I wake up the next day groggier than usual. I couldn't get much sleep with all that was on my mind. Pregnant. The word sounded foreign to me. I couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that this word could now be used to describe me. That it would be the only word used to describe me in the upcoming months. I wasn't okay with this; it almost made me want to get an abortion just so I wouldn't have to deal with the repercussions, but I knew nothing would be that simple.
I get out of bed grumbling as make my way to the bathroom. Just as I am about to reach the door Isaac and Josh run past me. Isaac makes it to the bathroom first shutting me and Josh out. I can feel annoyance clawing at me, but I stay calm. Josh starts banging on the door yelling at for Isaac to come out. God, I wish I had my own bathroom.
I grab Josh's shoulder and yank him away from the door. "Stop yelling. He'll come out when he's done."
"But I have to go." He says it in a whiney voice that kids use when their upset. It takes some effort not to roll my eyes at him. Usually I'm not this impatient with them, but my sleep deprivation and current state of mind has given me a shorter fuse than usual.
"Well so does he, now wait." He lets a noise that's a cross between a scream and whine. "Stop it." I say in a stern voice and he crosses his arms across his chest and glowers at the door. This time I don't hold in the eye roll at his dramatics.
A few minutes later Isaac comes out of the bathroom with smug look on his face and I know immediately he's done something mischievous. Josh starts to go into the bathroom, but I stop him with arm. He looks at me incredulously, but all I have to say is "trust me", for him to calm down. "Isaac, get back here now!"
He comes out of his room feet dragging with his arms across his chest. "What?"
"You know what. Go back in there and undo whatever it is you did."
"How do you know I did anything?" He gives me his best innocent look, but I know better and my face shows it.
"I just do." We enter a staring contest for the next five seconds until my stern look perseveres. He then walks in to the bathroom stomping every step until I hear a rustling. He comes out holding saran wrap a few empty paper towel rolls, string and a pair of scissors. I don't even want to know what he planned to do with that stuff, I'm just glad it was dismantled before it could do any damage.
"Happy?" he asks in a resentful tone.
"Very. Now go to room and get ready for school." I turn to Josh who is looking at me wide eyed likely thinking about the bullet he just dodged. I extend my arm out in the direction of the door. "You may go in now." He just nods and proceeds through the door.
I huff out a frustrated sigh. It was only Monday morning and the twins were already wreaking havoc, but then again none of this is new. I usually got up earlier ahead of time to evade most of their antics, but today just wasn't my day.
The rest of the morning goes by relatively calm except Isaac's death glares and Josh's smug looks, but I wasn't really paying much attention. I had greater things on my mind. Of course I could just be over reacting; I only took one test and I hear they could be inaccurate which I would be inclined to believe if the results didn't match my symptoms. I know once I go to the doctor they'll confirm what I already know and things will get even more real than they did yesterday.
I'm about to walk out the door to my car when my mother's hand stops me. She looks at me with concern etched into her features. I guess I'm not doing a very good job of hiding that something's wrong. "Sweetie, are you alright? You seemed a little quiet at breakfast."
I give her the best smile I can manage and speak. "I'm just a little tired mom, nothing to be alarmed about." It was half true which made it all the more easier to lie. I'm usually not that great at it, but since I've been lying to myself I've found it easier to lie to others.
My mother gives me a half smile and nods her head slightly. I can tell she doesn't quite buy what I said, but she takes my words as reassurance anyways and lets me go. I don't let go of the unconscious breath I was holding the moment I saw my mother's concerned face until I get to school.
Before I even walk in I know I'm going to be assaulted by the nauseating smell of a mixture of cologne, perfume and cafeteria food. Luckily each smell isn't particularly strong so I won't actually vomit, but the nausea is still there.
I get through my day pretty easily which doesn't really mean much because I don't have the most perceptive friends. The only one who gave me sympathetic looks was Bella which I appreciated to a degree. It was nice getting absorbed in everyone else's petty problems because it meant I didn't have to worry about mine.
Everything was going great until lunch and the saturated smell of cafeteria food caught me off guard. I had to run out to the girl's bathroom the moment I entered the cafeteria. I didn't actually make it to the bathroom, but luckily there was a trash can on my way there. I probably would have been more humiliated at vomiting in public while students who didn't know me stared at the spectacle I was making had my energy not been depleted so much already. When my stomach has emptied all of its contents I muster up all the energy I have and walk the rest of the way to the bathroom while trying very hard to ignore all the laughter.
When I get there I go straight to the sinks and wash my mouth out. If this becomes a common occurrence I'm going to have to start bringing mouthwash to school. I then splash water over my face and lean against the mirror in exhaustion.
I hear the door open and when I look I see that it's Bella. She gives me a sympathetic smile that makes me cringe a little bit. "So how bad is it out there?"
She chortles and then says, "Not that bad. Everyone pretty much went back to their normal lunch routine and others are just talking about it, but nothing that they're going to harass you about. I told everyone at our table that you have food poisoning, so they'll leave you alone also."
I smile at her thoughtfulness. "Thank you." I let out a sigh of fatigue. "I can't go back there."
Bella looks at me in confusion. "I just told you that they won't bother you."
"It's not them, it's the smell. If I go back in there I'll end up right in back here."
She gives me a look of recognition. "Well I guess we can eat outside. It's one of the rare days where it isn't raining."
I snort. "Yeah let's go outside."
The rest of the week goes pretty much like this with the exception of Wednesday; it was pouring buckets so we had to find another safe haven that wasn't the cafeteria. We used the computer lab to eat lunch and research medical clinics in Port Angeles. We found a walk-in clinic that wasn't too conspicuous. At first Bella suggested Planned Parenthood, but I didn't want to have to explain what I was doing there if I ran into someone I knew. So we settled on the walk-in clinic that's going to confirm the thing that I already knew.
It wasn't until Friday that our friends decided to join us at the picnic table. "You guys have been MIA at lunch all week. Are we now no longer worthy lunch companions?" Mike held hand to his chest in fake outrage.
"Or maybe they're plotting our murders. That's why they've been avoiding us." Eric chimed in with fake suspicion in his voice.
Everybody at the table was laughing at they're antics including Bella and me. Mike and Eric always knew how to lighten the mood.
Bella answered for us which I was thankful for. I'd been lying enough at home, I didn't like having to have to do it at school to. "We just felt like fresh air for a change. Sorry we didn't invite you, but we just assumed that you liked the cafeteria."
"Yeah we just love the smell of inedible food every day. We can't get enough of it." Mike said sarcastically which had everyone giggling in response.
"But, no seriously we missed you guys. Lunch has been lacking intelligent conversation all week and I won't stand for it anymore." Eric slammed his fist against the picnic table while Jessica and Lauren looked at him with a death glare. Mike held his hands up as too remove himself from the situation.
"Lacking intelligent conversation? Says the boy who guy whose only contribution to conversation this week was how hot Megan Fox was in Transformers." Jessica said in a clipped tone while throwing a potato chip at him.
"Hey, never said I wasn't a part of the problem." He had his hand up in surrender which both she and Lauren accepted. The rest of lunch had a more lively tone than it had all week which I was grateful for. I hadn't been much of a teenager this week and I missed it.
Near the end of lunch Mike invited us all to go camping the next day. Everyone accepted his invitation except Bella and me. "Why don't you want to go camping with us? Did we do something we're not aware of that has you avoiding us?" Jessica asked.
"No you guys didn't do anything, it's just me and Bella made unbreakable plans for tomorrow."
"What kind of plans?" Lauren said in a suspicious tone.
My heart rate increased as I tried to come up with a response, but again, much to my gratitude, Bella answered for me. "We're going to La Push to see my friend Jake."
Everyone was speechless after that. No one was aware that she had any friends outside of us, myself included. Mike finally broke the silence. "Who's Jake?"
"My dad's best friend's son. He just finished building his car and wanted to drive me to Port Angeles and I invited Angela to tag along." She spoke confidently as though what she just said wasn't a lie. Lauren was about say something but the tardy bell interrupted her and we went our separate ways.
It's wasn't until the next day and we were sitting in the waiting room that her lie started to bother me. Bella, while a very competent liar, had never been that good at it. In fact she was always pretty easy to read, so I wondered where all that came from. "Bella?"
She looked up from the magazine she was taking mild interest in to look at me. "Yeah?"
"How did you come up with that lie so fast yesterday?"
Bella's cheeks turned a new shade of red before she answered me. "Well it wasn't a lie."
"What do you mean?" I mean we were in Port Angeles, but not with some guy named Jake.
"I mean those are my actual plans just for tomorrow." She was turning an even deeper shade of red.
"So Jake is real?"
"Yes, very real. He's actually who I spend most of my weekends with."
"So you don't just reject all our invitations just because you want to be alone."
She looked a little perplexed by my statement. "No, is that what people think?"
"Well yeah. When we're at school sit silently like you'd rather be sitting alone, so we just assumed."
"I do like alone time just not that much alone time." She said sounding a little annoyed.
"I'm sorry." She nodded in response. So I actually was worrying for nothing, but the more I thought about it the more outraged I got. Why didn't she want to hang out with us and I asked.
She paused for a moment thinking about how to respond. She finally let out a breath before she replied. "With you guys, it's like I feel this obligation to talk and engage in conversations because if I don't I'm a freak. But with Jake there's absolutely no obligation or anything, not to even say hi. I can read a book while he works on his car in complete silence and know everything is alright. And when we do talk it's not out of obligation, it's just the natural progression of things. Don't get me wrong I still like hanging out with you guys, it's just so much easier with him."
I didn't know how to respond to that because I could see what she was talking about. There have been times when she sat with us in complete silence and she was readily ostracized for it. I guess I didn't think that we were the reason she was antisocial, I just blamed it on her nature. We both sat in silence after that.
We had been there for about an hour and a half and I still hadn't been seen. I'd asked the receptionist what was taking so long, but she just basically told me that I had to wait until the scheduled patients had been seen first. I let my mind wander to the person who got me into this mess. I wondered what he was doing with his Saturday morning. I bet it was more riveting and less stressful than what I was doing. I really wish I knew how to find him. The only thing I had location wise for his whereabouts was La Push and while it's a small place, it's not that small and I didn't know many places there beyond the beach. I wondered if Bella knew where things were there. She must considering she spent almost all her weekends there with Jake. Actually now that I think about it I wonder if Jake knew Paul. They're reservation was smaller than Forks and in Forks everyone knew everyone, so it probably worked the same way.
Bella was leaning to the side of her chair falling asleep when I got her attention. "Bella?"
She startled a little but quickly got her bearings when she realized where we were. "Yeah?"
"Does Jake know anybody named Paul that lives in La Push?" She looked at me with surprised eyes as her brain came to some realization I wasn't privy to.
"Why?" I don't know why I felt reluctant in telling her that that was the name of the guy I slept with since she knew everything at this point, but I still felt some things needed to be private.
"He's just someone I really need to get in touch with."
She continued to look at me inquisitively. "Well there's only one Paul both of us know in La Push and there's only one reason I can think of for why you'd need to find him, but that can't be true because that would mean you had sex with La Push's resident man slut." Her tone was a little vexing.
If I wasn't sure before I'm sure now that we're talking about the same person. He spent the entire evening hitting on almost every girl even after we had sex. The label she used for him wasn't surprising; what was surprising was the tone she was using toward me as though his faults were somehow mine. She had been pretty accepting of everything up until this point I don't know why this was her last straw.
"Calm down. If he is who you think he is, why are you so mad at me?"
Bella quickly realized that she came off a little intense and her features softened again. "I'm sorry Ang. I'm not's mad at you its-"
"Angela Weber" The nurse interrupted whatever she was about to say. I wanted her to finish, but she just gestured for me to go with the nurse.
"We'll talk about it when you're done."
"You better." I told her pointedly.
The nurse ushered me to the scale and asked for my height. Once finished she look me to the exam room where took my vitals and then the questions started and my comfort level plummeted.
"When was the first day of your last period?"
"Um…March 2nd"
"Okay" she said in a nonchalant voice as though I that wasn't two months ago and continued to write down what I saying. "Are you allergic to any medications?"
"No."
"Are you currently taking any medications?"
"No."
"Are you sexually active?"
"Yes?" It felt weird saying yes to that because it was only the once.
"How often do you exercise?"
"Um…only in PE which means I guess once a day."
"And what is the purpose of this visit?"
"Um…I think I'm pregnant."
She finished writing in the chart and got up. "Okay the doctor will be in with you shortly." Was all she said before she left. It felt kind of weird that the first person I actually said the words I'm pregnant to someone who couldn't care less.
The nurse was wrong about the doctor being in shortly which isn't news to me. The doctor didn't come in until about a half an hour later.
"Sorry for the wait Ms. Weber." She said as she rubbed was I assume was hand sanitizer on her hands.
"It's fine."
"Alright why don't we get started? According to your chart you're here for a pregnancy test. Is that correct?"
I just nodded my head in response.
"Okay I'm going to ask you a few questions and then we'll get a sample for the test." She was speaking in a soft reassuring voice. I was still scared, but the clearly non-judgmental tone in her voice was helpful.
"Alright so according to your answers on the questionnaire it's more than likely you are pregnant. You said you took a home pregnancy test and it was positive?" I nodded my head again. "So how those tests work is they detect a hormone called HCG and if the levels are high enough the test will detect them. If the test gave a false reading it's more likely due to false negatives than positives. The one we'll do today will be very similar, but it's likely to give you the same result. Do you still want to do the test?"
I nodded my head again. "I want to be a hundred percent sure."
"Alright, so it also says that you weren't having unprotected sex, but I want to screen you for STD anyways, do you have any objections?"
I shook my head no. I felt better knowing Paul hadn't unknowingly passed more than a baby to me.
"Okay that's going to involve a pap smear and some blood work, but first we'll get a urine sample and perform the pregnancy test." Everything was moving a little fast, but I understood that she had more patients after me so she need to get everything done as fast as possible. She handed me a sample cup and directed me towards the bathroom.
When I was done I gave the cup directly to her and she took the top off with her gloved hands and put what looked like a white strip of paper in it and it turned pink on the spot. She looked up at me with a sympathetic smile and that told me all I need to know about the results. "It's positive."
I nodded my head with tears filling my eyes. I kept them at bay because I still had more of this doctor's appointment to go through and we can't stop every time I get emotional.
The doctor took her gloves off and went towards a cabinet and took something cloth out. "I'm going to give you some privacy. Take all of your clothes off and put this on, even your underwear. A nurse is going to come in with a tray and I'll be back shortly after." I should probably be annoyed that sh was explaining everything step by step, but it was helpful to know exactly what was going on.
I did exactly as I was asked and wore the thin gown that was a little too drafty for my taste. And after a 20 minute wait I was in the retractable stir-ups with my butt nearly falling out of the chair and a very cold and uncomfortable device inside me. When she finally done I couldn't have been more thankful for it finally be over. "Alright we're done here. Once you get dressed you can take this form and take it to the labs to get you blood drawn. We'll call you when the results are in which should be within seven days. Do you have any questions before I leave? "
"Umm?" I did have one question, but I didn't know how to ask it without feeling stupid. I decided to suck it up and ask anyway. It's not like I would probably be seeing her past this appointment. "How did this happen. I mean…I know how it happened. It's just we used…he used-"
"How did his happen even though you used a condom?" She gave me a knowing look as she finished my question for me.
"Yeah, I mean we were safe." I couldn't look her in the eye as I spoke.
She smiled at me before answering. "Well no method beyond abstinence is a hundred percent safe, but it decreases your odds significantly. You could simply be one of those unlucky people in the three percent, or the condom wasn't put on properly or it could have simply broken. No matter the reason there's no way to know definitively and at the end of the day you're still pregnant, so let's not focus on the how and focus on what's ahead of you and making the best decision for yourself."
I nodded in agreement. She was right. I can't drive myself insane with something I can't change and focus on things I can.
"Oh before I forget, here are some pamphlets with information about your options. Are you planning on proceeding with this pregnancy?"
"I think so?"
"Well I'm going to write you a prescription for prenatal vitamins anyways. You should start taking them immediately. Have you told your parents yet?"
I shook my head no.
"I didn't think so. Well I suggest you tell them soon. It'll make making a decision easier on you once you know where they stand."
"I know, it's just hard. I can see the disappointment on their faces already."
"The big things in life never are easy. If you any questions about today's exam or anything medical related feel free to call." And with that she gave me the lab form and left.
I met Bella in the waiting room when I was done getting my blood drawn. She looked bored out of her mind which I couldn't really blame her for. We'd been her for over two and a half hours an she spent it all in the waiting room.
I approach her with a timid smile. She looks up at me coming out of her sleepy fog. "So, what's the verdict?"
"I'm definitely pregnant, even got a prescription to confirm it." My attempt at humor fell flat, but she didn't say anything anyways. She just gave me a weak smile and stood up.
"Let's go get some lunch."
"Yeah, I'm starving; I haven't eaten anything all day. Where do you want to go?" I was happy for the subject change and plus I was actually hungry. I hadn't been eating much lately to avoid any more incidents at school and I really didn't want one at the doctors.
"Let's go to that Italian place we went to when we went shopping for our homecoming dresses. You know the only good thing from that experience."
"Shopping with Jessica was not that bad, but it sounds good to me."
"Not that bad, we were shopping for over three hours in one store. Who needs to try on that many dresses?"
For the first time today I genuinely laughed. Bella didn't express her strong opinions on much, but when she did it was always entertaining.
When we were already seated and the waitress had taken our orders, I finally asked about Paul again. "Bella, why did you get so mad earlier?"
She looked really sheepish before she answered. "I wasn't really angry just shocked. I've met him like once and from what I remember of him he wasn't really someone you'd talk to let alone sleep with."
"Why would you say that?" I was really curious. Sure he was a little too friendly with girls, but he wasn't vulgar or anything.
She let out a sigh before speaking. "He was just really rude to me and Jake. Well, mainly Jake, he kind of just ignored me, but Jake was really affected by what he said and I know you don't know him, but it takes a lot for someone to do that. Plus all of the stories on the rez about him; he's got a different girl like every other day and he's got some serious anger issues. That's just not someone I pictured you with. I'm sorry if I came off a little abrasive earlier. I know this is about so much more than you having sex with Paul Lahote." Lahote. So that was his last name. She had a timid smile on her face unsure if I'd forgive her.
"I forgive you Bella." I gave her a reassuring smile to communicate that I meant it. She may have been abrasive, but it was coming from a place of sympathy. "So, does that mean Jake knows where he lives?" I was looking at her with hopeful eyes.
"Yeah, if not he should know where you can find him. Why don't you come down to La Push with me tomorrow and you can talk to him yourself."
"Sure, I mean he won't mind will he. I'd be intruding on your guy's time together." I didn't want my problems to leak into her life.
"No he won't mind and plus I'd really love for you guys meet." She sounded a little nervous to admit that last part
"Okay then it's decided. I'm going to La Push with you tomorrow." And I would finally know how to get in touch with the father of my baby. God, that sounded terrible.
A/N: I seem to be having a lot of inspiration for this fic, so my next update will probably be sooner that expected.