Joanna - Jinxed

Maggie cut open her fish just as I lifted my first aromatic, cheese-crusted spoonful of soup. The scent of deep-fried halibut wafted toward me. I dropped my spoon, knocked over my chair as I leaped up, and clenched my jaws, clapped my hand over my mouth, and raced inside to the ladies’ room.

“All right,” she said when I emerged wiping my mouth with toilet paper. “Enough is enough.” She stood; arms folded. Even the mirrored wall behind her reflected her impatience with me. Her red French braid bristled. “Think you can get through this state of denial? At your age, a pregnancy is high-risk, and you need to begin dealing with it. Now.”

I took a large mouthful of water from one of the taps, swished and spit. I accepted the wet paper towel Maggie handed me and held it over my face, hiding behind it, and said, “I am not pregnant!”

Suddenly, I wanted to cry. And I did. “Oh, shit, Maggie!”

“I suppose,” she said, “that’s a form of agreement?”

“All right, all right!” I crumpled the paper, tossed it into the trash and said, “Maybe there is a possibility you’re right, but I refuse to discuss it like a high school kid in the bathroom.”

“Fine. We’ll go to my office. A quick test will help.”

I slumped on the passenger seat and let her drive me to the doom of truth I hoped she wasn’t going to find. Couldn’t I possibly have something simple like a digestive tract affliction? Peptic ulcers? Colitis? Crohn’s disease?

“Don’t cry,” Maggie said softly. “We’ll deal with this.”

Sure enough, tears ran down my face and suddenly, great, choking, open-mouthed boo-hoo-hoo sobs shook me. That was stupid. “You know I never cry,” I said.

“I know. It’s hormones, honey.”

“Maybe it’s men-menopause.”

“Sure. Maybe,” she agreed. I struggled to get myself under control, finally succeeded, then she added, “But menopause isn’t known for causing morning sickness.”

“I only get sick in the afternoon and evening,” I protested.

“‘Morning’ sickness is just a figure of speech.”

When we were alone, she handed me the inevitable, too-small, pleated paper cup. “Pee,” she said.

I don’t think she was surprised by the result. I wanted to be. I tried to be. But I couldn’t be surprised, either. All I felt was dull resignation with a shallowly buried urge to swear and throw things and break windows and dishes and cry and cry and cry. Not to mention, scream. Fortunately, I was too tired to throw anything, even a tantrum.

“Your little dipstick could be wrong,” I muttered.

“Okay,” she said, laughter ill-concealed in her eyes, “You want a quick second opinion, go to the drugstore and buy a home pregnancy test. Sheldon Littlejohn will assume it’s for one of your girls and start the rumor that either you’re going to have another teenage, unwed mother on your hands, or that Faith ‘failed to learn her lesson’ the first time around.”

Sheldon apparently missed the seminar on “Patient Confidentiality.”