“I... Yeah. Home’s fine. I get along great with my mom. Is something wrong with me? Like, am I dying? It was only the once. Well, three times in the truck, but—”

“We’ll take some blood to rule out any complications after we talk. Sara, you’re pregnant.”

When this moment happens in movies, there’s usually some dramatic reaction to it, like a scream or a whoop or something to indicate that the gravity of the situation—that you, a human, have another human parasiting it up in your midsection—is understood and-slash-or appreciated. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t make a sound. I just stared at her. It was the total reboot, the blue screen of death that lets you know the computer’s operating system has shut down and needs a few minutes to hopefully patch itself back together again before it can function.

Preg. Nant.

Pregnant.

Baby.

Baby in me.

Jack’s baby.

“Are you alright, Sara? Did you want your mother?”

I didn’t answer.

Dr. Bhatia wheeled her stool in close so she was right beside me. She didn’t touch me, which I appreciated—I’d have probably jumped out of my skin, but she was close and she was a presence and there was comfort in that. Being alone moments after finding out you are toting around an unplanned and not super welcome kid? Not a pleasant notion.

We sat like that for a few minutes, her waiting patiently for me to react. She expected me to cry; I know that because she brought over the box of tissues and put it against my leg on the exam table. I dropped my gaze to it, reading the word Kleenex on the side over and over again. I wasn’t really thinking, more existing, but what was strange was that the existence itself was changed. There were other days I’d sat looking blankly at walls or ceilings, my mind on autopilot, drifting, but never before had I done that floating, thoughtless existing with the back-of-my-mind knowledge that I would be a mother.

It was different. I can’t articulate how it was different, but it was. I was Sara. I was in the doctor’s office. I’d just found out I was pregnant.

These were my truths.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

“Okay. Okay, sure.” Mom leaned against the clinic countertop, blinking fast, her hands curled over the lip of the Formica. She looked stunned, possibly as stunned as I’d looked a few minutes ago when I’d been told. A sheaf of blond hair had slumped down over her right eye, but she wasn’t brushing it away. She was too busy staring at me like I’d spawned an extra head. “So we have some options. I... Wow. Okay.”