When I woke later that night, the nightstand clock showed 3:00 a.m. I groaned and turned away from the dim red light, but as I tried to fall back asleep, my stomach began to churn and an unsettled sensation left my skin damp and hot to the touch. I pushed the covers back, wiped sweat from my upper lip and stood to check the thermostat. It was programmed in Celsius, not Fahrenheit, so perhaps I’d accidentally set it too warm the day before. I shuffled my feet along the carpeted floors, stopped to steady myself and threw my hand against the wall.

Suddenly, I heaved.

I dashed for the bathroom, hardly making it to the toilet before vomiting up everything I’d eaten the day prior. Once, twice, three times I retched, my body limp over the toilet.

Afterward, as my stomach unclenched and I caught my breath, I reached for a washcloth on the counter. My hand knocked over something small and solid. The vial. After I’d returned to the hotel, I’d taken it out of my purse and set it on the bathroom counter. Now, to prevent myself from nearly shattering it, I tucked the vial safely at the bottom of my suitcase and returned to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Food poisoning in a foreign country, I thought to myself, groaning. But then I covered my mouth with trembling, damp fingers. Food poisoning, or...something else. Hadn’t I been queasy a couple times yesterday, too? I’d hardly eaten anything, so I couldn’t blame that nausea on bad food.

It felt, at once, like a terrible joke—if I was indeed pregnant, this was not how I imagined it happening. I’d long dreamed about the moment that James and I learned the news together: the happy tears, the celebratory kiss, rushing out to buy our first baby book. The two of us, together, celebrating what we’d made. And yet here I was, alone in a hotel bathroom in the wee hours of the morning, hoping that we hadn’t made anything at all. I didn’t want James’s baby, not right now. I only wanted to feel the uncomfortable, heavy ache of my imminent period.

I fixed myself a cup of hot chamomile tea. Sipping it slowly, I lay in bed for a half hour, wide-awake and waiting for the nausea to pass. I couldn’t bring myself to consider the idea of taking a pregnancy test. I’d give it a few more days. I prayed travel and stress were to blame—perhaps my period would start later tonight, or tomorrow.

My stomach began to settle, but the jet lag left me awake and alert. I spread my hand over the right side of the bed, where James should have been, and twisted the cool sheets in my fingers. For a brief moment, I couldn’t resist the truth: a part of me missed him terribly.