Jake and Laura had plans to celebrate the conclusion of her latest trip around the sun. They were going to take the day off from the studio—it was Friday, after all, and they would not be missed much—and fly to Portland. Once there, they would have breakfast in the little café by the river they had dined in on their first trip there, visit the music store that had been their business that day (Jake would likely buy a new guitar since it was rude to just drop into a music store and not buy something, right?) and then have some dinner and stay in a suite in one of the downtown hotels where she could be as loud as she wanted when they fucked. Laura had gone to bed the night before quite looking forward to the trip.
But now, as she opened her eyes at 8:35 AM, she knew that something was not right. She was naked in the bed, smelled of sex, and had a little bit of a headache from the wine she had drank the night before. Jake was equally naked, equally smelly, and still sound asleep next to her. All of that was normal. What was not normal was that she was nauseous. And not just lightly nauseous, but extremely nauseous. And the smell of them—a smell she usually found associatively pleasant—was making the nausea worse by the moment. In fact, it felt like she was about to...
A second later she was scrambling out of the bed, fighting desperately with the covers which seemed to be doing their best to confine her. She finally managed to free herself and made a mad rush for the bathroom, barely able to take up position in front of the toilet before she started retching violently into it. A good portion of last night’s dinner came up, as did a good amount of bile that smelled of chardonnay.
All of the commotion had awakened Jake. He was now standing in the doorway behind her, looking at her with concern. “Are you okay?” he asked gently during a pause between retches.
“I don’t know,” she breathed. “I just woke up and was sick to my stomach. It came out of nowhere.”
“Hmm,” he said. “You didn’t drink that much wine last night. No more than you usually do.”
“I know,” she said, breathing heavily, feeling sweat forming on her skin. “It’s weird. Maybe it’s food poisoning or something.”
“You ate the same thing everyone else ate,” Jake said. “I don’t feel the least bit sick.”
She had another round of retching. This one was mostly dry heaves. And then, just like that, she began to feel better. Not all the way better, but a definite improvement. She slowly stood up and flushed the toilet. She then went to the sink and turned on the tap. She really needed to pee, but she wanted to brush her teeth first and get the taste of vomit out of her mouth.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Jake said. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Okay,” she said.
She rinsed her mouth out and then picked up her toothbrush and squirted a dollop of toothpaste on it. She started to brush listlessly, still feeling quite sour in the stomach. What a bummer to get sick on my birthday, she thought. What exactly did I come down with? One of those stomach flu bugs that goes around? But don’t you normally have diarrhea with that too? It seemed like that was part of the deal, but maybe this was some new strain of it.
Her bladder cried out insistently to her and she picked up the pace. She really needed to pee in a bad way. Just as she finished rinsing her mouth out, Jake reappeared, a strange expression on his face.
“What?” she asked, sitting her naked butt down on the toilet.
“Don’t do that yet,” he told her.
“What? Why not?”
“Something just occurred to me,” he said. “You just got sick out of nowhere.”
“Yeah,” she said sourly. “I’m aware of that.”
“You got sick in the morning,” he said. “As in morning sickness.”
She looked up at him and then shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s too early. I’m not even due for my period for another week or so.”
“But you’re past the fertile period for this cycle, right?”
“Well ... yeah ... that’s true, but...”
“Just pee on one of the sticks,” he told her, referring to the box of home pregnancy tests they had brought with them from home, assuming that she would need to test herself multiple times.
She wanted to argue the point but figured the path of least resistance was just to do what he asked. “All right,” she said. “Give me one. But hurry! I really need to go.”
He quickly got into the drawer in the vanity where they were stored. He took one out of the boxes, tore open the packaging, and took the little cylindrical device out. He walked it over and handed it to her. She shuffled around a bit, opening her legs wider so she had a clear shot. Jake watched her as she started to pee. She held the little round hole at the end of the cylinder in the stream for a second, getting urine all over her hands but accomplishing the task of collecting the sample. She then set the thing down on the counter while she finished her business. Jake stopped looking at her vagina and looked at the little cylinder instead. There was a viewing window in the middle of it that was about a half centimeter square. A negative sign meant no (or at least there was not enough human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, in her pee to be detected) and a positive sign meant yes.
“How long does it take?” Jake asked her. She had already done this several times before, but this was his first witness of the procedure.
“Two minutes,” she said, wiping with a wad of toilet paper. “Watch out. I need to wash my hands.”
She went to the sink and washed up. Jake continued to stare at the little window. The minus sign had come up pretty quickly, but the vertical portion remained blank. And then ... slowly, faintly, it began to fill in. It was not dramatic. It was not very prominent. But it was there. There was no mistaking it for a false reading.
“Well now,” Laura said. She was staring at it now as well.
“Yep,” Jake said. He turned and gave her a big kiss on the mouth.
They kept the news to themselves for now, mostly because they were not entirely sure the test was accurate. But it was only a matter of forty-eight hours before everyone noticed that Laura was no longer drinking wine, no longer smoking her pot, and seemed to be kind of sickly at times, particularly in the morning. Celia was the first to guess, since she already knew they were trying.
“Did he knock you up?” she whispered as they worked on the dinner dishes two nights later.
“Yeah,” she whispered back with a smile. “It looks like it.”
“Oh my God!” Celia cried. “That’s so exciting, Teach!”
“Jesus, Celia,” Laura said grumpily. “Why don’t you yell it a little louder? I don’t think the neighbors in the house down the street were quite able to hear you.”
“I’m sorry,” Celia said. “I’m just so happy for you.”
“Thanks,” Laura said. “But we’re pretty early in the process. The test might be a false positive. And even if it’s not, the first six weeks are ... you know ... the most likely for something to go wrong. I really don’t want to start getting attached to the little zygote until we know for sure that there really is one and that it’s going to be hanging around.”
“Understood,” Celia said solemnly. “Mum is the word for now.”
But, of course, it was just too out of character for Laura not to have her wine or her evening tokes on the pipe, so it wasn’t long until other people began to suspect what was going on as well. Sharon was the next one to draw the conclusion.
“Are you pregnant?” she asked bluntly as she, Nerdly and Laura manned the soundboard one morning while they cued up one of the tracks for primary mixing.