“What did your colleague have?” Mandy asked when I stopped talking.
“Just a stomach virus. He called it the stomach flu even though it wasn’t the flu,” I told her.
“Most everybody does. How long ago did you say he was sick?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“And you just started experiencing symptoms over the last couple of days?”
“Yes. They were pretty mild to start with, but like I said, they’ve gotten worse. He must not have realized he was sick and passed it on to me,” I said.
Mandy looked hesitant. “Basic stomach viruses don’t have that long of an incubation period.”
“What does that mean?”
“If you caught the virus from him that long ago, you would have already been showing symptoms. It wouldn’t have taken this long. I don’t think you’re dealing with a stomach virus,” she said.
“Then what is it?” I asked. “I’m fatigued, I feel sick to my stomach. There’s obviously something going on.”
“I’m going to talk to the doctor, but she will probably want to run some tests to see what’s happening.”
“What kind of tests?”
Forty minutes later I not only knew what kinds of tests she was talking about but was holding the results in my hands. I would very happily start calling it the stomach flu if it could mean that’s what was going on rather than what the papers were telling me. Because in that moment, all I wanted to do was cry.
“I can’t be pregnant,” I said.
Nurse Mandy was still in the room with me. She didn’t leave after giving me the results. It was as if she could sense I needed the support.
“You said you’ve had sex recently,” the nurse pointed out.
At any other time, I probably would have been indignant about that, but I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts to let it process.
“Yes,” I said, nodding but still looking at the paper.
“About how long ago?”
I thought back to the first time Noah and I had had sex in the wine room. “About a month or so ago and then a couple weeks after that,” I admitted.
“Did you use protection?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then, Ally…”
“I’m on birth control,” I interrupted. “I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t.”
I didn’t know why I said that. The truth was, I couldn’t say for sure if I would or not. I hadn’t thought precisely about being on the pill when I was in that wine dungeon with Noah, or when I was in the kitchen with him two weeks later. I only thought about it later, after it was all said and done. As much as I would like to think I would have displayed more self-control if I wasn’t taking birth control, I couldn’t be totally positive.
“Birth control isn’t one hundred percent effective,” the nurse said. “Particularly when you take into account human error.”
“I don’t have human error,” I argued, knowing how ridiculous I sounded but not caring. “I take it at the same time every single day. I have alarms. I have little symbols I draw in my calendar.”
“Even so, there’s still that margin of error.”
“Oh, no. I’ve been taking the pills every day. I haven’t missed a single one.” A sudden thought struck me. “Is that going to hurt the baby?” I asked.
“No,” the nurse said. “I’ll definitely mention that to the doctor so she can talk to you about it, but the chances that the medication will cause any harm to your baby are very low. But you do absolutely need to stop taking it now.”
A few minutes later, the doctor came in to talk to me about my results and what I was going to do moving forward. I felt like I had already made more than enough plans about moving forward and what I was going to do next recently. This blindsided me. It wasn’t even something I could have imagined happening.
“I was so sure it was a virus,” I said to the doctor.
She nodded. “A lot of women are. That’s one of the main reasons we always insist on tests even if the woman says she doesn’t think she’s pregnant, or even that there’s no way she’s pregnant. It’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself it’s impossible, when it’s very possible. It’s always better to be safe and use the precaution of taking a test rather than just assuming.”
I nodded, feeling numb. “I know it’s a shock. This obviously isn’t something you had planned or were even thinking about. But I want you to know you aren’t alone in this. There are options, and since according to your timeline you are still very early on, there’s a lot of time to figure out what you want to do. Do you have any questions, or do you think you might know how you want to proceed?” she asked.
As stunned as I was by the news of being pregnant, I was just as stunned by the steady, almost cold way she offered that statement. I knew she was trying to be compassionate and help me to move forward and not completely freak out. But somehow it came across as being almost heartless. Like she wasn’t really thinking about me and the baby I just learned I was carrying.