Chapter 14: The Test
The clinic waiting room was a special kind of hell. It was too bright, too quiet, and smelled like lemony cleaner trying and failing to mask a deeper, darker scent of fear and antiseptic. Catriona hated it immediately.
Jenny sat bolt upright in the mint-green vinyl chair, her hands clasped in her lap like a schoolgirl waiting for the principal. She hadn’t touched the ragged magazine she’d pulled from the rack. Her knuckles were white.
“You okay?” Catriona asked, her voice low.
“No.” Jenny’s answer was immediate, honest. A tiny fracture in her perfect, fragile composure. “I feel like I’m going to throw up. Or pass out. Or both.”
“That could also just be morning sickness,” Catriona offered, trying for a smile.
Jenny didn’t smile back. Her eyes were fixed on the door marked ‘Phlebotomy’. “What if it’s negative? What if the lines were a fluke? A chemical thing? I don’t think I can… I can’t see Mark’s face if it’s another no.”
“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.” Catriona reached over and pried one of Jenny’s hands loose, holding it. It was ice cold. “But what if it’s positive?”
Jenny finally looked at her, her hazel eyes swimming. “Then my husband will think a miracle happened. And I’ll have to live knowing it’s a miracle with another man’s face. Your husband’s face.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I can still feel him, Cat. It’s insane. But sometimes, when I shift a certain way, I swear I feel… a presence. Like he’s still in there. Claiming space.”
Catriona’s breath caught. The words were too intimate, too visceral. They dragged the memory of that night right into the sterile light, naked and pulsing. She saw Aidan over Jenny, his back corded with effort, heard the raw sound he made when he finished. The image was scalding.
“He’s thorough,” Catriona said, the words coming out huskier than she intended.
A faint, almost guilty blush crept up Jenny’s neck. “Yeah.” She was silent for a minute, her thumb rubbing anxiously over Catriona’s knuckles. “Does that… bother you? That I think about it? That my body remembers?”
Did it? Catriona searched the tangled mess inside her chest. There was no neat jealousy. There was something messier, darker, more possessive. “No. It doesn’t bother me. It’s… it’s part of the deal. He was meant to leave an impression.”
An older woman across the room coughed, the sound echoing in the quiet. The fish in the grimy tank swam in listless circles.
“I dream about it,” Jenny confessed, her gaze going distant. “Not the whole… orchestration. Just fragments. The weight. The stretch. The smell of his skin. I wake up and my heart is hammering and I’m soaked and I have to lie there next to Mark and just… exist with it.”
Catriona didn’t know what to say. Good felt wrong. I’m sorry felt like a lie. She just squeezed Jenny’s hand.
“Jenifer Walsh?” A nurse in garish floral scrubs stood in the phlebotomy doorway, tablet in hand.
Jenny flinched as if shot. She stood, her legs seeming unsteady. Catriona stood with her, not letting go of her hand.
“Can my friend come back with me?” Jenny asked, her voice thin.
The nurse gave a practiced, impersonal smile. “Sure, hon. Just for the draw. Results come to the doctor in 24-48 hours.”
They followed her into a narrower hallway, then a small, windowless room dominated by a clinical chair and a tray of sinister-looking tubes and needles. The air was cooler. Jenny sat, rolling up the sleeve of her blouse. Her arm was pale, veins a delicate blue tracing just beneath the skin.
Catriona stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder. She watched as the nurse tied the rubber tourniquet, tapping at the inner crook of Jenny’s elbow. Jenny looked away, focusing on a poster about cholesterol on the far wall.
“Little pinch,” the nurse said, without warmth.
The needle slid in. Jenny’s fingers tightened around the chair’s armrest. A dark ruby stream flooded the first vial. The nurse switched it out. Another vial filled. The blood was shockingly vivid against the clinical white of the room.
This was it. The proof. The truth was literally being siphoned out of Jenny’s body, drop by drop. Catriona stared, hypnotized. That blood contained the answer. It contained the ghost of Aidan’s furious, genetic claim. It contained a possible future that was both a gift and a lifelong secret.
“All done.” The nurse placed a cotton ball on the spot, folding Jenny’s arm up to hold it. “Keep pressure. The doctor will call.”
They walked out of the room, back through the buzzing hell of the waiting room, and out into the overcast afternoon. The outside air felt thick and real after the canned, processed atmosphere inside.
On the sidewalk, Jenny stopped, leaning against the rough brick of the building. She was shaking. Catriona rubbed her back.
“It’s done,” Catriona said.
“It’s just beginning,” Jenny corrected, her voice hollow. She looked at Catriona, her eyes full of a terrified wonder. “I’m either pregnant with your husband’s child, or I’m not. There’s no in-between anymore. It’s binary. It’s real.”
A bus rumbled by, drowning out any possibility of speech for a moment. When it passed, Catriona asked the question that had been curdling in her gut since they’d arrived. “When you know… will you tell me before you tell Mark?”
Jenny considered it. The wind picked up, tossing her honey hair across her face. “Yes,” she said finally. “You deserve to know first. Both of you do.”
They walked to their cars in silence. The normal sounds of the city—car horns, a distant siren, snippets of conversation—felt like they were coming from another planet. They had just crossed back from a territory where nothing was normal.
Before Jenny got into her sedan, she turned. “Thank you. For coming. For holding my hand.” She bit her lip. “For everything before this. Even the hard parts.”
Catriona just nodded, a lump in her throat. She watched Jenny drive away, the car shrinking until it was swallowed by traffic.
She got into her own car but didn’t start the engine. She sat in the quiet, the faint smell of her own paint-stained clothes a comfort. She replayed Jenny’s words. I can still feel him. I dream about it.
A slow, hot coil of something twisted in Catriona’s lower belly. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t regret. It was a dark, thrilling pride. Her husband had marked their friend so completely that even a clinical needle couldn’t erase the memory. She had watched it happen. She had orchestrated it.
She pulled out her phone. Her text to Aidan was simple, no room for misunderstanding.
Blood draw is done. Results in a day or two. She’s scared. I’m coming home.
She started the car. The engine’s growl was a satisfying sound. She was driving back to her life, to her husband, to their bed that still held the echoes. And she was carrying the secret, the weight of it, the terrifying, exhilarating possibility of it, all the way home with her. The waiting was its own new kind of intimacy, stretched thin and wire-tight between the three of them.