Page 48 of The Grumpy Doc's Surprise Delivery

Tom is going to be a great dad too. He’s promised to travel less once the baby is born, but even though he is away often, he still cares for his wife from afar. They talk on the phone every night, and he always leaves her food in the freezer for dinner. This time, he’s made chicken noodle soup, and Tom’s soups are always to die for.

Phoebe steers me to the bathroom and sits me on the stool by the bath. I pout at her as she rummages in the cupboard, sitting awkwardly so she can reach to the back and rejecting all the help I try to offer.

Eventually, she throws a box out. It lands on the floor by my feet, skating across the tiles. A test.

“You good to take it?” she asks. “Or will you need help?”

I try my best not to smile, but her dumb, mood-lightening joke does just that and I huff at her to show I’m not happy. “I think I can manage to pee by myself, thank you.”

She squeezes my shoulder and leaves me. With shaking hands, I open the box, read the instructions three times to put off the task, and then do the deed.

The second I’m done, I open the door and Phoebe comes back, gesturing for me to follow her to the kitchen where soup is waiting.

“Your husband is the best,” I say as I pick up my spoon.

“I agree.” Phoebe grins.

We eat quietly, waiting for the timer to go off, and when it does, Phoebe forces me to sit at the table so she can go and retrieve the results. She walks away and then walks back, her face completely neutral.

“Tell me,” I demand. “Stop being enigmatic.”

“You’re having a baby,” she says simply, and time itself stops.

“It’s positive?” I whisper.

She nods and shows me the unmistakable pair of lines on the test. “It’s positive.”

“I’m pregnant?” She nods again, and time snaps back into place, making my head spin. “What am I going to do?”

Phoebe comes closer and wraps her arms around my shoulders. “You do whatever you want to do. If you want to keep it, you know Tom and I will be family to you. You won’t be alone. And the same is true if you don’t.”

“Of course I want to keep it,” I blurt out. “I want my baby.”

“Then you will both be loved,” says Phoebe, squeezing me with a fire that makes it impossible to argue against. I will be loved. I can’t even start to mope about the fact that I won’t be.

But I can be furious with the father. “What am I going to tell Liam?”

Phoebe sighs. “I don’t know. Are you going to tell him?”

I open my mouth, but no words come out. Before this week, the answer would have been yes, a thousand times yes. But he’s been so flaky with me lately, and he hasn’t said a word since I decided I wouldn’t message him again.

Can I really trust someone like that to be reliable? To be a father?

He didn’t want commitment, and a baby is just about the biggest commitment you can have. How can I expect him to want this?

“I should,” I say at last. “Because despite everything, I think he has a right to know.”

“Does he?” Phoebe asks.

“Yes,” I say, the certainty growing in my mind. “I don’t know how or when, and I don’t know if he’ll care, but he deserves to know. I would feel awful if I didn’t at least give my baby a chance to know their father. If I tell him and he wants nothing to do with us, that’s on him, not me.”

“You are the strongest, bravest person I know,” says Phoebe, squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe. “You will get through this. We’ll do it together. And when you’re ready to tell him, we will. He’d be a fool to reject you. He already is.”

“I hope so,” I mumble into her belly. Her baby moves; I can feel their feet against my face.

At least my baby will have a friend to grow up with.

It just won’t be the same as having a father.

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