Page 37 of Babies for the Boss
I look back at the ceiling. The ceiling is textured and white and completely unhelpful. I look at the test again, in case the ceiling interlude has changed anything.
There are still two lines.
I have to tell Pavel. Don’t I?
I sit with that for another moment. The man who says my name in the dark like it costs him something. The man who tucks my hair back with rough, careful fingers and watches me across conference tables with those pale eyes and makes me feel, consistently and against all available evidence, safe.
That man. Who does not know. Who is going to need to know, at some point, in some conversation I cannot currently imagine having, that he is going to be a father.
I wrap the test in approximately half a roll of paper towels and wash my hands. Baptism by sink. Some way to purify myself, I guess.
“Okay,” I say to my reflection, quietly and with some feeling.
Then I go back to my desk, pick up my bag and my coat. “I have an errand to run.”
Vet stands, grabbing her bag. “Where are we going?”
I want to argue. I want to tell her to stay put. But I don’t have it in me. Right now, I need someone to lean on, I think. “The doctor.”
She nods once, ready to follow. She doesn’t ask me anything. She picks up her bag and walks to the elevator, and I follow, and we don’t speak until we’re in a cab heading uptown.
My doctor’s office is on Sixty-Third, a twelve-minute ride that Vet fills with a silence I am genuinely grateful for. I’m not ready to say anything yet, and she appears to understand this without being told, which is one of the things I have come to rely on her for in a way I did not anticipate.
The cab smells like pine air freshener that turns my stomach. I watch the city move past the window and do not finish a single thought, which takes considerable effort and is not entirely successful.
The waiting room is busy when we arrive. The receptionist at the front desk is a young woman with a pleasant, practiced smile that she applies to us as we approach. She checks the system. “Dr. Okafor is fully booked today, so sorry, could you perhaps schedule for later in the week? There’s a Thursday at two-fifteen, or a Friday morning if that works better, I hate to turn you away but the schedule is really quite?—”
Vet leans forward on the counter with a smile I have not seen on her before. It’s warm and unhurried and entirely pleasant, the smile of a woman who is perfectly comfortable with the conversation she’s about to have and is in no particular hurry. She leans slightly closer to the receptionist and says somethingI can’t hear. Her voice is low and even, and whatever she says takes approximately fifteen seconds, and she maintains the pleasant smile throughout.
The receptionist’s practiced smile stops moving. Her eyes go quite wide. She swallows once, with visible effort. “Eh, just a moment. Let me recheck—oh, I missed a spot. I can squeeze you in right now, just one moment please, let me just find someone.” And then she’s gone, moving through the door behind her desk with the brisk efficiency of a woman who has somewhere to be and would like to be there immediately.
I look at Vet. “What did you say to her?”
Vet straightens up and smooths the front of her coat with the serene composure of someone who has just completed a minor errand. “What I needed to tell her.”
There are things I don’t want to know. Pavel’s crimes, for the most part. Vet’s history in wetwork. There’s a strangeness to the general quality of my life since I adopted a policy of not asking Vet to elaborate on certain things, and I decide this can be one of those things. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she agrees, and we sit down.
Dr. Okafor appears in under two minutes, which is remarkable by any standard and which I choose not to examine too closely. She’s a calm, efficient woman whose manner I have always appreciated, and she takes one look at my face and gets straight to it once we’re in the exam room.
I pee in a cup. Moments later, she confirms the test results.
I am pregnant. The words echo across my brain.
Then, being even more customer service oriented than usual—which I suspect is Vet’s doing—Dr. Okafor tells me she’d like to do a quick ultrasound to establish how far along I am. I lie back on the exam table and stare at the ceiling, while she prepares the equipment. Vet sits in the chair beside the table with her hands folded and her face composed, steady and present in the way that means she’s paying attention to everything and will continue to do so regardless of what happens next. I find this unreasonably comforting.
The screen flickers on.
Dr. Okafor is quiet for a moment, and it’s the kind of quiet that precedes information rather than the comfortable kind. She moves the wand over my uterus and looks at the screen. Then she says, “Molly, I want you to take a breath first.”
I look at the ceiling. Then I turn my head and look at the screen.
“You’re approximately nine weeks along,” she says. A brief pause, giving me the space to process the number before she supplies the word. “Also, you’re carrying twins.”
The room does not spin. Everything goes very still and very clear instead, the particular clarity of a moment that’s too large for an ordinary response.
Twins.
