I sleep like shit that night. My stomach stays tied up in knots and my head is even worse than that. Hours tick by like molasses.
The problem is that, somewhere along the line, I’ve started to want this baby.
It goes against all sense and all reason, but the heart wants what it wants, you know? Try talking it out of that. I’ve never had any luck on that front.
So when the gray dreariness of dawn finally sneaks through the curtains, I get out of bed and creep back into the bathroom.
I squat and pee, just because I need to see it one more time before I can start to figure out what to say to Vince.
Now, the pregnancy test I bought yesterday sits on the bathroom counter—sleek, clinical, impersonal. The harbinger of fate disguised as a plastic stick.
Three minutes until my life gets rocked yet again. They go by insanely slow.
I remember Anastasia’s words from yesterday: “The difference between fantasy and reality is simply a matter of how badly you want it—and what you’re willing to sacrifice to make it happen.”
The truth is, I want it. Despite the danger, despite the complication, despite the absolute fucking insanity of bringing another child into our blood-soaked world… I want to feel life growing inside me again.
My phone timer chimes.
I pick up the test. And…
One line.
One.
Fucking.
Line.
I’m not pregnant.
I blink, certain I’ve misread it. I hold it up to the light, tilt it, shake it, as if the laws of chemistry are just gonna laugh and say, Gotcha!
But the result remains stubbornly, infuriatingly singular.
One line.
Yesterday’s test was wrong. A false positive. A cruel joke played by a universe that seems to delight in my suffering.
“No,” I whisper to the empty bathroom. “This can’t be right.”
But it is right. I know it is. The first response was the anomaly—stressed bodies do strange things, and pregnancy tests can be fallible. This is reality crashing back in, crushing my fragile hope under its heel and cackling at my fledgling hope.
The most fucked-up part? I’m devastated.
I do it again and again. Three more tests until I empty the package.
One line.
One line.
One line.
I sink to the cold tile floor, tests clutched in my white-knuckled grip like the most fucked-up bouquet there ever was. Twenty-four hours ago, I was terrified at the prospect of another pregnancy. Now, I’m mourning its absence like a death.
A laugh bubbles up from my chest—bitter, jagged, bordering on hysterical.
What kind of monster am I? What kind of woman mourns a pregnancy that never was, when she already has a beautiful child sleeping safely in the next room? When that same woman was paralyzed with fear at the possibility just yesterday?
The kind of woman who loves a monster, perhaps.
The kind who’s becoming one herself.
