Authors: Alice Dee
Hope stopped in her tracks and turned around, following the nurse back into the room where her doctor wasn’t.
“She’ll be right back.” The medical assistant stepped out of the room while Hope read a text from Shamayla. Hope responded with
“I woke up in the middle of the night and caught him praying.” Hope smiled in retrospect. Her doctor walked into the room so Hope dropped her phone into her purse.
She lowered her reading glasses when Hope stepped back in.
“Hi again Miss Flores. I totally overlooked this.” The doc smiled but didn’t say anything more.
“Over looked what?”
“We found HCG in your urine.”
Hope didn’t seem to understand what the doctor was saying, may as well be speaking German. She stared at the doctor’s dirty blonde hair and the lines around her eyes and mouth. Maybe she said THC?
“You’re pregnant. Surprise!” The doctor smiled. “When was your last period?” She held a laminated paper wheel with dates in her hands.
“Dominic,” Hope said under her breath, adrenaline surging through her.
“This is good news right?” The doctor held her brows up at Hope.
Hope turned around and walked out, stepping on her own foot. Both her doctor and the medical assistant tried to stop her with words but Hope couldn’t hear anything. She was calculating days and weeks in her head, fear bleeding through her body. Her period hadn’t come in almost two months but she hoped she was only skipping one, that it would come any day now. This hit her like a bag of bricks and she couldn’t catch her breath. She could see the exit doors glowing at the end of the dark hall and motionlessly walked through them.
Shane was sitting on the hood of his car in the parking lot, squinting in white sunlight. He pulled his lips into a smile that melted her heart but for her, there was nothing to smile about. Her phone vibrated against her rib. She stopped in her tracks and reached in her purse, just to buy time.
“I love you” displayed across her screen in a text box from Dominic. She felt shades of strange, levels of elevation when she saw those words associated with Dominic’s name. Two seconds later another followed, refreshing her screen with “I want to tell you in person but you won’t take my calls… please see me”.
Suddenly the sun was intense and hot, the world folding in on her. She was flustered from the inside out and felt like she might lose consciousness. If hearts were made of glass hers would be mosaic. Dominic and Shane would have their equal sweeps of the bits but that would only happen in a perfect world. Life is far from perfect, ever. Hope hated that she’d been indulging in love like it was a giant cocktail. But love is a giant cocktail; a cocktail bomb just waiting to blow up in your face.
She looked from those three words in her phone to Shane’s smiling eyes. No matter where we sign off in life, it’s far from over.
Table of Contents