36 days:
I keep a grim tally for two weeks, marking down the days like a prisoner in a cell, trying not to think about the juxtaposition of a convict counting the days until freedom and me, counting down the days until I am condemned.
It's embarrassingly easy, for the first two days, to pretend it was something I ate.
The next twelve days are a lot harder. I have to scramble to find more than two excuses for vomiting half a dozen times a day, but I try them all on anyway. It's stress. Insomnia. An allergic reaction to some new plant I've never been exposed to before. For a solid 32-hour stretch I almost have myself convinced that the older I get the less tolerant my system is of shampoo.
After two weeks, when I catch myself concocting elaborate reasons for some unknown assailant poisoning me, I go to Haymitch.
I find him sitting peacefully in his backyard, one of the few remaining geese sitting in his lap. After fourteen years his flock has been diminished to a scant handful, and he has overcompensated with affection to the degree that half of them think that he's their mother and follow him everywhere, and the other half are terrified and won't go near him. The half that won't go near him flap their wings wildly at me when I wipe my mouth and head out of the trees, and for a brief second they make the kind of noise that I imagine a cat would make right before you boil it alive.
Not that I have ever imagined in great detail what that noise would sound like.
Haymitch hollers at his geese to shut up, and they are old enough and tired enough to listen as I collapse on the grass next to him and try to keep my eyes from following the wild flyaway progression of his gray hair. I've learned fast that it helps to keep my eyes on something steady; that a moving target inevitably leads to a rollicking stomach.
"You look green," Haymitch remarks finally after we sit in silence for several long moments. "Are you sick?"
I can't find it in me to answer, and he turns to look at me, those dark gray eyes sober, probing, invasive, and then he sighs and scratches his nose.
"I thought this might be coming," he remarks as mildly as if we were discussing the weather. "Have you told him yet?"
I muster up the energy to glare, but judging by the amusement that flickers across his face I have not mustered up quite enough. I try harder. He knows me too well to ask stupid questions like this.
"You need to tell him, sweetheart," he says reasonably. "Think of how happy it will make him."
I groan in response, unable for the moment to find something any wittier than "shut up."
"He'll be ecstatic," Haymitch rubs in as a brave beam of sunlight sneaks through the clouds, cocooning us a pocket of warmth, forming a kind of spotlight on his face. The sun traces the cruel lines that have marked his face with history, highlights every scar and burn and tear.
I drag in a deep breath and exhale through my nose. All of a sudden he looks inexpressibly old.
"Of course it will make him happy," I say sourly, trying vainly to hide my surprise at Haymitch in the unforgiving light. "Have you ever noticed that Peeta and I are rarely happy about the same things?"
"That's mostly because you're a grouch," Haymitch says patiently. "So what's the deal? You didn't plan on this?"
"He wanted this," I say grimly, now fighting the gorge that is creeping up my throat. "I said we could tr- try. Even though we all know something is going to happen to this… to this…"
I can't force the word out because it is suddenly hard to speak, and when I clap a hand over my mouth, Haymitch wrinkles his nose.
"If you have to barf, do it over there," he says. "I have a weak stomach."
I don't bother to respond to this, but jump up and sprint over to a clutch of bushes, steadfastly ignoring Haymitch behind me as he roars at me to stay away from his gladiolas.
When I'm finally done I crawl back to him on hands and knees, and the dewy grass is amazingly cool on my face when I push my cheek down against it, inhaling the clean scent of earth, the sweet scent of passing summer berries.
"You'll name the baby after me, right?" Haymitch asks after enough time has passed, and that just makes me push my face down deeper in the dirt.
"Don't use that word," I say into the grass. "I don't want to think about it like that yet. I can't think about it like that yet."
"You better get used to it," Haymitch says amiably. "It's not going anywhere."
"What's not going anywhere?" Peeta surprises us both, standing behind us with a streak of flour sketched in his hair. I raise my head from the ground, a tiny shower of dirt falling from my peppered cheek, and it makes the world spin sickeningly. Deciding to let Haymitch explain, I whimper a little and let my head fall back down.
"What did you do to her?" Peeta says accusingly, dropping down onto his good knee beside me. "Haymitch, she looks like a ghost. Is she sick?"
"I guess," Haymitch answers him unhelpfully, and Peeta shoots him a quick look before brushing the hair off of my forehead and pressing his wrist against the clammy skin. It reminds me of when I was little and my mom would sit beside me when I was sick, sing to me; when I would accept her comfort only until I had enough strength to push her away.
"Katniss?" Peeta says gently. "Can you make it home?"
"No," I tell the dirt. "Not right now."
He awkwardly maneuvers himself until he is sitting down on the ground next to me, and I lose myself in sensation: the rhythmic stroking of his fingers against my face, the muted wink of the tarnished ring on his finger, the smell of fresh rolls.
"Katniss," Haymitch says sternly from the other side of Peeta, and I dig my fingers into the grass for just a second, make myself count to three and then pull myself up until I am sitting half collapsed on Peeta's shoulder while he looks down on me with flickering confusion.
"Hey, real or not real?" I ask Peeta steadily, valiantly wishing that Haymitch would disappear, that I could disappear. "I'm pregnant."
Peeta's hand freezes on my cheek and when I look at him his eyes have glazed over, are the ice at the end of winter when it starts to melt and the water runs polluted with dirt. The color slowly drips from his face until he is as pale as I am, until our faces are twin clouds against Haymitch's surprisingly lush grass, and I begin to worry about him.
"Peeta." I wave a hand in front of his face and, despite my protesting stomach, push off of him and crawl until I am sitting in front of him. I grab his hands, one of which is still floating where my face used to be, and squeeze as hard as I can until he blinks once, twice, and his eyes focus on mine.
"Peeta," I say again, quietly. Ignoring Haymitch, I lean forward and press my mouth against Peeta's, smelling only good things: clean water, sugar, vanilla, rosemary. For the first time in two weeks my stomach calms, and I bring my hands up and press them gently against his cheeks, kissing him harder.
This is what I want to remember; this is what will get me through the months ahead.
When he looks down at me, still a little dazed, I have to steal back a grin at the tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes that mean he's smiling.
"Real?" he asks me. "Katniss, really? Real?"
I look at Haymitch, who is determinedly looking away from us, and for the first time I feel something else flutter open in my stomach, something that tickles like excitement and twists like regret.
"Yeah," I answer him, turning back to the eyes that are starting to gleam like sapphires. "Yeah, Peeta. Real."
Now the color floods into his face, staining roses onto his cheeks, and he grabs my arms and curls his fingers around my shoulders, resting his forehead on mine.
"I love you," he tells me. "I love you."
His intensity makes me laugh, hurts my abused stomach, but I let it come anyway, liking the feel of it in my mouth, liking the sparkle that is lighting up his face like sun on the surface of still water.
It lasts all of three seconds, until I glance over at Haymitch again and see him watching me thoughtfully, and it all hits me again: I have been careless enough to allow this baby to become a reality, knowing even as I do that someday someone is going to hurt this child because it's the easiest way to hurt me.
I swallow, hard, and force back on the smile that suddenly seems too large on my face. Just because the very idea of this baby hurts me doesn't mean it has to hurt Peeta.
"How do you feel?" he demands from me. "Are you miserable? What can I do? Do you want me to get you something? I don't even know what you'd want. Milk? Do you want milk? I can bake you something. Do you want a cheese bun?"
The laughter this brings feels slightly more natural, and I shake my head.
"Nothing," I tell him honestly. "I don't want anything. I am just going to lay here-"
I slip out of his grasp and stretch back out on the grass, feeling the small beads of dew wet the back of my shirt, and it feels like heaven.
"-and when the world stops spinning I will go home," I say, and Peeta laughs, almost glowing, and when I flick my eyes to look at Haymitch again he is smiling.
"I can't believe it," Peeta marvels. "I thought you just had a virus. I never thought – never let myself think-"
"Me either," I tell him, and he stretches out beside me, one of his hands hovering tentatively over my stomach. He looks at me questioningly, too-long hair falling over one side of his face, and I give him a tiny nod, bite the inside of my mouth when his fingers graze over aching skin.
"Katniss said you'd name the baby after me," Haymitch interrupts us. "Boy or girl. I told her I would graciously accept your offer."
I don't listen to Peeta's teasing retort, content myself with the soothing rhythm of his gentle fingers and let their voices play over my head: Peeta's increasing excitement, Haymitch's joviality carefully undercut with something I cannot quite place.
Haymitch is just launching into a family history that, he assures us, validates his claim that his many-times removed paternal namesake was the first man to ever discover white grain alcohol, when nausea rolls over me in a rush, a sudden clenching in my stomach that hits like a punch, and I suck in air with a hiss, stilling Peeta's fingers, a dip in between his eyes creasing in sympathy as he looks down at me.
"Is it awful?" he whispers.
"A baby named Haymitch?" I whisper back sickly. "Yes. Terrible."
"Well I just assumed," Haymitch says, "that as the only person around here you guys like-"
I don't hear the rest of his horrible lies as my throat seizes up and I have to make another mad dash for Haymitch's bushes. There is the low exchange of voices from behind me and then I hear Peeta's steady footsteps, feel my hair pulled back from my face and gathered in one gentle hand as the other rests on my back.
"Come on," he tells me quietly when I am finished. "Come on. I'll take you home."
I can't find the energy to do anything more than flap a hand at Haymitch, and Peeta stays silent beside me as his strong hands wrap around my arms, holding me against him, guiding my feet. He whispers soothing words in my ear that mean nothing, but his tone is as cool as a glass of water in the middle of summer, and he walks beside me, supports me, holds me tight and takes me home.