Oh God, pregnant. I’m pregnant.
“How am I going to tell him that after all these years, we’re back to square one again? Less than one. Zero. How am I going to tell him that he’s got to wait another eighteen years before we go on that road trip he’s been planning? By then, they won’t let him drive because they’ll have taken away his driver’s license.”
The exaggeration made Dr. Kilpatrick laugh. “Jason’s what, one year old than you?” Laurel nodded, letting another from-the-bottom-of-her-toes sigh escape. “That makes him forty-six. I don’t think he’ll be ready to be put on an ice flow just yet. Besides, haven’t you heard? Forty-six is the new thirty-six.” She patted Laurel’s shoulder. “Forget about this early-retirement business,” she advised, referring to something Laurel had told her earlier about her husband’s plans. “It’s highly overrated. Being involved keeps you young. Babies keep you young,” she emphasized. “This way, he still has retirement to look forward to.” Crossing to the door, Dr. Kilpatrick paused for a moment, a fond expression on her face. “Sometimes, the looking-forward-to-something part is even better than actually getting that ‘something.’”
“You want to come home with me and explain that to him? Maybe he’ll believe it if he hears it coming from you.”
Her hand on the doorknob, Dr. Kilpatrick stopped and turned around. “What, that you’re pregnant?”
“No, that looking forward to something is better than having it.”
Dr. Kilpatrick smiled. “Look at the positive aspects—”
What possible positive aspects could there be about being pregnant at forty-five? “Right, I’ll be the oldest mother in kindergarten.”
The look the doctor gave her said she knew it was just the shock talking, nothing more. “No, you’re better off financially than you were when you had your other children. And you’re definitely more experienced. You know what to expect.”
“Yes, morning sickness for five months.” And one hell of an explosion when she broke the news. She couldn’t think of one person who was going to be happy about this unexpected twist.
“Afterward,” the doctor gently prodded. “Remember how afraid you were when you brought that first baby home? How you thought you’d drop and break him? How everything was this big mystery? Every rash, every cough had you fearing the worst? Now you’ll have the advantage because you’ll know what you’re doing.”
Laurel remembered the early years and, yes, she’d learned from them. Learned that she could survive and, most of all, learned to expect the unexpected.
She laughed drily. “Obviously you’ve had an easier time with motherhood than I have. Each one of the boys was different. Each one refused to play by the rules his brothers set down.” She had great kids, but it had been an uphill battle with each one of them. There’d never been any coasting, not even with the youngest one, Christopher, who’d been the most like her.
He wasn’t going to be the youngest one anymore, she suddenly thought. How was Christopher going to like that? “Every time I thought I knew what I was doing, I didn’t.” And it had been exhausting, physically and emotionally. Laurel raised her eyes to the doctor’s. “How am I going to go through that again?”
The doctor answered her question with a question. “Would you change anything if you could?”
“What do you mean?”
Just for a second, Dr. Kilpatrick moved back into the room. “If you could erase one of your sons, go back and not have him, would you?”
Laurel didn’t even stop to think. “No.”
It was obviously the answer the doctor had expected. “Then how do you know you won’t feel that way about this one?”
Laurel shook her head. Things were getting jumbled, twisted. “Because with this one, I’ll be forty-five years old. Because with this one, I won’t be able to run and play.”
The doctor opened her chart and glanced down at the notation she’d made earlier. “You still get in a game of tennis now and then, don’t you?”
It had been an exaggeration. Wishful thinking on her part. She was too busy with the demands of her career and personal life to spend much time on the courts. “More then than now.”
The doctor closed the chart again, accepting the correction and going from there. “Running is not a requirement with children.”
The hell it wasn’t, Laurel thought. “I guess your kids were less active than mine. Mine were born running.” At least it felt that way. “I get tired just thinking about it.” And then it suddenly dawned on her. “Is that why I’ve been feeling so tired lately? Because I’m pregnant?”
Dr. Kilpatrick’s smile filtered into her eyes. “That would be my diagnosis.”
One mystery cleared up—and she wished with all her heart that it’d had an easier solution. “I beat you to it. That means you can’t charge me.”
“All right,” Dr. Kilpatrick agreed, tongue in cheek. “I’ll just bill you for the urinalysis. And the friendly advice.”
She could use some advice, Laurel thought. Real advice. “Which is?”
“Enjoy.”
Laurel rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms before her. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to face a man who’s stockpiling tons of brochures on summer cabins from three different states.”
“He’ll be thrilled,” the doctor promised.
“He’ll be in shock,” Laurel countered. Real concern began to set in. What if the news was too much for Jason? “Got any smelling salts I can take with me?”
Dr. Kilpatrick opened the door. “You have my number. Call if you need me.”
Laurel laughed. “That’s all Jason needs. An ob-gyn attending to him.”
Laurel’s smile faded the moment the door was closed again. She slid off the table, trying to stay one step ahead of the numbing shock that threatened to completely swallow her up.
This was absurd.
Unreal.
How in heaven’s name could she be pregnant? Weren’t eggs supposed to dry up at her age? She slipped on her underwear, then hooked her bra. Wasn’t that what the whole ticking-biological-clock thing was all about? Having babies before it was too late? Before she couldn’t have any? It looked as if she could go on having babies until she was an octogenarian.
Laurel pulled her turtleneck sweater over her head, then punched through her arms.
“This breaking news,” she mumbled to herself in disbelief. “Eighty-seven-year-old Laurel Mitchell has just given birth to her twentieth baby. Someone stop this woman for the good of humanity.”
With her panty hose still in her hand, Laurel leaned her hip against the table and sighed. How had this happened? She knew how it happened, she upbraided herself, putting on first one leg, then the other. She’d gotten lax. At the end of last year, she’d given in to Jason’s pressure and finally stopped taking her birth control pills. He thought it wasn’t too much of a risk.
Well, guess what, big guy, we’re pregnant. How’s that for a risk?
She was on the cusp of menopause, experiencing her own personal heat waves while others were bundling up in sweaters and jackets. She’d assumed that her birthing years were over. That any occasional romp she enjoyed with her husband was deemed safe for all concerned.
Well, you deemed wrong, Laurie old girl.
Old girl.
God,