Anne waited the required time before she checked the second stick. The results were the same as the first time. She sat down heavily and looked out the window at the rainy Seattle day. She felt numb inside. Fitting that it would be raining on today of all days, she thought, because it mirrored her life. As she looked out the window, she could see the gas barbecue grill her landlord decided to leave on the deck. It was still covered with the grill cover. She had not used it once since she arrived. She had left her bicycle on the deck last night after her ride, too tired to put it away in the garage, and she watched as the rainwater dripped from the frame. She sat there until the numbness began to start to wear off. Then she put her hand on her belly and looked down, feeling both a mixture of awe and panic. What was she going to do, now?
She was pregnant.
Two tests, both showing the same results, could not be wrong. She took several deep breaths to calm herself and looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look any different, but everything about her was going to be different from now on. Well, sitting here won't make any difference on her current state, she thought, and she stood back up to go into her bedroom to dress for work. A wave of morning sickness struck her, and she fought it down until she could reach her bedside. There she grabbed a saltine cracker and ate it to settle her stomach. It didn’t work, and she ran back into the bathroom and lost her meager breakfast. Once she emptied her stomach, she felt better and stood to brush her teeth again. That was the first time she actually vomited. Usually eating something or munching on crackers helped stem the nausea.
She was beginning the fourth week of working at Stanford Enterprises today and her seventh week of being late with her monthly flow. When she didn’t get her period when she was due, she thought it was just the stress of her breakup with Ben, the move, and starting a new job that was causing the delay. But they were not the reason she was late, and she finally stopped at the pharmacy last night because she had to be sure. Now she was sure that it wasn’t just stress causing her symptoms.
It was easy to see why she was at first confused. After all, there was a tremendous amount of stress in her life right now. She moved, started a new job, and every single day she tried to work her body and mind to a state of exhaustion so that she could sleep at night and forget that she loved Ben, and that he did not love her in return. It did not work.
It was not difficult to stay busy during the day, though. She was thrown into the deep end at work once her first week was completed, and she loved it. Dr. Scott Rudolph, her new boss, put her in charge of a team to begin searching for a new compound solution for the problem of counteracting crude oil in marine water. They hoped to create a natural solution to quicken the seawater’s natural ability to absorb oil so that when future spills happened, the sea would recover faster. The key was in also not making something that would ultimately hurt the very thing they were trying to save. She found the work, so far, to be challenging, and she liked her coworkers.
The only down side of her job was that she spent far too much time looking for Ben on campus even though she knew that he would not be back until next week. Dr. Rudolph told her that his trip was being extended another week but did not go into details as to why. Not that she missed him, she told herself again. If she told herself that long enough, maybe one day she would believe it.
Oh, whom was she kidding? Except for her professional life, she was miserable. Even that would change once he returned. Carla noticed and commented a few times over the past few weeks about Anne’s brooding and weight loss and wanted to know what was wrong. But Anne just was not ready to talk to her about Ben, yet. Not with Carla and not with her mother who asked her again if she wanted to talk about Ben when she heard the sadness in Anne’s voice the last time they talked on the phone. All Anne could do was hope that her heart would heal in time. She just needed to survive the next year.
But having a baby changed everything. If Ben thought that she used him to get the position in the company, what would he think when he found out that she was pregnant with his child? She could not continue to work for the company over the next year knowing that Ben would think that she was only trying to trap him into marriage like Chelsea and his other past girlfriend. Or worse, that he would think that she was trapping him just so that she could collect child support payments from him for the next eighteen years. But Ben needed to know about the baby. He had a right to know. Even if he did not want her or the baby, he had a right to know. Eventually, she would have to tell him. She just could not do it yet. Once she found another job, she would tell him.
Maybe, she would tell him!
Yes, she would tell him.
Her indecisiveness was driving her crazy, and she left her house for work while she lectured herself. She just hoped her indecisiveness would not start to cross over into her professional life, too.
She drove into the parking lot of Building Two a half an hour later, grabbed her umbrella from the passenger seat, and ran for the employee entrance through the pouring rain. After shaking the water from her umbrella when she walked through the door, she rounded the corner at the end of the hall and went into the Research and Development wing. Her office was the second one in, and she quickly stored her things, turned on her computer, and pulled out her files. She needed to get her notes together for the morning meeting she was to attend with Dr. Rudolph, Mr. Winfield, and the science technicians who worked on the project with her.
They were going to discuss proposed compounds with which they might experiment and lay out a game plan for combining them. Compounds needed to be mixed in a certain order to gain the results they were looking for. Ben usually joined these initial meetings, Dr. Rudolph told her last Friday, when he also told her that Ben would not be there. Anne was just happy that this morning, of all mornings, he would miss the meeting because he was still in Asia. She didn’t think that she could handle seeing him today.
Anne walked into the first floor R & D conference room of her building at five minutes to ten and saw the technicians already sitting at the large oblong table. Before she left her desk, she uploaded her PowerPoint presentation to the Research drive, and now went to the front of the room to pull the presentation up on the digital board so that it would be ready for the beginning of the meeting. She could hear Mr. Winfield and Dr. Rudolph talking as they came into the conference room, but she didn’t turn around to acknowledge them. Finally, once the program was ready, she turned around and stopped frozen in place. Her body went into shock, and her heart filled with sudden pain.
Oh, God!
Ben was sitting at the table looking at her, closely. He wasn’t supposed to be here. What was he doing here, and why was he staring at her so intently? He was the one who called off their relationship, not her. When he saw that she was aware of him looking at her, he turned away and began talking to Dr. Rudolph who sat next to him at the table.
Seeing him again drove home to her that she was no closer to getting over her feelings for him than she was seven weeks ago, and the sudden pain in her chest knocked the wind out of her. She wanted to keep looking at him but didn’t dare because she wasn’t sure she would be able to do it without the pain shining through her eyes. She sneaked a peek at him again while he looked away. He looked tired and like he had lost some weight, but otherwise he was just as handsome as she remembered. After noting the time, she cleared her throat and picked up the clicker so that she could begin giving her presentation. Ben focused on the digital screen instead of looking at her directly throughout the meeting, a fact that helped her to continue speaking instead of becoming a bundle of nerves. When he finally did speak to her to ask questions, his voice was distant, like she was a stranger to him.
After the meeting and the technicians had left the room, Dr. Rudolph introduced her to Ben, and she shook his hand. Her hand was cold, and she pulled it away as quickly as she could without being rude. Their smaller group talked for a few minutes about the
project and her move to Seattle. The entire time they talked, Ben continued to act as if they were meeting for the first time, as if she had never laughed with him or loved him. She realized that her thoughts were wandering into areas that would only lead her to trouble, and she looked down at her notes and waited until she could get them back under control. The meeting ended fifteen minutes later, and Ben walked out with Dr. Rudolph and Mr. Winfield, leaving her to shut off the digital board and turn off the lights.
After they left, she sat in the silence of the room for several minutes as she worked to compose herself. Her emotions were in turmoil, and she wiped away several tears before she felt like she was in control enough to move again. After taking several deep breaths, she slowly stood up and felt a pain move throughout her body that had nothing to do with her pregnancy or feeling under the weather. Stop wasting your time, she told herself. Pull yourself together! She stifled a laugh of hysteria and began to close up the room by turning off the digital board, picking up her notes, and turning off the lights.
Anne didn’t see Ben for the rest of the week, which gave her time to contemplate her future. The fact that he didn’t seek her out only served to cement the idea that he really never cared about her like she cared for him and that there was no hope. On Wednesday, she confirmed her pregnancy with an OB-GYN, started a regimen of vitamins, and adjusted her diet. With her pregnancy confirmed, she began to consider her options. On Thursday she saw an attorney, not from her father’s firm, and looked into having paperwork written up for Ben to give up his parental rights. She would not seek child support. She remembered what he said about feeling trapped, and she did not want him to ever feel that way about their child. He would resent the baby, eventually, if he did. She did not want their child to go through what she went through with her own father.
Her options for future work were a little more complicated. She had signed a non-compete clause in her contract, so she could not work for a rival research company for at least another year. She liked working at Stanford Enterprises, but she also knew that she had to leave. Staying would not be an option. She could see about doing adjunct teaching and consulting again to make ends meet until the year was up. To fill in the gaps in her income, she only had one option. As much as she hated it to use it, it would help her until she found a different position or until her inheritance came through.
On Friday, she worked late and stayed to enter her notes into a file the team used to track their observations and results. It was well after eight pm, and the research area was empty except for her in her office. She looked down at her peanut butter and jelly sandwich without much interest but ate it anyway. In the past few weeks, she discovered that she could not stomach lunchmeat. What she would not give for a diet soda and a slice of pizza right now, she thought, but they were not on her diet. She finished typing her last note from the day’s experiment and future ideas then closed out the file. Then she opened up her email program and typed out an email before she pressed the "send" button. After closing down her computer, she grabbed her purse and walked out into the warm evening air before she headed home.
Chapter 19