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Emma threw herself onto the sofa and hung her head over the back with a groan. “I can’t believe my Philosophy professor assigned us another frickin’ essay.”
“Bummer,” said Spinner as he tossed some veggies in a pan over the stove. “I’d love help you, but Philosophy isn’t exactly my fort.”
“Forte,” Emma corrected.
“That too.”
“It’s super annoying because we just handed in essays not that long ago!” she continued, leaning forward now and rummaging in her backpack for her textbook.
“Really?” Spinner replied. “I don’t remember you complaining about an essay recently."
Emma didn’t find her textbook, but pulled out her planner instead. “Yeah, look.” She began thumbing through the pages. “Oh. Well. I guess it was actually six weeks ago.”
“Time flies,” Spinner teased with a laugh, tipping the veggies into two bowls over top of some rice. “Here’s dinner.”
Emma didn’t get up right away, though, tracing her finger over a pink circle she’d drawn over that date six weeks ago. “Um, Spinner….”
“Yeah?” Spinner tried to hand her the bowl, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention. He set it down on the coffee table and joined her on the couch to see if he could figure out what had her so transfixed on that agenda book.
“I haven’t had my period in six weeks,” she said, face having drained of color.
“Is that bad?”
“I’m supposed to have them every four weeks!” Emma said, finally looking up to meet his eyes.
“So, like, you’re late? What’s the problem?”
“What if I’m…” She whispered the next word, “pregnant.”
“You’re on birth control, though, right? So you should be fine.” Spinner gave her an uneasy smile, hoping he was doing a decent job of reassuring her and hoping that she’d try to reassure him too.
“I am, but I forgot a few days and had to take two pills on the same day to catch up. What if that got everything messed up?” She closed the agenda and tossed it on the coffee table next to her steaming dinner. She began pacing around the room. “Oh God, I can’t be pregnant.”
“You’ve been stressed lately,” Spinner replied. “What if that’s why you missed your period? That can happen, right?”
“Maybe,” said Emma. “Oh, I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Quit freaking out! You’re freaking me out!” Spinner stood up, too and began pacing behind her.
“Do we even want kids? We haven’t talked about whether we want kids!”
“I want kids,” Spinner said.
“You do?” Emma asked, pausing her rapid walking for a moment.
“I think so. But not right now. Oh God, you can’t be pregnant. Well, we have options right?”
“Abortion?” Emma clarified.
Spinner shrugged and nodded.
Emma shook her head.
“I thought you were a feminist or whatever!” Spinner seemed exasperated.
“I don’t see what that has to do with getting an abortion. I just don’t think I would feel comfortable with it.” She wasn’t as opposed to the idea as she had been when she was a kid, but she still wrestled with the concept.
Mulling this over, Emma went back to wearing a trench in the floors, just a half a kilometer per hour away from jogging at this point. “I didn’t even think I could get pregnant!”
“I didn’t think I could get you pregnant!”
“Really?” Emma paused again. “Why?”
“The nut cancer,” Spinner said. “I’ve only got one ball left, so I figured my swim team would be a few men short, and probably slow. What about you?”
There was no point in hiding the truth from her husband. “I had anorexia, so I might have done some permanent damage to my body.”
“If you are pregnant, I guess it’s a miracle.”
Spinner might have been joking, but as Emma started pacing around again, she couldn’t outrun that notion. Was this a miracle? In spite of everything, was this supposed to happen? “I need to take a pregnancy test first thing tomorrow morning,” she concluded. She had to be sure.
Spinner leaned against their bathroom sink while Emma sat on the toilet with the pregnancy test he bought her the night before in her hands between her knees. “Longest three minutes of my life,” she said, watching the pink dye creep across the test.
“Is this a watched pot situation?” Spinner asked. “Should you maybe not look at it?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said as the control line turned dark pink. She turned it over as the dye was just beginning to reach the part of the window where the test line would be. She turned her head toward the ceiling as if praying, but she didn’t know what words she’d even say to God, if she even believed that He cared or existed. A pregnancy would be awfully inconvenient, unplanned, disruptive. But some little part of her heart wondered what it would be like to experience a miracle.
The egg timer in Spinner’s hand began buzzing.
“I can’t look,” Emma said, handing the test to Spinner.
Spinner took a deep breath before turning it over in his hand. “One line,” he said.
“I’m not pregnant?” Emma asked, snatching the test back from him to study it. She’d heard of “faint lines,” and wanted to be sure there was absolutely no trace of a positive. But the test was bone white aside from the magenta control line. It was really, truly negative. “Well, I guess that’s that.” She stood and pulled up her pants.
“No kidding,” said Spinner, pointing to the toilet bowl.
Emma felt a slight tinge of embarrassment at the sight of the blood in the toilet before remembering that a period is nothing to be ashamed of. “What timing,” she said as she flushed and grabbed a tampon from the cabinet.
There was a weird energy in the air, like there wasn’t enough oxygen to go around or the ambient noise of the loft had gone silent. “Why do I feel disappointed?” Spinner asked, breaking through that numbness.
Emma’s eyes welled a little bit. “I don’t know.” Her voice wobbled.
Spinner grabbed her and held her closer to him. “We’ll have our miracle someday,” he said. “When it’s the right time.”
“Yeah,” Emma agreed, feeling rather foolish, but glad knowing that Spinner felt the same way.