight, 25 would be preferable. If you can bear it, I will suggest drinking, eating more dairy if possible. Cheese is good for protein, milk for calcium. You may find yourself craving things you might have no wanted before."

I sigh and nod my head,

"Are you still dancing?" The doctor asked me next.

"I don't know?" I tell her. "We're going to figure out that next, and I suppose it depends on what you say as well."

"Light exercise is fine. For athletes and dancers, I always stress to continue at a reduced rate as long as you feel comfortable. Or to which your teacher or trainer feel comfortable in you doing as well. It would do a person like you worse stopping cold turkey then slowly reducing your hours." She explained and I let out a breath of relief.

"I will do an ultrasound, for an accurate measurement today as well." She said moving on with the appointment. "Do you want your mom to come in for that part?"

Mom was waiting outside for me but I still shook my head. I was not naive to be excited about this, but I still didn't want her ruining this memory.

"I got myself into this, I can do this by myself," I say bravely.

"That's where you're wrong Rilla, you're never going to be alone in this," The doctor said shaking her head. "Put on this gown, panties off but you can leave your bra on and I'll come back in a moment."

I nod my head and take the paper gown and wiggle out of the tights that I wore with my uniform skirt. I fold my underwear hiding them in my skirt that I placed on a chair. I hop on to the papered table and I wait.

"Do you know what you want to do?" My mother asks me when I leave the clinic with her. My one arm was being favoured as it seemed to take forever to find a vein good enough to draw blood from when the doctor sends me over to the lab with a form for bloodwork. "You don't have much time to decide and if we need to drive to Halifax we will need to clear some time."

"I already told the doctor thats not an option," I tell her, repeating myself for what seemed like the third time.

"You barely have thought about it," My mom tells me.

"How do you know how much time I have spent thinking about it! Do you think I just crossed it off? Do you think I didn't consider that it would be the easiest option? The option that won't change my life forever? But then I think, what would he want? Does it matter? What's worse, him never knowing, or him finding out there's a baby? Trust me I have thought about it all!" I let my voice raise.

"Well, apparently you haven't!" She snaps at me and ignores her and stares out the window. The small photos that was still clutched in my hand. A little blob that was inside of me, my baby, my child. Ken's child, the one he had no idea existed.

I ignore her for the rest of the ride home and have my seatbelt off by the time she has the car in park. I grab my bag and race inside. Joy's car was in the driveway, at least I had her to comfort me.

"This isn't over Rilla!" I hear Mom call out to me.

"Why are you being such a hypocrite!" I find myself shouting at my mother, letting the screen door slam in her face.

"Marilla Nadine! Don't you dare slam the door in my face!" She yells at me using my middle name, which was how my nickname Marnie came about from Ellie had come from. Nadine was one of the names of my maternal grandmother who passed away when mom was thirteen. I counted myself lucky that she had gone by her middle name and not Bertha as what her first name had been. Bertha Marilla did not quite have the same ring as Marilla Nadine into the 21st century.

"Why can't we just drop the subject. I'm not changing my mind." I cry and shout, you could hear the stairs from the basement creak. Shirley was home and from the extra pair of shoes by the door. His girlfriend was over as well.

"My apologies for offering you a drive to Halifax, I'm sorry to inform you that you have options worth considering." Mom waves her hands in the air, her voice laced in angry sarcasm.

"You had Joy, you didn't have an abortion, I already said no, yet you keep bringing it up" I exclaimed. I can see Joy wince in the corner of my eye.

"Apparently you retained nothing from those health classes." My mother says sarcastically. "If you actually listened or paid attention you would know that I had Joy in 1985, three full years before abortion was decriminalized in 1988. Before that it was case by case and if the mother's life in danger. So, my dear, I had no choice, I was having a baby whether I wanted to or not. You though, you have a choice, you have all the choices in the world!"

"And I told you no! I told you that I was not going to do anything until I managed to inform the father," I fire back at her.

"Yes, and how is that going?" She gives me a look. I still refuse to tell them who it was.

"I'm trying!" I cry. "I'm sorry that I made a mistake, I'm sorry I royally fucked up. But the answer is no thank you."

"You have no idea what you are heading towards." Mom shakes her head at me. "You have no idea how much your father and I struggled. What life was like back then, so is it that hypocritical of us to want you to experience life? Is it so wrong that we don't want you to make the same mistakes that we did?"

I can see Joy wince from her spot. She knows the truth but hearing such angry words from our mother must have hurt. I stalk out of the room though I still hear my mother sigh.

"I'm sorry Joy, I—," Our mother says wincing at her own words.

"It's fine Mom, I know." Joy waves her off like it meant nothing to her. "But maybe we should just leave the subject alone?"

I can only hear my mother sigh and apologize again. My pregnancy was bringing a lot of arguments into the house. It was hard for them after all.

I walk up to my room, wanting nothing more than to bury myself in blankets and forget the world. Which I do rather carelessly as I flop on my twin bed and pull the comforter around me. Mentally counting in my head, waiting for someone to disturb my pity party I had going for myself? I realize that I am still holding the photos and I stare at them once again.

Too early to tell if it's a boy or girl. Too early to tell who it will take after.

"Rilla?" Joy knocks on my door. "Can I come in?"

"I don't know? Are you planning to try and persuade me to get rid of it too?" I answer sarcastically through the closed door.

"No," she answered simply. "I just wanted to make sure that you were okay." She sits down on my bed. "But mom is right, you have no idea what it was like for them back then. I was little, but I remember bits and pieces back then. I remember small apartments and second-hand clothing as they tried to make it through University. Working multiple jobs to meet ends meet, student loans only covered so much. I still think I remember mom skipping lunch most days, just to make the peanut butter last longer."

I frown, trying to imagine my successful parents who always made sure to have the refrigerator and pantry stocked for us children. I couldn't imagine them ever not being who they are.

"They did it though," I stress with a frown.

"Yes, with plenty of sacrifices but they had each to lean on." Joy corrected her. "When mom got her teaching degree, things began to look up. Dad was in his residency when we finally moved into a nicer place. It felt so big, so nice, I was young but I felt the difference. How our lives were changing. Mom got her first teaching job and then Jem came along in our crowded two-bedroom apartment. Dad finished medical school we moved back to the Island. Mom taught for two years then Walter was born. We rented this little house is probably not the greatest area of Charlottetown. Dad worked to pay off student loans, Mom taught another year and then they found out about the twins."

"I'm starting to wonder if any of us were planned," I say rather bitterly.

"I think a lot of you were all at least partially planned," Joy smiled kindly. "It was after the Twins were born when we got this house, I was almost twelve" Joy reminded me. "This was my room before Jem took over it when I left." She told me looking around her old room. "You keep it much cleaner."

"Anyone is cleaner than Jem," I said into my pillow.

"Can you not just give us some sort of hint to who the father is?" Joy asked. "We don't understand why you are so secretive. It can't be that bad considering you swear it was all consensual and nothing illegal?"

I shake my head.

"Mom knows everyone, it would take one call to another person to get to him. If he doesn't want to talk to me if he wants to continue to date around, be with other girls. That's his choice," I say refusing to say Ken's name out loud to him.

"Is that what made you sick on thanksgiving?" Joy asked, "You saw him with another girl?"

"No, it was the turkey," I lie. I already had Nan giving me strange looks since Thanksgiving, between looking up from her phone to study me before pretending not to. She wasn't asking and I wasn't going to ask. "Does this matter, they haven't thrown me out yet?" I say off-handedly.

"No, and Aunt Marilla would never allow such a thing from them." Joy said with a straight face. "They may not like the situation, they may be baffled, disappointed by your choices but they will never make you go through this alone."

"Great, so I'm stuck in a house of disappointment then," I respond sarcastically and finally relinquish the photos and place them on my nightstand.

"Is that?"

I merely nod my head and watch her take one. "Baby Blob," I say weakly.

"Surely you can't think of a better nickname than Blob?" Joy raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug my shoulder.

"They say that's the head, and the legs are over there," I told her moving my finger over the photo.

"It makes things very real does it not?" Joy asked me quietly, in her daze of seeing her niece or nephew.

"It's been real since I peed on the stick, but yes it adds another dimension to it all," I tell her as I flop down on my pillow.

It was a small saving grace of my situation but the subject was dropped when I passed my 13th week. I soon learned that support meant awkward talks about planning where and how a baby will affect my life the most. How will I manage school, work? The cost of nursery furniture and what to do about rooms landed mainly on my parents as they work out a new allowance for me. Of course, I would qualify for the child benefit once the baby was born. That would cover a fair amount of the expenses the baby would occur with diapers, clothing and possibly formula. Breastfeeding was cheaper, but if I was in school would it be possible? Could they get a spot in the daycare near the school for me and how was daycare these days? If daycare wasn't an option, do I transfer over to remote learning and stay at home?

Most of these were posed to me, yet they didn't wait for an answer as they decided them for me. As even the simplest of conversations often lead to temper's flaring when I tried to tell them what I wanted. Still, every day had a small reminder to take the prenatal vitamin that sat on the counter in the kitchen in my father's messy script, and mom reminded me to eat more at every meal.

Just the same school went on, I didn't dare tell anymore and my friends had yet to clue in.

"Marnie!" I turn at my nickname as I pull my cardigan around me more.

"Ellie! What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Nothing, looking for you, you went MIA. Anyway, there is an epic party this weekend. We should go, it will be like the summer. You can find some hot piece of a hunk to disappear with and leave me all alone." Ellie tells me with a grin.

"Uhh I think we have family coming this weekend," I lie knowing that while my parent hadn't officially grounded me. I was still pretty much on house arrest until my 18th birthday.

"Oh come on, ditch them," She elbows me playfully. "With those new boobs of yours, I'm sure you'll be the hit of the party. Really what did you do finally eat something of substance?"

I realized at that moment that I would never get her off my back about the party.

"Ellie I can't," I tell her. "I just can't all right, all those parties have got me in so much trouble that I just can't." I didn't care I hurt her feeling as I grabbed my bag and walked away from her.

Mother was waiting for me outside, she gave me a worried look when I wiped the tears off my face as I walked past her to the car. We had to inform the dance studio this week, she had to figure out about the tuition or if I could still dance. Dad agreed with the lady doctor that light classes might be beneficial to me, but that also depended on rules and possibly other parents. The drive was quiet as I looked out the window, my dance bag in the bag seat. I could only hope and pray that Tessa would let me dance, a had doctor's note saying it was all right as long as I was conscious of my condition and my abilities.

I sat quietly as mom explained the situation, and Tessa nodded her head.

"I had noticed the change in your body and dance, but I wasn't sure. You lose your muscle strength rather quickly pregnant. While your technique is still there, I noticed that you were working harder on execution. I can't say that other parents won't complain, but you paid for lessons and you are entitled to them. Dance is exercise, it will do you more harm to stop suddenly than to continue on a lighter dance schedule." Tessa told her truthfully.

"What about pointe?" I ask her, speaking for the first time since my mother broke the news.

"Ballerinas have danced on pointe well into their pregnancies in companies around the world. If they felt strong and stable enough of course. For now, if you wish to continue you can, as long as you feel comfortable and take it easy. Just as well you will be regulated to the barre work once you are showing, your centre of balance will shift and I can't chance you falling. If needed we can work on a schedule of private classes. You are a gifted and talented dancer it would be a shame to see you give it up." She spoke kindly to me.

"What about helping with the little ones? The shop?" I ask her. Wondering if my job was still available to me.

"It's illegal to fire someone because they are pregnant so the shop is yours for a job for as long as you wish it to be. Helping with the littles may ruffle some feathers, and you won't be able to wrangle them in as safely as before. But working the desk and taking attendance and tuition payments for me is something they have no say in," She explained to me, politely as she could. No parent wants a pregnant teenager near their four-year-old after all. "Ultimately, you need a job if you wish to support yourself and your child and I can offer that for you. If any harasses or comments about your pregnancy, tell me and I will set them straight.'

I nodded my head, and she was right. A job was the first thing I would need if I wanted any freedom from my parents financially. My mom is about to say something as her cellphone rings

"Sorry excuse me," she says to Tessa and leaves the room quietly.

"What about after I have the baby?" I asked even though I knew that ballet would be out of the question next year.

"After the child is born and you're given the okay to get back into regular exercise. We can arrange something for you again" She tells me with a knowing smile. "If you work a few hours and finish closing up and organizing early and the studio is free. I don't think anyone will say anything about your dancing," she says as if she knows what I am worried about and I nod my head understanding what she was saying. "If you work hard, and try your best you can still achieve your dreams. Now go get changed for class," she tells me.

I nod my head.

Thank you all for the lovely comments the last chapter.

Yes, there is a line up to punch Ken...please get in line if you wish to do the same. haha! I gather by chapter 10 we should see him make his appearance.

I look forward to your musing on this Chapter.

Tina