The nurse tittered, and left Wynn to curse the invention of specimen cups. All this rigmarole just to get some pills that would delay the onset of her period! And there wasn’t even a guarantee that they’d work this late in her cycle, either. She’d just have to hope Evan’s eternal amorous nature triumphed over his squeamishness about blood, and they could laugh about this stupid test afterwards, tucked into bed together. Setting the cup of straw-yellow fluid on a paper towel inside the little cabinet, Wynn washed her hands and reassembled her clothes. By the time she’d closed the clinic’s glass door behind herself, she felt better. Writing herself a note on her BlackBerry, she congratulated herself on yet another obstacle met and vanquished. Things were looking up.
She missed the call she had never even expected. Her morning had been busy, with none of her tasks taking place at her desk, and her phone had been ignored in its cradle. Scooping it up as she contemplated the logistics of getting across town to the clinic on her lunch hour, she thumbed through the messages collected in her inbox. She spent a precious moment listening to Evan describing his morning, murmuring an “aaaw” at his ending “Wish you could see this! I love you.”
Playing its bony xylophone, an icy finger of dread ran up her spine as she spotted the next message in her queue. “Evergreen Health,” the Caller ID screen read, and praying that it was just the pharmacy, Wynn hesitantly lifted the phone to her ear. An animated female voice read a standard privacy message, then declared that the results of her lab test were in, and would she please return their call? Wondering what could have prompted this message, Wynn punched in the number, her fingers shaking so badly that she had to listen again and scribble the number down on her desk calendar-slash-doodle pad.
The phone rang. And rang. A robotic voice answered, and Wynn squeezed the “End” button automatically. Gripped by a horrible certainty, she dropped her phone into the patch pocket of her smart woolen cardigan and galloped for the closest exit. She passed a pool of secretaries as she went, and heard a surprised wave of laughter as she barreled out the door. Her cheeks flamed in shame, but she couldn’t afford to stop now: couldn’t make her feet obey her, anyway. There was a Safeway tucked into the shopping center two blocks away, a rather convenience-store sized one, but it would have what she wanted. Needed. She needed to know this before she could have a voice read these results to her.
The pharmacy section seemed to be a mile from the automatic doors. Barely in control of herself, Wynn confronted the aisles, stuffed with a mind-boggling collection of nostrums, over the counter aids, and vitamins. Racing up the aisles, she could not find what she needed: it wasn’t by the feminine hygiene supplies, those magenta and passionfruit-pink plastic bags of sanitary napkins, nor was it by the condoms, in their black and gold boxes. Not for the first time, she wondered if it was any coincidence that condom boxes looked like whiskey bottles. Then, a young woman in a white coat cleared her throat behind Wynn, making her leap nearly a foot into the air.
“You look like you’re racing the clock,” the young woman said, one hand planted on her hip.
“I...I guess I am,” Wynn said, weakly. “Draconian lunch break rules. Um, do you work here?”
“Nah,” the young woman teased. “I just like having my name pinned to the outside of my clothes and bugging people. Yes, I’m a pharmacy aide. Can I help you?”
Wynn couldn’t restrain her nervous smile. “I, um. I need a pregnancy test,” she muttered, red sieging her cheeks.
“Oh,” the young woman said, turning on her heel. “We have to keep those behind the counter. We have to keep so much flaming stuff back here,” she said, darkly, nodding to a cheery display of infant formula, “that I swear there’s no actual room for the pharmacy.” Rolling her eyes, she bent down a moment. “Which sort do you think you want? We have early response tests, tests that practically guess the day you conceived, tests that probably swear they make babies smarter...” She winked, and came up with a pink box in one hand and one with a wide blue ribbon in the other. “And you know,” she said, shaking the boxes, “these, because they’re for those early gender guessers.”
Wynn just stared. “Um. Either? Both,” she said, finally. “And um, I need two or three...?”
“Why’s that?” the pharmacy tech asked, dropping the boxes into Wynn’s orange plastic basket. “You’re gonna be just as lucky – or unlucky, I guess – on one as the other. They’re pretty accurate tests.”
“I can’t be pregnant,” Wynn announced, feeling a vague panic somewhere in the pit of her stomach. “I really just can’t. I haven’t thrown up once.”
The tech grinned at her. “You know, only half of women get morning sickness? I never have. So if you’re worried about it, why don’t you take these, too,” she said, offering a brown plastic jar of vitamins to Wynn. The yellow label read “Prenatal Formula,” and Wynn dropped her hand immediately, her eyes wide. “I’m not ready for this,” she wailed.
“Honey, no one ever is,” the clerk said, gently. “Come on, I’ll ring you up.”
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