Page 32 of Bar Down, Baby

I nod as she continues talking about anti-nausea medications and keeping suckers on hand, but the bottom line is that in order for Megan to have morning sickness she’d have to be pregnant.

Megan is pregnant.

Did she know when she let me into her bed last week? How long has she been pregnant? Am I just some schmuck? And she didn’t want to call me because she knew it was a mistake?

The way she looked at me though, when she told me she couldn’t do casual, when I told her that it wasn’t casual, could never be casual between us—she wasn’t faking that. That meant something to her. It had to have.

Unless… she knew? And she couldn’t do casual because she’s going to be a mother? She wouldn’t do that… would she? My brain is spinning, fully catastrophizing, when I realize the nurse is still speaking.

“We’ll order an ultrasound so we can confirm,” she says, catching my attention. “Sometimes that’s what it takes for dads to feel like it’s real.” She wears a soft smile and I realize that I must look like a freaked out first-time dad. But I’ve seen an ultrasound. I’ve seen at least three of them.

“I, uh… I’m going to get some coffee,” I say, backing away.

She gives me a tight-lipped smile and nods. “Sounds good. I’ll see you later.”

I walk through the hall toward the cafeteria, and then I keep walking. The hospital smell is too much. It’s too clean, it’s too sweet, it’s too much like a gut punch. I end up at a coffee cart outside next to a fountain. I order an Americano and a mocha. Then, on second thought, I tell them to make the mocha decaf.

God, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know if this baby is mine. There’s no way she’d be feeling this sick this soon. It’s only been four days. And we used condoms. And she’s on the pill. She said she was back in April. But if she got pregnant in Seattle, the first weekend of April, she would know by now. It’s been two months.

The barista passes me my coffees as the reality hits me hard. It’s probably not mine. I haven’t fucked this up. I haven’t done anything to apologize for.

So then, why do I feel like shit? And why does this crippling, cloying feeling in my stomach feel so much like… disappointment?

CHAPTER13

MEGAN

The beeping wakes me up.You’d think it would be the tubes poked into my arms or the strange angle of the bed, but it’s a weird beeping sound.

“Silly girl.” A woman in scrubs with sweet brown eyes and curly hair hustles around me. “Did you knock that off your fingertip again?”

I look down at my hand, and sure enough, there’s a sensor wrapped in purple tape laying on the sheet next to my hand. She plucks it up and deftly repositions it on my fingertip. The machine stops beeping and numbers fill the screen again, telling her my heart is beating 62 times per minute.

“How do you feel?” she asks, cuffing my arm to take a blood pressure reading.

“Fine,” I say as I take stock of my surroundings. I slowly look around the empty room, noticing a jacket and two magazines sitting on a chair adjacent to the bed.

“Just fine?”

I flick my eyes to her and brace myself, but nothing happens. I don’t gag, I don’t heave, the room doesn’t spin.

“Huh,” I say to myself.

“Huh,” she repeats with a smirk as the cuff hugs my arm.

“I’m not vomiting.”

“We gave you some anti-nausea meds and have spent the better part of the day pumping fluids into you. You need to do your best not to let yourself get so dehydrated next time.”

“Next time?” I ask with a frown. “So did you figure out what it is?”

She stills, eyes focused on her chart, marking down whatever it is she reads off the cuff.

“Hmm, seventy-six over sixty. Low, but not too low. Good girl.”

“Thank you?” I’m not sure what else to say.

“Your man will be back soon. He went to get some coffee.”

---