“I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back,” I said.
With that, I rushed out of the room, throwing open the door and running down the hall. Marta was still by her office, her eyes going wide with surprise as she watched me run past. Maggie stood near the break room.
“Are you OK?”
“Fine!”
But I wasn’t fine. As I reached the bathroom and dropped to my knees in front of the toilet, all I could think was that I was looking in the same spot where my career had likely just ended up.
* * *
I felt like a total idiot as I sat on the examination table of the doctor’s office.
Granted, it hadn’t been a total disaster. Marta had been watching, after all. She’d sent Maggie to check on me in the bathroom before she hurried into the meeting, picking up where I’d left off.
When Marta found out that I’d gotten sick, her frustration with my behavior vanished. She’d filled Sheryl in on my progress on the project, and the Davidson group ended up leaving feeling satisfied that they’d gotten a little facetime with one of the owners.
All the same, I was mortified. I’d been given the biggest responsibility in my career up to this point and what had I done? Run to the bathroom and puked right when I was needed the most.
It took all the effort I had to answer the nurse’s questions. I didn’t want to be rude, but my mind kept playing scenarios of me coming back to the office, Marta telling me that she’d considered the situation and decided that maybe I wasn’t quite up to the task she’d assigned me.
“And what kind of birth control are you on?”
“Huh?” The nurse’s words snapped me back into the moment.
“Are you on any kind of birth control?”
“Well…not really.”
The nurse was clearly confused. “Not really?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I’d been taking Yaz up until about five months ago.”
“Your OB/GYN took you off of it?”
I pursed my lips. “Not technically. My OB/GYN had been Dr. Barnes over in Washington Park. But she moved away a little bit ago and, well, I got kind of busy with work and all, and…”
I trailed off.
“And you haven’t moved over to a new doctor and gotten a new script.” She finished for me.
“That’s the long and short of it.”
“So, for the time being, you’re not on anything.”
“Correct.”
She nodded and jotted something down.
“Please tell me you’re not writing ‘totally irresponsible’ on there.”
The nurse chuckled. “Not at all. Now, let me ask you this – have you been sexually active recently?”
“Well, yeah. But just once.”
“How long ago?”
“Um, about six weeks.”