My Remedy (Open Door Love Story Book 3) (12 page)

Aunt Nina screws up her mouth. “No fever. Are you achy? Have the chills?”

I shake my head no, the motion making my stomach sour. I jump out of bed, seeing stars, and run to the bathroom. After my gut makes sure there really is nothing left in it, I sit back against the wall, trying to keep the world from spinning.

Aunt Nina pokes her head around the bathroom door, worry coloring her expression. “I’ve made an appointment for you at the urgent care in fifteen minutes.” She sets a clean pair of sweats, some underwear and a bra, and a t-shirt on the vanity and drops my slippers onto the floor. “I’ll drive you. Grab a handful of bags from under the sink for the car ride.”

~

I
shuffle into the doctor’s office to check in while Aunt Nina parks the car. On top of being on the verge of dry heaving, I feel like I could sleep for exactly one million years. I am truly exhausted. Whatever I’ve got isn’t the flu – at least no flu I’ve ever encountered.

Since I have an appointment, the nurse calls me back before I even have a chance to take a seat in the waiting room. She gestures for me to stand on the scale. I step onto it and immediately look off to the left. I care less about my body if I don’t know what that number is, but then she fiddles with the weights, sliding them back and forth and I have to look. 157.

“What?” I ask. “How is that possible? I’ve gained almost twelve pounds and I still fit in all of my clothes.”

She looks me up and down and shrugs. “Must be all your muscles.” She laughs. “You’re ripped.”

I don’t feel ripped, I feel like a freak of nature. Like a sloth and a gorilla had a baby.

We go into the exam room and she takes my blood pressure, which is a little low and explains all the light headedness. My temperature is normal, my lungs sound clear.

“Date of your last period?” she asks.

“I’m not completely sure, but it is late,” I confess. “I think I might have overexercised it out of existence.”

She nods and types it into her tablet. “Okay. Do you have any reason to believe you might be pregnant?”

I shake my head no, but then stop. “There is a very slim chance that’s what’s going on here.”

She nods again and then gives me a reassuring smile. “Okay, just to rule it out, why don’t we have you take a test.” The nurse goes over to the sink area and opens one of the cabinet doors and takes out a pregnancy test – like the kind you buy at the grocery store. She hands it to me. “This is cheaper for you than doing a blood test and we’ll get results faster. If it’s inconclusive, we’ll do ours. Just follow the directions. The bathroom is back down the hall by the scale.”

I hold the box close to me, trying to cover it up with my forearm, strangely feeling like I’m doing a walk of shame.

I get into the bathroom, take the test out of the box, check the directions to make sure they’re really just as simple as “pee on the stick,” which they are, and after having to talk my bladder into cooperation, I get it over with.

Unsure of whether I’m supposed to hang out in the bathroom waiting for the results or deliver the thing back to the exam room, I take out my phone and set the timer, figuring if someone needs me out of here they’ll let me know.

A text from Duncan appears.

Hey. :( Sorry you’re sick! I’ll get all your chores done for you and be waiting to kiss you when you get back.

Idiot
, I type back,
what if I give you the plague?

It will be worth it! I’m dying to touch you, now that you’re not off limits anymore.

<3

<3 you too!

After four more minutes of excruciating waiting, the timer finally goes off. I tentatively pick up the stick and look in the little window.

Big, fat plus sign, not even a little hint of minus.

Fuck. Who knew loser boy would have super-hero sperm?

I take the test back to the empty exam room and sit on the table waiting for the nurse to come back.

She breezes in a few minutes later and her face falls the instant she looks at me. “Is it positive?”

I hand it over and she tosses it into the medical waste container. “I’ll let the doc know about this development and she’ll be right in, okay honey?”

I shrug. “Is there a point to seeing her now?” I ask. “I mean, I have morning sickness, right?”

“Yes, but you might want to talk about your options?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Like I really have any.

~

I
walk out into the waiting room, holding the three pamphlets the doctor has given me. Aunt Nina glances at them and then at my face, my bottom lip trembling, on the verge of breaking down, and she hops up out of her chair, puts her arm around my shoulder, and guides me out the door.

I make it into the car and put my seat belt on before I let the tears loose.

Aunt Nina takes the pamphlets from my hand. She looks through them quickly and nods. “I’m glad to see they covered everything.” She turns the car on and the radio down. “Do you have any idea what you’d like to do? Are you going to consult Duncan first?”

I lean my head back against the seat and swipe my arm across my runny nose. “It’s not his. We just had sex for the first time yesterday.”

My aunt nods again. “Well, that’s good actually, because he’s the type who will ask you to marry him.” She looks at me sidelong. “Just like your dad was.”

I slump down into my seat and put my knees up on the dash. “You went through this with Mom, too?”

She signs. “Yep. Only, she obviously decided to keep you and marry your dad.” Aunt Nina bites her lip. “I’m going to suggest you don’t do what she did ... and it’s because I love you, Izzy, not because I wish that’s what your mom had done. I supported her back then and I’ll support you now, in whatever you decide, but I do have the benefit of hindsight ... and you are so very much like your mom...”

I look out the window at this stupid town. I don’t know why my dad thought Beaverton would be a better place for me. I’m still me and I’m still fucking up everything. I know Aunt Nina is trying not to hurt my feelings and I can see her point. My mom did abandon me, after all. And I do probably love Duncan more than any guy I’ve ever been with because he is the most like my dad. Because he is a safe bet.

I want a drink so bad. I want to escape this horrible decision. If I drink enough, maybe my body will make the decision for me?

I shake my head to rid it of that awful thought. “I can’t be anyone’s mother,” I say finally.

Aunt Nina nods in agreement. “Okay. I’ll make an appointment for you.”

Reaching for one of the plastic bags on the floor, I get it open quickly and throw up.

––––––––

D
uncan comes out to greet us, concern in his eyes, and helps me out of the car. I try to hide the barf bag behind me so as not to majorly gross him out.

Instead, he takes it from me, jogs over to the garbage can around the side of the garage, throws it away, and is back before I can become fully mortified.

Yeah, I can’t tell him. He’s too good for me and I don’t want him to work at convincing me not to abort ... because he probably could. I’m just going to have the fake flu, get the procedure done, and then tell him I’m on my period when he wants to get frisky.

Duncan sweeps me up in his arms like I weigh nothing and closes the car door with his foot.

“Whoa,” I say, letting him carry me. I am so, so tired. I rest my head against his chest and concentrate on listening for his heartbeat to distract me from wanting to hurl.

He takes me into the house through the front door and walks down the hall, pausing outside of my bedroom. “Do you want to go to bed or be in the den to watch TV?”

“Bed. Please,” I whisper, my dry mouth suddenly filling up with saliva. “Oh, man, I’m going to—” I clamp my mouth shut. There is nothing left in my stomach to come out, but I can’t risk it.

“Bathroom it is,” Duncan says, hurrying me to it.

He nudges the door open with his knee and sets me down gingerly on the bathmat. My nausea subsides. How do women deal with this shit for nine months? How do they get anything done?

Aunt Nina is right behind us with a plastic cup full of ginger ale and some saltines. She sets them on the vanity and then rushes off.

I lie down on the mat and curl up onto my side. Duncan takes a towel from the bar, folds it into quarters, and tucks it under my head. He kneels next to me and strokes my hair.

“So, are you dying or what?” he asks, a hint of playfulness in his voice.

“No, it only feels like it,” I mutter. “Can you give me that drink?” I flop my hand up, waving it in the general direction of the ginger ale.

“I’ll get it,” Aunt Nina says, appearing in the doorway holding the comforter from my bed. She drapes it over me and then sets the cup in front of me on the floor. “Go easy, don’t gulp.” She watches me as I take the tiniest sip, enough to wet my mouth, before she seems satisfied that I’m paying attention to what she’s saying. “I’m going to go make a phone call and then get your chores done, holler if you need me.”

I wish I could get a sense of what Aunt Nina thinks I should do in this situation. I mean, I know how she feels about me being pregnant and all that, but I can’t gauge if she’s leaving me alone with Duncan so I can tell him the bad news or if it sketches her out to hear me lie to him and she doesn’t want any part of it.

Duncan brushes his fingertips along the length of my arm from elbow to shoulder, then along my collar bone, down to my breast. He tweaks my nipple and it hurts like hell.

“Hey!” I swat his hand away.

He grimaces. “Sorry! You did say you weren’t dying, though.”

“Which means you can grope me?” I narrow my eyes at him, but then decide they want to close completely.

“No. It’s just that when you were feeling bad yesterday, you rallied when it was time to, y’know, so I was testing the waters.”

“The waters would like you to refrain from any sexytime attempts. On top of this flu, I’m about to get my period and my boobs are killing me.”

“They’re killing me too, babe.”

I strike out into the darkness and punch thigh. “Ugh. You really are related to Hector. Never call me babe again.”

“Okay, okay. No boobs, no babe, no nothing. I’m going to go help Nina with your work. Want anything before I leave? A book or something?”

“I don’t think I can focus on a book right now, but I can probably scroll through Instagram and heart things,” I say. “Can you get my phone from the car?”

“On it.” Duncan hops up, and I pull my blanket over my head into cave formation awaiting his swift return. Things are gonna turn out okay. I just have to make it through a few more days.

~

I
wake up, my mouth dry as a bone, but my upper lip coated in sweat, still buried underneath my comforter, still lying on the bathroom floor. It’s dark.

I throw the comforter off my head, and it’s not quite as dark, but it definitely isn’t daytime or even late afternoon anymore. Feeling around in front of me, my hand first lights on the cup of ginger ale. I drink the flat liquid, smiling to myself over my wild gulping abandon. Setting the cup down, my fingers search for my phone in the darkness, the irony being that it would be a lot easier for me to find my phone if I had the flashlight on my phone to help me see. I’m positive it’s here. Duncan will have looked for it until he found it, and put it within my reach.

After pawing around for a few more seconds, I find my phone and wake it. 8:46 pm! I’d been asleep for nearly twelve hours. On the freaking floor of the bathroom. Keepin’ it classy, as always Iz.

I notice something in front of me, propped up against the cabinet doors. Three pamphlets. One on prenatal care. One on adoption. One on abortion. Scrawled in hurried writing on the last pamphlet it says, “Call me when you wake up – Duncan.”

The phone slips out of my hand and I leave it where it falls. I crawl over to the wall and reach up to flip on the light. A sob attacks me, stealing my breath. I get onto my knees and stare at myself in the mirror over the vanity. Who is this weak girl? Her face, red and contorted with pain. Snot running from her nose, her mouth open in a silent scream. She should be ashamed of herself, carrying on like this. Worthless piece of shit. Always bringing trouble on herself and hurting everyone she cares about.

“Fuck you,” I mouth at my image, wanting to slap the pathetic person in the mirror.

A knock comes at the door.

“What?” I manage to squeak out in a relatively normal voice.

“I’ve been waiting for the light to turn on,” Aunt Nina says.

“We didn’t want to wake you,” adds Uncle Stan.

I slump down and rest my head against the door. “Okay. I’m awake.”

“Honey,” Aunt Nina says, like she’s trying the word out, “I was able to get you the last appointment at Planned Parenthood at nine tomorrow. They had a cancellation.”

I wonder about this other woman who cancelled. Was she scared? Or did she change her mind? Did she have someone who supported her in whatever she chose, or someone who gave her an ultimatum? Maybe she just couldn’t get a ride and needed to come another day.

If I don’t talk to Duncan ... if we don’t speak to one another, then he can’t help me change my mind and I can get through this, I can get over this, I can deny this, and get on with my life.

“How did Duncan seem?” I ask, sliding my hand up the door and turning the knob. I open it a crack. “He found the pamphlets.”

My aunt and uncle are sitting on the floor in the hallway. Aunt Nina gives me a sad smile and shakes her head no.

“He ... wasn’t angry,” Uncle Stan explains. “But he did get the hell out of here in a hurry.”

“Are you going to call him? I wouldn’t. Not yet,” Aunt Nina says. “I don’t know what good it would do.”

I nod. “No, me either.

“Can I get you anything?” Aunt Nina asks. “You can eat and drink until nine tonight. Then nothing in your belly until after the procedure.”

I reach over and grab the plastic cup and get to my feet. Aunt Nina reaches for the cup, but I pull it to my chest.

“I can get it myself.”

~

M
y phone vibrates in my hand. I glance at the incoming text. I’ve graduated from the bathroom floor to my bed, but am fully awake and wishing I could just sleep the next ... it’s 3 am ... twelve hours away. I wish I could wake up and it would all be over. But that’s not what’s happening.