Page 62 of The Circle

“Wait,” Danny cuts in, “right. Morning sickness. Maybe you throwing up is something else?”

“Whaddayou mean?”

“I mean, it’s not morning, so…”

Jesus, he’s so adorably stupid right now I just wanna punch the shit out of him and eat his whole head. “Dude, it’s just called that because… I don’t know why. But it can happen any time. Also, it’s morning somewhere right now and I’m not sure my body knows what time zone it’s in anymore. It barely knows what planet we’re on.”

He takes this all in and then says, “Okay. So. Let’s get you a pregnancy test ASAP.”

“K. But I’m not sure how we do that at present. You may have noticed we’re here.” I gesture.

“Yeah, well,” Danny says, standing up, his beautiful, naked form rising above me, “what did Nigel say? Tending to the passengers’ every want, need, and desire is the something or other of their service?”

“I don’t think that means—” But before I can finish, he’s off into the other room and I hear him pick up the phone. “Hey, Nigel? Yeah… No, it’s good… Is it possible you have a, uh, pregnancy test lying around somewhere?”

There’s a pause and I try to imagine what’s being said on the other end of the line. After a moment, I hear Danny say, “Hold on, lemme ask.” He pokes his head back into the bathroom and says to me, “Preference on which kind?”

“Seriously?”

“He says they have blood and urine—Oh, wait.” He listens to whatever Nigel’s saying now, then pulls the receiver away from his mouth again. “Never mind,” he says, “since there’s not a doctor on board he says he wouldn’t feel comfortable administering a blood test. You okay with a urine one?”

I stare at him a little dumbfounded, then say, “Yeah,” in a half-cough, half-whisper sort of a way.

“Yeah, Nigel,” he echoes into the phone, “that’s fine. Okay. Thanks.” He hangs the phone up and steps back into the doorway. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

Danny looks at me. I look at him. And then I ask, because I have to, “Still think this whole thing isn’t all that insane?”

He waffles for a tick before answering, “I hear your point.”

Placing the test stick on the edge of the basin, I feel a wave of anxiety sweep over me. I’ve done this before. And we all know how that ended. I chew at my nails.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Danny says. He’s dressed again. He threw back on the same clothes we came here wearing. Nigel noticed when Danny opened the door. He asked if we wanted them laundered, but Danny just took the pregnancy test, said thanks, and shut the door in Nigel’s smiling face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Whatever happens, it’s gonna be fine. If you’re pregnant, amazing. If you’re not, well, we’ll just have to keep trying until you are.” He searches my eyes. “Hey,” he says, taking my chin in his hand. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“No sense worrying about the future?”

“Exactly right,” he answers, still smiling. “Or dwelling on the past. Not helpful.”

I appreciate him trying to be encouraging, but he wasn’t there. He didn’t see how awful it was. Wasn’t by my side when the doctor said, “Incompetent cervix,” wasn’t there to stare at the baby room we had all ready to go that would never have a child to put in it, never…

He just wasn’t there.

I remember that, at the time, I felt as though the baby I lost was really Danny’s. I had crafted some kind of narrative for myself that the child I was carrying was really to be Danny’s child. And I think I did that because he was gone. Because I wanted him to be with us and I missed him so badly. I suppose, in my mind, I concocted this story that once Danny found out Alec and I had had a child, that would be the thing that would bring him back to us.

I’d tell him that I had had it, it would compel him to return to our life together, and we’d live happily ever after. And the more I entertained that fantasy, the more I focused on the life that was growing inside me being ours. Mine and his.

But when I lost it, that daydream disappeared and the nightmare reality settled in. And in the stark light of inescapable truth, it was most definitely Alec’s. The miscarriage was all on him.

It wasn’t, of course, although the way he dealt with it was, and in those weeks and months after, all I wanted was Danny there to help me through. And since he wasn’t, couldn’t be, that’s when I went insane. Justifiable or not, I most certainly lost my shit there for a while.

A castle. A meeting. A man with a scar.

The same sharp but ultimately still useless memory fragments keep popping up. Doing nothing to help me and everything to piss me off and make me nervous.

But, anyway, that’s all why I think it’s reasonable to believe that Danny might not be right when he says everything’s “gonna be fine.”

I want it to be. Obviously I do. I want everything to be fine. But, y’know, that shit’s not really up to me. Because if this thing turns positive in about thirty seconds, and Danny and I have made a baby, then the fantasy of how I wanted life to go before—having a kid; doing it with Danny, my first love and longest love, specifically; and the three of us still coming together, being together, to watch it be born and grow and…

Then everything becomes so dangerously close to being a reality that if anything were to jeopardize that… that might be it. As strong as I am, as much grit as I have, as resilient as I know myself to be… I don’t know if I could come back from that.

I realize I’m holding my breath. I don’t know why. No, that’s bullshit. Of course I do. But it doesn’t matter now. I can let it out because…

A “plus” sign appears.

I stare at it for a second. I knew it would be. Positive, I mean. I know myself, my body, and I just… knew. But here it is. Visual evidence.

There’s just the briefest second where I think, Let’s take one again to be sure. But that’s both dumb and unnecessary. I know what I know and now Danny knows it too.

He picks up the stick, looks at it, looks at me, then drops the stick in the sink and grabs me, envelops me, smothers me in a hug. He buries his face in my hair and kisses the side of my neck.

I am pregnant. Again. This time with Danny Fortnight’s baby. I am standing here on a five-star luxury hotel on wheels, alone with a person I love and with whom I just found out we’ve made a baby, and he’s so happy he can’t even speak, just holds me tightly, making sure I feel him and his happiness and love and our connection… and it’s all so perfect it’s like it’s from a storybook. And as I realize this and take it all in and let the reality settle, the feeling that courses over me is utter and absolute…

Terror.