Chapter Text
Barbara yanked her hoodie over her head, shoved her hands deep in her pockets, and marched through the automatic doors of the 24hour drugstore at the corner of Mulberry and Green. She ignored the cashier’s lackluster greeting and kept her eyes on her sneakers. She really should tie that shoelace already but she’d finally managed to get to the store and she didn’t want to stop now. It had taken four false starts already and this, this really needed to get done. Barbara sighed when she found the right aisle. She looked all around, but there was no one else there save the cashier, who’d started flipping through a magazine. Barbara stepped before the pregnancy tests.
Taking a few was a quick, relatively painless task if she didn’t think about why she was doing it too much. On her way back to the front of the store, Barbara stopped in the candy aisle and picked out a chocolate bar, then another, and then a bag of sour gummy candies. Then some peppermints. By the time she finished, her arms were so full of sweets that what she’d originally come in the store for was buried. Though, she still felt the smooth boxes resting on the palms of her hands underneath everything else.
The cashier raised an eyebrow over an otherwise disinterested face when Barbara dumped everything down on the counter. She returned the expression with a frown, a part of her daring the older man to comment on the items she’d picked out for purchase. He didn’t, though he did let out a suspicious huff at her. Barbara glared. The cashier scanned the first candy bar and dropped it in a waiting plastic bag.
It was a quick walk back to Barbara’s apartment building, made even quicker by her rushed pace.
“Hey, great you’re back, James the hot guy has been leaving messages like nonstop on the answering machine since—”
Barbara walked by her roommate relaxing on their apartment’s dilapidated sofa, Gina, without a second glance. She entered the bathroom, closed and locked the door behind her, and dropped her plastic bag of candy and tests on the floor. Barbara leaned on the door and slowly sank to the floor. On the other side of the door, she could hear Gina turn down the TV’s volume and the slap of her slippers as she approached the bathroom.
“Hey Barb? You ok in there?” Gina knocked twice on the door. “Look, I was just kidding around with the “hot guy” comment. You know me, I’d never steal your boyfriend. He’s not my type anyway. Plus I think Rachel would kill me if I dumped her for a guy.”
“Not now, Gina.” Barbara closed her eyes. “Look, I’ll be out in twenty minutes, ok?”
She wasn’t, but she did unlock the door so Gina could get in. When the door opened, Barbara was sitting on the floor, leaning against the cool, smooth surface of the bathtub. She didn’t look up or acknowledge Gina’s presence. Her thoughts had interestingly devolved into static. At first, her roommate approached her, but then stopped when she reached the minefield of pregnancy tests scattered across the floor. Gina bent down, picked one up, and looked at it.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
“It was right after he came back from Paris,” Barbara whispered. “James was so happy that a lead finally worked out so he got to recover one of the artifacts for his boss’s collection. I was just excited to see him again since he’d been gone for so long.” She stared at the ceiling light. It flickered. The bulb would need changing soon. One of them would have to go to the store to buy lightbulbs. They’d run out last week. She’d burned through a couple staying up late putting together materials for her secondary applications. “We went out to this fancy, upscale restaurant and then, you know, back to his place.”
“Have you told him yet?” Gina sat down next to her, close enough to be in hugging range, but far enough that Barbara still had space if she wanted it.
“No, Gina. Really? When in the past half hour did I have the chance? It’s not like I can drag the landline all the way into the bathroom.” Barbara glowered at her.
“Oh, sorry. I just thought. He’s been leaving a lot of messages. Like creepy stalker a lot.” Gina ran her hand through her hair. “It’s kinda been freaking me out.” She winced. “Sorry. You wanna go hear the messages? Or call him?” Gina took in Barbara’s expression. “Or I’ll just be quiet now and let you decide what to do next.”
Barbara groaned. “You’re fine, Gina. I’m just…I’m going to med school!” She threw her hands out in front of her for emphasis. “Med school!” Barbara put her head in her hands. “I…I don’t…I mean, I like the idea of being a mother. Some day. And yes, with James. But, med school!” Her grip tightened around fistfuls of hair. She let out a long breath. “I can’t afford both.”
Tentatively, Gina reached out and wrapped an arm around Barbara. “Yeah, but James works for a rich dude who pays him like bazillions to search for some archeological site stuff, right? If the guy can take you out to the most expensive places in town, he can definitely pay for baby stuff.”
“Sure,” It wasn’t quite an agreement, but Barbara didn’t really want to expand on that thought. Personally, she’d only met James’s boss, Mr. Scaarbach once, when she’d been heading into and he’d been heading out of James’s apartment. They hadn’t exchanged any words, but he’d looked at her with the same disapproving frown the more well-off clients of her parents’ computer repair store always gave her back when she’d worked the register as a teen. She couldn’t say she liked the guy or understood why James insisted he had to work for him. The likeliness of her boyfriend getting a sort of “I’m having a kid and need money” raise was slim in her mind.
“Look, Gina, can we just go watch TV or something? I don’t want really want to think about this right now.” Barbara pulled out of Gina’s embrace. She collected the pregnancy tests from the floor and shoved them in the trash. Then, she stood and collected the plastic bag still full of candy.
Gina watched Barbara do all this with a pensive expression. “You know I’ll always be here if you ever need to talk. Okay?”
“Okay.” Barbara helped her roommate up. Together they walked into their living room, bickered over whether or not Gina got to eat any of the candy Barbara purchased, concluded that Gina could have one chocolate bar and one bag of gummy worms, and flicked through TV channels until they found the pilot episode of a new show called Mistrial and Error.
It was when the credits started that the phone rang. Barbara picked it up.
“Hey babe, I’ve been trying to reach you. I know we had plans for our anniversary next month, but there’s been a new lead into one of the pieces of the bri—artifacts and I’m going to have to travel. Italy, can you believe it? I’ll bring you back something nice, I swear.”
Barbara didn’t catch most of what James said. Firstly, because of how fast he spoke. Secondly because, upon hearing his voice, her mind made a quick decision. Rather than wait for an opportune moment or build up to the point, she halted his stream of words with,
“James, I’m pregnant.”