Positively Mine (2 page)

She continues to do this for a few minutes, pressing into my belly firmly while staring at the monitor. Finally, she stops moving the thing around and begins pushing hard in one spot.
I thought she said this wouldn’t hur
t? Then she hits the keyboard, lifts the probe off, and types something into the computer.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Everything is fine. The ultrasound has just confirmed that you are indeed seven weeks pregnant.”

“So you, um, could see the baby?”

“Well, it is still an embryo.”

I bite my lip. “Can I see?”

“We recommend first considering what you want to do. If you decide to continue with the pregnancy, then we can do another ultrasound. You can listen to the heartbeat. We’ll even print up a picture if you like. But first you need to decide.”

I shake my head. “I want to see it now.”

Karen hesitates, but then turns the monitor so it faces me. She sticks the probe back to the same spot and presses again. At first it’s just a dark grey cone on the screen, but then something appears that looks like a lima bean.

“There,” Karen says.

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s so tiny.”

“According to the computer, it’s 1.24 centimeters. So about half an inch.”

“What is it – um – doing?” I ask this realizing as it comes out of my mouth how stupid the question sounds.

“Well, it’s doing what it’s going to continue to do. It’s growing,” Karen answers.

I absorb her words for a moment, and the pins and needles sensation returns.
Growing inside of me.

My neck, back and shoulders tense up.

“And you can hear the heartbeat already?”

“Possibly.”

“Can I hear it?”

“We don’t advise it until you know what you are planning to do.”

What she is saying makes sense. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but something inside me won’t let me walk away without listening first.

“I want to hear it.”

She re-adjusts her glasses. “Okay.” Then, she presses into my belly again, waits for the bean to appear and turns up the volume. Suddenly there’s this muffled, superfast heartbeat filling the room. “We don’t always hear it so early without a Doppler,” she offers. “It’s strong.”

“It’s so quick.”

“149 beats per minute.”

“Is it supposed to be that fast?”

“Yes. It’s perfect.”

Perfect.
Nothing about me has ever been perfect, so of course I have a perfect embryo. I close my eyes and listen. Then without warning, Karen removes the probe, and the beating stops. She tugs at the paper sheet, which at this point is pretty much hanging off me exposing everything anyway, and wipes away the gel.

“Get dressed, and meet me in the office so we can talk.” She turns on the light and pulls the ultrasound cart out with her.

I’m left lying on the table, staring at the holes in the ceiling, and I have only one thought going through my head.
What have I done?

I leave the clinic, numb, with a manila envelope stuffed to the brim with pamphlets that explain in detail all my options. According Karen, if I choose an abortion I should schedule it right away so that I can do it by taking a pill instead of having a medical procedure. You can only take it up until nine weeks of pregnancy, she explained. Her business card is crushed in my hand, damp from my sweaty palm, in case I have any questions. She’s also given me a bunch of horse-sized prenatal vitamin samples and a questionnaire that is supposed to help me come to a decision. A decision about if I should have a baby or not. A fucking baby! How could I let this happen?

I somehow manage to pedal my way back to the dorm, my body disconnected from my mind. I leave my bike, unchained, at the rack outside the front door and am jolted back to consciousness as I head inside and see all the activity going on in the main lounge. Half the dorm is here. Four guys who live on the first floor are pushing furniture out of the center of the room and into the corners. Rita, the dorm RA, and June, a shy girl who lives right across from me, are setting out chips and pretzels. Mike McDonough, the one guy who I’ve actually had more than a few conversations with, is playing around with his iPod and some speakers. Olivia and Mikayla, also from my floor, are struggling with a helium balloon machine as Tom and Owen are unfolding tables.

For Miller, this amount of activity is unusual. I deliberately picked the only freshman dorm on campus made up of all single rooms. To quote the brochure, “One of the quieter places to live on campus.” Although I’ve never considered myself anti-social, coming from New York City, I’ve learned to relish the rare opportunity for some space to myself.

Turns out, the description was right. As a result of not having roommate situations that require the occasional escape down the hall, people here tend to go to their rooms and stay there. I mean, they’ve been friendly enough. The dorm is co-ed by floor, and the first few weeks we were encouraged by Rita to mingle. Encouraged with a capital E. She practically forced people out of their rooms during freshman orientation. But she’s a junior and once her friends returned to campus, she backed off. Though every once in a while she storms through the floors, pounding on doors, calling an impromptu dorm meeting that turns out to be an excuse for everyone to eat ice cream together. She’s big on the ice cream social concept. We’ve had three already and judging by her love of junk food – she hoards it in her room – there are more in our future. Otherwise, the main lounge, the only common place outside of the laundry room, usually sits empty.

As I try to sneak past without being noticed, it hits me. Tonight is our turn to host happy hour. A Colman tradition, each dorm on campus picks a Friday night to have one during fall term. It’s like a dorm open house, and from the ones I’ve been to already, they get pretty crazy.

We’re not allowed to serve alcohol, technically, but that hasn’t stopped people. I haven’t been to one where there wasn’t at least beer involved, not to mention strange blue and red concoctions being served out of huge plastic bins that get you really drunk, really fast. Usually, these are tucked inside people’s rooms out of sight from the campus police and the RAs. But it doesn’t take long to follow the cup trail, and as the night goes on, the parties tend to move from the common spaces to the residential floors.

Karen told me that I need to avoid alcohol and caffeine… if I continue with the pregnancy. Although I don’t exactly binge drink, I’ve definitely had enough over the past several weeks. It’s kind of unavoidable as a freshman. I realize my hand is resting where she did the ultrasound, and I slide it off and bolt up the stairs before anyone tries to assign me a job.

Thanks to Mike’s speakers, music fills the building, allowing me to escape to the third floor unnoticed. I head down the hall fumbling for my keys, and just when I think I’m in the clear…

“Hey, Laurel!”

I turn to see Liz, who I’ve had more than a few conversations with and even gone to several parties with too. She’s a tall, pretty blonde from Florida, who can be relatively social when she is in the mood. You wouldn’t look at her when she is gabbing at a party and think she’d want to be in one of the quietest dorms on campus. But I’ve been around her enough since orientation to notice that she also has this other side too, sometimes to the point where she won’t say hi even if you’re the only people in the hallway. That’s fine with me because I live better in uncertainty most of the time anyway. But I think a lot of people just don’t get her.

I try to force a smile. “Hi, Liz.”

“Where have you been all day? You missed Swedish Massage. We learned how to use our knuckles to penetrate deep tissue.” She laughs. She’s obviously in her social mood, much to my despair.

“I, uh, had a doctor appointment.” I blurt out, and as soon as it’s out of my mouth I regret it.

“Oh. Are you sick or something?”

I couldn’t make up something else? A meeting with an advisor? A hangover? I had to say doctor appointment. What did I go to the doctor for?
My mind is blank.

I stand silent a little too long, and she starts to squint her eyes, waiting for a response.

“Uh, no. Not sick. Just some female stuff going on. No big deal.”
There’s the understatement of the century.

“Oh, I got ya.” She gives me a wink. “So you coming down to set up? Rumor has it we’re ordering pizza. And Mike has a senior connection out getting a keg.”

“Maybe later. I’m kind of tired. I might take a nap before everything gets started.”

She shrugs. “Suit yourself. But don’t make me come looking for you later.” She saunters off.

As soon as the door is closed and locked behind me, it hits me like a ton of bricks.
Total exhaustion
. Without bothering to take off my sneakers, I lie down on my squeaky cot of a bed, pull the comforter over my head, and I am out.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Laurel?”

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Seriously, Laurel. I told you not to make me come looking for you.”

I roll over into the pitch blackness as Liz pounds on my door.
What time is it?
I fumble for my phone on the lamp table. When I find it and press, green neon illuminates my room.
10:30pm
. Wow. I slept for almost six hours.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“I know you’re there. Come on. Wake up. You’re missing the party.”

I run my fingers through my hair. The music downstairs is blasting. Do I answer her?

“I know you can hear me. Don’t think you’re getting out of this. I’m going to get another beer, and then I’ll be back…with reinforcements and maybe the RA’s key to your room. So get your butt out of bed and put on something hot. We’ve got a dorm full of cute guys.”

Just what I need right now
.

I turn on the lamp as soon as I hear her footsteps fade down the hall. I have no doubt she’ll be back – even drunker next time – so I stand up and look at myself in the full-length mirror. I barely recognize the reflection staring back at me. My normally straightened brown hair is about three inches shorter and curly thanks to all the humidity in the air plus the fact turning on the flat iron wasn’t exactly a priority today. My face is a pasty white, and my green eyes – usually my best feature – are overpowered by dark circles underneath them. Is this what pregnancy does to a girl?

I lift up my shirt and look at my belly. I’ve always been lucky to be thin, and I can’t envision my stomach protruding out like a basketball. How can there be something growing inside of me? The music blasts louder. Maybe going down would do me some good.

I kick off my sneakers and strip off my clothes, then grab for a pair of jeans and a party top. Attempting a brush through my wavy knots proves an impossibility, so I pull my hair up in a bun, powder on some pink blush and lip gloss, and suddenly I don’t look half dead anymore. I grab my keys and head downstairs.

As I weave through strangers sitting on the stairs, talking to each other, sipping out of red cups, and not making any effort to move as I make my descent, I pause on the first-floor landing to take in the scene below. My dorm is unrecognizable. Unfamiliar faces are all over the place – hanging out along the main hall, coming and going as if it was their own dorm, and the lounge…wow, the lounge. Thanks to a strobe machine and some poorly chosen dance music, it has been transformed into what seems like a bad 80s’ disco. I walk in and survey the room for Liz, but other than quiet June standing behind the table with snacks on it, I don’t see anyone I know. So I make my way down the hall to Mike’s.

Once through the double doors that separate the first floor dorms from the lobby, the lights are all turned off. As I travel the dark narrow hall, small groups of people are sitting in various rooms having their own intimate parties. At the far end – the last room before the fire exit – a large crowd has spilled into the hallway. Someone has propped the fire door open, and people are hanging around outside as well. I squeeze through to find close to twenty people packed like sardines in Mike’s tiny single. Here is where the party is. And, sure enough, Liz is in the corner in what looks like an intense conversation with a guy about a foot taller than her, which says a lot. Mike is chatting up a couple people around the keg while he fills up a plastic pitcher.

I decide to leave Liz alone to work her love connection and nudge my way to the keg.

“Hi, Mike.”

“Where’ve you been?”

Before I can say anything, he grabs an empty cup and fills it with a beer. “Here. You’ve got some catching up to do.”

I peer at the cup for a second, wondering if there is a way to refuse, but if I don’t take it, he might get suspicious. “Thanks.”

He clinks it. “Bottoms up.” Then he takes a huge swig out of the pitcher he’s holding.

“Nice,” I comment.

He doesn’t seem to notice I don’t share in his toast, and he pulls me gently in a neck hold over to a group of guys who are sitting on his bed.

“Laurel, these are some of my best buds from Saratoga. They drove here today for the party. Guys, this is Laurel – the coolest girl in the dorm.”

I roll my eyes at him.

“No, seriously. You are definitely the coolest girl here. No doubt.”

Mike’s friends don’t pay me much attention.

“Why do you say I’m the coolest girl here? What about Liz? She’s fun.”

“Yeah. When she’s not in one of her moods.”

“True.” I laugh. “So why did you pick this dorm? You don’t seem like the anti-social type.”

He takes another swig, “I come from a huge family. I’m the oldest of seven. I’ve never had a room to myself my entire life. This was the only place where I’d be guaranteed a single.” He smiles. “I didn’t think it would be THIS quiet.”

“Well, it’s not so bad tonight.” I feel myself relax and take a sip of beer.

“What about you? You’re from New York City, where everything is always going on. Why’d you pick the quiet dorm?”

“‘Cause I’m from New York City where everything is always going on. I wanted some peace.”