Page 61 of The Bratva's Innocent Pregnant Bride
She looked down at the jeans, t-shirt, and sweater that she’d been wearing when I found her and shrugged. “I guess they’re a little dirty, but that’s the least of my worries right now.”
With that said, she covered her mouth and went still, fighting a new wave of nausea. I cradled her to me, starting to feel real fear. What if this wasn’t just a virus? Furious that I hadn’t insisted she go to the hospital the night before, I kept my hand locked around hers as I drove to the closest emergency room.
“That asshole might have seriously hurt you when he hit you with his car,” I told her.
She shook her head. “Nothing hurts, I just feel like my stomach is turning inside out. And it was fine for a while…”
She managed to smirk at me, her cheeks turning a much healthier shade of pink on top of the waxy luster of illness. Then I silently cursed myself for our robust antics. I simply couldn’t control myself around her, and I might have added to her injuries.
She poked me in the arm, as I silently pulled into the hospital parking garage. She gave me a curious look, eyes wide. “I’m really fine,” she said. “You’ll see.”
I slid my hand behind her head to pull her close, but her stomach gurgled dangerously and she lurched out the door, puking on the concrete.
So much for being fine.
Chapter 40 - Paisley
Oh shit. Oh, damn it. I stared at the doctor, an intern who couldn’t have been much more than five or six years older than me. I repeated her words in my head, but they didn’t make sense. I wasn’t fine. Not anywhere close to it.
I cast my mind back to when I started feeling like crap. It seemed to come on quickly, but I had been so stressed out for the last few weeks it was hard to remember what normal felt like. I glanced at the door of the exam room, firmly closed, though I was certain Dan was hovering nearby in the hall outside. I had very adamantly kept him out for my examination, waiting alone while they took my blood and prodded my abdomen and asked me a bunch of questions.
Now the doctor came in with her electronic pad, blinking patiently as I stared at her with my mouth hanging down to my chest.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “There’s literally no way.”
A corner of her lip turned up. “Have you had unprotected sex lately?” My silence and the burning red color that infused my cheeks was all the answer she needed. “Then I assure you it’s entirely possible.”
I looked at the door again, letting my hand rest against my stomach under the embarrassing hospital robe that flapped open in the back and chilled my shoulder blades. Or maybe that was reality sinking in.
Pregnant?
“Listen,” I said, leaning toward the doctor like I could bargain my way out of her diagnosis. “It’s just been shy of three weeks since I first… you know. Ever. In my life.”
She didn’t seem overly shocked by that and shrugged. “The blood test can detect the presence of the pregnancy hormone very early on. It’s incredibly accurate. Have you also been feeling abnormal levels of fatigue? Maybe headaches?”
“I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,” I said. “All that could be stress. My nausea could be stress.”
“Sure. But you’re still pregnant,” the doctor said. “Keep food on your stomach and that will help. If you go ahead, the sickness should pass by the end of the first trimester. I can give you some antinausea medication that might help as well.”
She was right that I had felt better for a while after I ate the toast earlier. She gave me a long look and I was glad the red marks around my throat from Agent Pierce’s strangling grip were completely faded. She might have felt the need to question me about the big, angry looking Russian pacing back and forth outside the door.
I lay back on the exam table and stared at the ceiling, absently listening to the doctor’s further instructions, telling me I could get any information I needed on how to proceed from the nurse’s station.
Wait. What? I realized she had already mentioned if I decided to go ahead, and now she was alluding I might want information on how to proceed? I sat up so fast my stomach lurched again, but I ignored it.
“I want this baby,” I said. It was a knee jerk reaction, not thought out at all. And probably the stupidest thing I ever said or thought in my whole life.
What the hell? I was being hunted by an evil corporation. That didn’t end just because Agent Pierce was out of the equation. As soon as Gavril Bocharov and whoever else was running the show found out that I escaped and their dirty fedwas rotting in that warehouse, they would just send someone else after me. And now I wanted to bring a baby into it?
The doctor smiled, and patted my knee. “Well, that’s fine. We can set you up with an obstetrician.”
Ha. Like I could make the appointments while I was on the run. This was another problem I didn’t need, but the more it sank in, the more I couldn’t view it as a problem. When I closed my eyes I could picture this hazy little one who was barely a speck right now, laughing and running around with his or her cousins. Sharing future Christmases, sticking chubby little hands into cookie dough and flying down snowy hills in a sled, firmly and safely held in Dan’s arms.
None of that was going to happen, and when I opened my eyes, the doctor was turning away to head out of the room.
“Don’t say anything to my, uh, boyfriend,” I said, forcing a smile that felt like a grimace. “I want to surprise him. For Christmas.”
“That’s sweet,” she said, already mentally done with me and gearing up for the next in the endless line of patients she had to see that day.
