“Uh-oh,” Damon knew that look and shouted to the driver to pull over. Carla needed to get off the bus for a while.
“Thank you,” I managed to grab my purse when the bus stopped and I rushed out, managing to get away from the bus before I got horribly ill. But to my horror, I got sick all over my shirt and I didn’t have a clean one with me.
“We’re getting off here,” I heard Damon tell the bus driver. “Carla needs to get some more motion sickness pills and a change of clothes.” I looked up and saw Damon pat his backpack. He’d seen me get sick on my shirt through the window.
I heard the driver mention something about luggage to Damon but he was so focused on helping me that he didn’t hear the man correctly.
“No, I don’t need it right now, I have everything I need in my backpack,” Damon said as he stepped out of the bus and walked over to me. “There’s a little drug store across the street where we can get you some motion pills.” He put his arm around me and walked with me to the store.
Luckily, I had grabbed my purse because after buying what we needed, we exited the store to find our tour bus gone. They’d left us stranded in this teeny tiny one-horse town.
“Why would they leave without us?” Damon swore.
“I think the bus driver misunderstood you when you told him you had everything you needed in your backpack,” I pointed out. “Sorry, I need to sit down.”
“Okay,” Damon took my hand and led me over to a bench. “What is going on, Carla?” he asked me. A deep frown creased his brow.
“I told you I’ve been really stressed and had this weird stomach bug.” I closed my eyes as a horrible giddy spell gripped me.
“Breathe.” Damon gently rubbed my back. “So, what do we do now?”
While the dizzy spell passed, Damon stopped a local man and asked if there were any hotels and car rentals in town. To our surprise, there was a guest house and the owner also happened to have a car that could be rented.
The guest house was two blocks down and very easy to find. When Damon explained to them what had happened, we got booked straight away into the guest house for the night and got the rental car for tomorrow. Unfortunately, there was only one room available in the guest house which we shared with the owner.
So, we had no option but to take and share the room. We were stuck, and Damon was forcing me to go see the town’s doctor. The guest house owner made an appointment for me. After shopping at a tiny clothing store for a few essential items, I got changed and headed over the road to the doctor’s. She was in her mid-forties and originally from the little town we were in. She’d come back to the town when her husband had been killed in Afghanistan. He too had been a doctor.
After telling me her life story, and then listening to all my symptoms and woes, she asked me a question that turned my blood cold. I sat looking at her in shock for a few minutes. I thought my jaw was actually hanging open because I could feel air flowing into it.
“Take your time.” The doctor smiled at me. “If I was to guess, I would say this is your first pregnancy.”
“You don’t know I’m pregnant yet,” I said defensively while I rummaged through my purse for my phone. I looked through my calendar and felt little zaps of shock shoot through my nervous system. I had missed two months. “How did I not realize that?” I looked up at the doctor.
“It happens,” she smiled kindly at me and pulled out a pregnancy test kit. “Usually, I’d take a blood sample but you’re leaving tomorrow, and in this town, it takes at least two days to get the results.”
The receptionist pointed me to the bathroom. I stood staring at the kit for about five minutes before I worked up the courage to pee on the stick. I wasn’t going to wait. I took my stick through to the doctor with the stopwatch I’d used on my phone to time the results.
The alarm sounded but I couldn’t look. The doctor looked.
“Congratulations,” she said, “it’s positive.”
What?
“I may not be able to do blood tests but we do have an ultrasound,” the doctor told me.
She led me to another examination room where there were a few surprisingly modern medical machines. As I got up onto the bed, she pulled the ultrasound machine toward me. The doctor switched the machine on and hiked up my shirt before putting cold gel on my stomach. She ran the scanner over my belly and found the little bean.