HAPPY FOREVER AFTER

Two days later, Emma woke up feeling nauseous. She got up from the bed and ran to the bathroom where she threw up violently enough to alarm herself.

Great. She thought as she got ready for work. This was a really bad time to fall sick. The last thing she needed right now was to feel weak. She had missed work for days and now she had to take care of all of it at once.

She made a mental note to stop at the pharmacy after work.

Except that the pills she bought did nothing. She still felt the same way two days later and that was when she began to think that maybe… Just maybe… She could be pregnant.

But it couldn’t be. She thought. They used a condom and they only stopped when she started taking the pill. She didn’t want to believe it, so she spent a lot of time looking up exotic diseases that might cause abnormal breast tenderness and nausea without a fever.

She bought a pregnancy test on her way from work and it took a lot to actually take the test. She was scared. But the test just confirmed her fears. It was positive.

Trying to think, Emma took a deep breath and dropped the test in the bathroom sink. Maybe it was wrong. She tried to persuade herself that these tests could be faulty. This couldn’t be happening to her right now. Not when she was trying to get over Daniel. She hadn’t seen him since he ended things with her. And she was a bit relieved. It made things a bit better.. A bit easier. But now this! She decided to go see a doctor. The test was definitely wrong.

The next day she was in the doctor’s office.

“A negative could be a false negative,” the doctor warned when she realized she hadn’t even missed her cycle yet. “But a positive is almost certainly a positive.”

Even now, armed with that warning, as the doctor sat across from her wearing her white coat and a pleasant yet very much not joking look on her face, and said the words, “You are pregnant,” Emma was still thinking, But it could be norovirus.

The doctor prescribed prenatal vitamins.

Emma thought about all the times she and Daniel hadn’t used a condom and asked herself for the hundredth time how she could have been so stupid. With Daniel, it was like her senses had gone for a walk. She had put so much faith in the pill. She should have been more careful. She thought.

Well, she was pregnant. Nothing couldn’t change that.

Dammit!

She went to her office and sat in her chair, staring at a blank screen. There was no point in turning on the laptop. No way could she get her head around work today. She didn’t even know why she was sitting there. Instinctive, probably, putting herself in the place where she was comfortable, tapping out words on a keyboard.

But there was only one mountainous word in her mind, blocking out the flow of any others.

Pregnant.

The shock of it drained her of any sense of purpose. She hadn’t recognised the symptoms. How could she, knowing nothing about pregnancy, and not even suspecting such a cataclysmic cause to feeling off? She hadn’t been sleeping well-too much churning over memories of Daniel Rohan. And eating too much comfort food, then feeling queasy in the morning.

Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.

The word was playing like a song in her head. She was going to be a mother. And Daniel Rohan was the father. Never mind that the pill was ninety nine percent safe from falling pregnant. Daniel Rohan had beaten that percentage in two months of intense sexual action. Or maybe her own body had treacherously welcomed him beyond the point of stopping anything, because what had happened between them was so…so extraordinary.

She shut the laptop, got her things and went home, feeling drained. Daniel Rohan was the father of her baby. Was she going to tell him? What would he say… Or think? Was he going to want the baby?… She wasn’t even sure she did. He didn’t even want her. He definitely wasn’t going to want the baby. Good job, Emma. She thought. Good job. She had created this whole awkward situation for herself.

She didn’t know what to do.. Or think. So she dropped her bag in the living room and took off her shoes. Then she went to the bathroom without taking off her clothes, then she turned on the shower.

She sat under it and did what she had been doing the past few days… She cried.

————–

After dinner, Emma lay on her bed and shut her eyes. There was a cold hard lump in her throat and she wanted to cry again and couldn’t. Strange – but now she remembered another time, years ago when she had lain like this – felt like this -even though she had been a little girl.

A picture of herself at that age struggled across her disordered mind. She was a child in a scarlet coat standing in the garden. She had a scarlet beret over her head, underneath which emerged two short spiky plaits. The little girl was staring down at a heap of snow, fast melting in the strong sunlight. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she was crying, crying :

“Oh my snowman. My snowman. He’s all melted”.

And there was her mom hurrying down the path towards the little girl. She stopped and lifted the child in her arms and carried her towards the house. Then she set her on her knee and said :

“Stop crying now, dear. You will make yourself ill if you go on like that”

“But my snowman. He has melted. My lovely snowman. I spent all morning building him”.

Her mom’s face was very wise and sad. She said, “I’m afraid he’s gone, honey. Perhaps you are too young yet to understand the meaning of these words, but listen. A wise man named Scott once said : We build statues of snow, and weep to see them melt. That is life, my dear”.

But the little girl had been too young to understand. She had gone on wailing :Content from NôvelDr(a)ma.Org.

“My snowman, mom. I want him”.

“Listen, Emma, I will try to explain” her mom had said. “If you want to build a man who will not melt in the sunlight, then you must build him from brick or stone or some material that will last forever. The sea will always wash away your sand castles just as the sun will always melt your snowmen… Now, you had a lot of pleasure building him yesterday and you were very happy while you worked. Why not build another one today. There is still plenty of snow on the ground “.

Emma had stopped crying and stared at her mother from large, wet eyes.

” Will he be gone tomorrow morning, mom? ” she asked.

” I’m afraid so, darling. You must be prepared for that if you make a statue from snow “.

” Then I will never build another snowman again” vowed the five year old Emma.

Now, years later, as she lay there on her bed, she realized that there had been other snowmen -at home, at school, the guys she had dated -and the last of them was Daniel.

She buried her head in the pillow.