Chapter 16: The Waiting Room
The clinic chair was a mold of cold plastic against Jenny’s thighs. She concentrated on the sensation, anchoring herself to anything other than the slow, ticking clock above the receptionist’s window. Her leg jiggled, a frantic piston she couldn’t control.
Catriona’s hand covered hers, stilling the tremor. “Remember that café in Barcelona?” Catriona said, her voice deliberately light. “The one where the waiter spilled that entire pitcher of sangria all over my white linen pants?”
Jenny’s lips twitched. “You looked like you’d been in a knife fight.”
“And you laughed so hard you snorted espresso out your nose.” Catriona squeezed her hand. “The couple at the next table asked if we needed medical attention.”
A real, thin laugh escaped Jenny. It felt alien in the antiseptic air. “God, we were a mess.”
“The best kind of mess.” Catriona leaned her head back against the wall. “We’ll have stories like that again. Different ones. Messier ones, probably.”
Jenny nodded, her throat tight. She shifted in the seat and the subtle, internal reminder made her breath catch. It wasn’t pain. It was a faint, deep ache, a fullness that had settled into her bones. A phantom presence. She hadn’t imagined it last night. Even now, in this sterile, heartless place, she could feel the ghost of Aidan’s claiming. It was a secret she carried, a warm, illicit anchor in a sea of cold possibility.
“I can still feel him,” she whispered, so low Catriona had to lean in. “Not like… a person. Like a fact. Like my body won’t let me forget what we asked it to do.”
Catriona’s gaze was unreadable. There was no jealousy there, just a deep, simmering focus. “Good,” she said finally, the word simple and fierce. “Let it remember.”
A nurse in garishly cheerful scrubs appeared at the inner door. “Jennifer Miller?”
The sound of her legal name was a jolt. Jenny stood, her knees watery. Catriona rose with her, not letting go of her hand.
“You can both come back,” the nurse said, her smile a professional curve that didn’t touch her eyes.
They followed her down a hallway of closed doors, past a cart rattling with vials. The nurse led them not to an exam room, but to a small, windowless office. A polished desk, a computer, two client chairs. An administrative cell. This was where news was given.
A grey-haired woman in a white coat stood up. “Jennifer, I’m Dr. Vance. Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the chairs, then glanced at Catriona. “And you are?”
“Family,” Catriona said, the word leaving no room for debate. She sat, pulling Jenny down into the chair beside her.Dr. Vance resumed her seat, lacing her fingers on the desk. She looked from the screen to Jenny, her expression carefully neutral. “We have your quantitative hCG results from the blood draw yesterday.”
Jenny’s world narrowed to the woman’s mouth, waiting for the shape of the words to come out.
“The level is 85,” Dr. Vance said.
Silence.
“Is that…?” Jenny’s voice was a dry croak.
“For this stage post-ovulation, it’s a strong, positive number,” the doctor said, and the neutrality cracked into something resembling a genuine, if slight, smile. “You are pregnant, Jennifer.”
The words didn’t land. They floated in the air, beautiful, abstract butterflies. Jenny stared. Pregnant. The word she’d carved into her heart over years of negative tests and silent ultrasound screens. It just hung there.
Catriona made a small, choked sound beside her. Her grip on Jenny’s hand became vicelike.
“A number of 85 is excellent,” Dr. Vance continued, clicking her mouse. “We’ll want to see it roughly double in about 48 to 72 hours to confirm things are progressing as they should. I’d like you back on Friday for another draw. We’ll schedule your first viability scan for about two weeks from now, provided the next numbers look good.”
“Pregnant,” Jenny echoed, testing the weight of it on her tongue. It felt mythical. Then, a cold, practical wave crashed over the wonder. “Is it… is it viable? Could it be ectopic?”
“The number is consistent with a very early uterine pregnancy. The repeat test will give us more information. For now, celebrate. This is what you wanted.”
What she wanted. Jenny’s mind fractured. It was what she wanted, with every torn-up piece of her soul. It was also a bomb that had just detonated in the center of three lives. She thought of Aidan’s concentrated, almost grim focus. Of Catriona’s watchful, aroused eyes. Of her own husband, Mark, thousands of miles away, unaware that the future had just irrevocably changed.
She burst into tears.
Not delicate, pretty tears. Great, heaving sobs that wrenched out of her chest. She folded forward, her face in her hands, the relief and terror and sheer monumental strangeness of it all flooding out.
Catriona’s arm was around her instantly, pulling her into a fierce hug. She smelled of home and shampoo and the faint, familiar scent of her perfume. “Jenny. Oh, Jenny, baby. You did it.”
Dr. Vance quietly slid a box of tissues across the desk and pretended to look at her screen, granting them a moment of privacy in the little box of a room.
When Jenny could breathe again, she sat up, mopping her face with a wad of tissues. She looked at Catriona, whose own eyes were glistening. “You did this,” Jenny whispered, her voice wrecked. “You gave this to me.”
Catriona shook her head, wiping under her own eyes with her thumb. “We all did. Together.” She took a sharp, steadying breath and turned back to the doctor, her nurturing demeanor snapping back into pragmatic mode. “Friday. What time? And what does she need to do until then? Prenatals? Restrictions?”
As Catriona took down the instructions, Jenny sat back in the chair. She placed a hand low on her abdomen, over the ache that was no longer a ghost, but the beginning of a fact. A life. Aidan’s life, growing in her darkness.
The fear was still there, a sharp-edged companion. But underneath it, warm and undeniable, was a current of pure, animal triumph. Her body, which had been a tomb of disappointment, was now a vessel. It had accepted the gift. It had taken him in, all of him, and it had begun to build something.
They walked out of the office, past the nurse’s station, down the hall. The fluorescent lights still buzzed. The plastic chairs in the waiting room still looked unforgiving. But everything was different.
In the lobby, by the cracked payphone, Catriona stopped and faced her. “Okay,” she said, exhaling a huge breath. “Okay. What now? Do you want to call Mark?”
Jenny’s phone felt like a brick in her purse. She thought of his hopeful, tired face on their last video call. The news would electrify him. It would also be a lie by omission so vast it would swallow everything. “Not yet,” she said. “I can’t… I need to sit with it first. Just us.”
Catriona nodded, understanding. “Do you want to come over? We can just… be. Or I can take you home.”
Jenny looked out the glass doors at the washed-out morning. The world was going about its business. Cars passed. A dog walked by on a leash. And inside her, a cluster of cells was dividing. “I want to tell Aidan,” she said, surprising herself. “I mean, you’ll tell him, but… I feel like I should be there. When he knows.”
Catriona studied her for a long moment, then a slow, complicated smile touched her lips—part pride, part awe, part something Jenny couldn’t name. “Yeah,” Catriona said. “Yeah, you should.”
She linked her arm through Jenny’s, and together, they pushed through the heavy doors, leaving the clinic’ chill behind, stepping into the uncertain, blazing light of a new world.