Laura looked at her intently. “Why do you ask that?” she demanded.
“Well ... you stopped drinking and smoking your pot,” she said. “That, coupled with the fact that you always seem to look ill in the mornings suggests that you might be.”
She sighed. “Elementary, Watson,” she grunted.
“Is it true?” Nerdly asked. “She suggested this to me last night, but I was more inclined to believe that you might be suffering from irritable bowel syndrome or perhaps an inflammatory bowel disorder such as Crohn’s disease.”
Laura raised her eyebrows. “You thought it more likely that I had a disease instead of being pregnant?” she asked.
“Naturally,” he said. “I am certain that Jake would have told me if he had conceived a child ... unless, of course, the child is not his and you have not informed him of its existence because of this. If that is the case, forget we asked.”
She shook her head. “The child is Jake’s,” she said. “We haven’t told anyone yet because we just found out ourselves.”
“I see,” Nerdly said. “And how did you diagnose the condition?”
“We’ve been trying to get me pregnant for a few months now,” she explained. “I haven’t taken my birth control pills since December. The other morning, I woke up and started vomiting so I peed on a stick and it came back positive. It was a faint positive but a positive nonetheless. There is a possibility that it is a false positive since I would be awfully early in the process at this point. I’m not even due for my period for another four days.”
“I beg to differ,” Nerdly said. “False negatives are quite common with home pregnancy tests, but false positives are almost unheard of. True, you are early in the process, but if you used the first morning urination for the test there likely would have been enough hCG in the sample for detection. Did you use the first morning urination for the sample?”
“Uh ... yeah,” she said, blushing. “I did.”
“Then it is likely that you really are pregnant. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, Bill,” she said. “And, just so you know, we’re keeping this close for now.”
“Understood,” Bill said.
But everyone else in the house picked up on it in the next forty-eight hours. And Pauline and Obie, who were staying at Obie’s house in Coos Bay for now, picked up on it when the four of them went out for dinner one night. Again, the illuminating factor was the fact that Laura was not drinking any wine with her steak.
“That’s badass,” Pauline declared when they confirmed the facts for her. “Tabby will have a little cousin! I just know they’ll grow up close to each other.”
“Probably,” Laura agreed, feeling a little overwhelmed by this point.
“You’ve got to tell Mom and Dad soon,” Pauline said. “They’ll be so happy to hear about this.”
“We’re going to wait until we get home and have confirmation that all is well before we start telling people,” Jake said. “You know? Just in case?”
“Oh ... right,” Pauline said. “I guess that makes sense.”
Over the next few weeks, Laura got more and more evidence that she was, in fact, knocked up. Every time she peed on a stick—and she did so with each morning urination for five days straight—it showed positive, the vertical bar showing a little more prominently with each successive test. And then her period did not come when she was expecting it. And then her breasts became tender and sore. And she continued to regularly barf in the mornings, though she usually felt better by the time breakfast was served, at which point her appetite would swell significantly and she would be watched with astonishment at the amount of food she was consuming.
“It looks like you got a little zygote in there all right,” Jake commented, though at this point in the game, it was no longer a zygote at all.
“Yep,” Laura agreed, growing happier with her condition by the day. “My little Ziggy.”
And that was what their name for it became. Pauline and Obie had called the fetal Tabitha ‘The Clump’ after their doctor told them she was a clump of rapidly replicating cells, and Jake and Laura called her little clump Ziggy. They would, naturally, come up with a more suitable name later.
Meanwhile, life went on. Laura kept in touch with her brother Joey in Pocatello, calling him at least once a week to catch up on things. As it turned out, he and his family had not been able to come to California for spring break because she and Jake were still up in Oregon working on the V-tach project and Jake did not feel they could take a week off over spring break because the project was behind schedule and they only had studio time until May 1. They made plans instead for the Best family to visit in the summer, when things would be far less hectic and they could stay for two weeks instead of only one. She did not tell her brother about her little passenger and, since he was not here to observe her non-wine habit, he was unable to deduce it on his own.
On April 18th, the first new cut from the Brainwash II CD began to hit the airways. It was called What’s In a Name? and it was one of Jim’s songs, a moderately toned alternative rock piece with some fairly profound lyrics. It was not the best cut on the CD, but it was the best of Jim’s and Jake had directed it to be promoted first so it could be followed up with one of Marcie’s tunes and then one of Steph’s. The listeners seemed to like the tune well enough. It got a lot of requests and was soon being played regularly from coast to coast throughout each day on alternative rock and pop stations, though the hard rocks tended to ignore it. Jake liked the song well enough, but every time he heard it he could not help but think what it might have been had he just been there to help shape it in the early stages of the recording progress.
Oh well, he thought at such times. I made my choice to concentrate on the TSF and now I have to live with the consequences.
On April 27th, the mixing and the mastering of the V-tach CD (simply titled V-tach) was finally complete to everyone but the Nerdlys’ satisfaction (they felt that if they could just have a few more days to tweak a few more levels, they could nail it down to perfection). Copies were made and distributed to the band members and those involved in the studio portion. A box of copies were given to Jake for distribution to the Aristocrat suits primarily, but to other record companies if Aristocrat used their option to pass on the project if they did not feel it would sell. Jake was pretty certain they would not pass on the option. The boys had put out some good solid tunes and they had mixed and mastered them quite well.
Celia got back in her car for the two-day drive home (she planned to overnight in the Heritage area and then continue on the next morning). The members of V-tach were flown home on a chartered Gulfstream that KVA Records paid for. The Nerdlys, Jake, Laura, and little Ziggy all climbed into Jake’s plane and left Coos Bay behind until the next time.
No one was sure exactly when that might be.
On May the 5th, Cinco de Mayo, Laura and Jake arrived at the office of her gynecologist, Dr. Vargo, in Granada Hills just before 10:00 AM. She had had blood work drawn the previous day and they were here to go over it and receive their official confirmation that Laura was pregnant, although at this point there was no longer any doubt in their minds. She still had not had her period, her breasts were now getting larger as well as sorer, and she had begun to have strange food cravings—watermelon and other melons chief among them, fruits that she had never really cared for much before.
“He’s not going to stick his hand up in there, is he?” Jake asked as they entered the modern office building.