How many sticks do you really have to pee on?

Welcome back to mine and D's relationship story.  If you've missed the first two parts, go check them out here and here.

It was Monday, February 21, 2005 and I was driving back to my office that morning.  By this time, I had taken a promotion and followed my boss to a bigger office which was closer to where D. lived but it was still a good hour and half to two hours away (depending on traffic).  We were still seeing each other almost every weekend and most of those weekends I would make the drive to see him.  He was the one with the busy life.  I just had my apartment and my two cats.  Outside of work, I knew no one so there was really no reason for him to come to see me in my apartment.  Sure, I lived at the beach.  There were plenty of things to do where I lived but he always seemed to have things that he needed to get done on the weekends.  So, it was me who fought the beach traffic and the military traffic (there were multiple military bases around where I lived at the time) for hours on Friday afternoons just so that I could travel to see him.

  Sure thing, honey.  No problem. 

It also meant that I was the one who would get up early on Monday mornings and drive back.  I would get ready at D.'s house and drive straight to work from his house.  Two-ish hours in the car on a Monday morning (every Monday morning!) is enough to start anyone's week off on a bad foot.  The only positive thing about that was that I didn't have to be at work until 10am on Mondays.  That's probably the only reason I put up with it for so long. 

Anyways, I was driving to work that morning and I started feeling pretty blah.  Not surprising though because we had gone out over the weekend and had partied pretty hard.  In fact, that Friday night I had drank far too much and had paid for it dearly on Saturday.  I pretty much spent the entire day in bed on Saturday being tired and nauseous.  On Sunday, we had driven around and looked at cars for D. since he was wanting to buy a new car and I can remember looking at myself in the side mirror thinking that I wouldn't be surprised if someone mistaked me for a walking corpse.  I looked awful.  I felt awful.  Anyways, when I started getting waves of nausea on Monday morning, I just figured that I was still hungover/sick from Friday night.  I went into work like normal and felt pretty crappy all morning.  About half-way into the afternoon, it dawned on me that most of my co-workers in the office had been off at one time or another the week before on account of a stomach virus.  "That's it!", I thought, "I'm not still sick from this weekend, I'm just getting what they had last week.  Duh!"  So, I got most of my work done for the day and I went home to rest.  The next day, I felt a little bit better but was super tired.  I just figured that my body was working really hard to fight off the virus and it was making me tired.  So, I went into work and explained to my boss that I was feeling a little better but that I was just a little bit tired.  He looked at me and said "Girl, you're not sick.  You're pregnant".  I think I looked at him and uttered a few four letter words that aren't appropriate for even this liberal blog.  It was at this point that he so kindly (and inappropriately, I might add) said "Look, I'm pretty sure you're pregnant because your boobs have gotten huge".  If he had been anyone else (other than my boyfriend's best friend), I would have slapped him and filed a sexual harrassment complaint.  Instead, I told him that I'm glad he had chosen to take up the task of deciding if I could make the cut at the next Hooters job fair but that I was pretty sure that I was in control of my own menstural cycle and that I was most definitely not pregnant. 

Thankyouverymuch. 

Then, I rushed to my calendar and secretly tried to figure out when I had last gotten my period.  Since I had never been great at tracking these things, I honestly couldn't remember.  But I did know one thing. . . .

It had been awhile since I could remember seeing Aunt Flo last.  Ummm. . .shit. 

Nevertheless, I brushed it off and decided that there was no way that I was pregnant.  Afterall, I was on birth control.  That stuff had a job to do and I trusted that it was doing what it was supposed to be doing. These things don't fail.  At least, these things don't fail on ME.

The next day (Wednesday), I was still feeling kind of crummy but I went to work anyways.  Every time I made any sound, movement, or any other illustration that I was even a living breathing human being, my boss made a sound like a baby crying.  He was convinced that I was pregnant.  I was convinced that he was out of his mind crazy.  Before I left work that night, I told him that I was going to take a test that night and I was going to keep the urine drenched stick and drop it on his desk for him to find the next morning just as proof that he didn't know what he was talking about.  At that point, I was pretty sure that he didn't know what he was talking about.  I guess a little (teeny tiny) part of me was a little curious since I wasn't able to determine exactly when my last period had been.  The last time I could vividly remember having my last period had been before Christmas.  It was now almost the end of February.  I guess I was pretty sure that wasn't necessarily a good sign, but, like I said before, I wasn't always good about tracking the timing of my cycle.  Plus, I worked a very high stress job and I knew that sometimes had an effect on whether or not my cycle was predictable or not. 

Basically, I wasn't really sweating it. 

On my way home that night, I stopped by the grocery store and bought a two pack of pregnancy tests.  I figured I'd have a back up just in case Mr. Nosey (my boss) felt that he needed immediate proof that I was not, in fact, pregnant and that he just needed to shut it and get off my non-baby carrying back.  So, a few hours later, I decided to go ahead and get it over with.  I dutifully did my pee-pees on the stick and waited the requisite 3 or so minutes.  At that point, I looked at the pregnancy test and what I saw concerned me.  According to the directions, if the test was positive, there would be a "+" sign.  If it was negative, there would be a "-" sign.  What I was looked like this "l"  Yes, I got a straight up and down line.  That's it.  So, I figured that test was broken and I took the next one out.  Downed a few glasses of water (I needed more pee!) and waited until it was time to try again.  Next test delivered the same thing.  I was perplexed.  I looked and looked all over that test but all I saw was one straight up and down line.  And it was a DARK pink straight up and down line.  So, I called a friend of mine from college.  I don't remember exactly what was said, but I do remember her saying that she didn't think that the straight up and down line was a good sign.  Instead, she told me to go back to the store and buy a digital test.  She said those things are fool proof.  I was quite annoyed that I needed to go back to the store and buy more pregnancy tests just to get a confirmation that I wasn't pregnant.

Those damn things are expensive! 

But, I did it.  At this point, my curiosity was kind of getting the best of me.  So, I bought not just one double pack of digital pregnancy tests, I bought three boxes.   If you're bad at math (like me), that's six digital pregnancy tests.  I'm sure the young cashier guy either thought that I had lost some sort of bet within my sorority or that I was extraordinarily paranoid.  The look on his face screamed "WTF?"  But, I gave him the stinkeye which basically told him to mind his own business and high tailed it out of there.    Not before spending over $50 on digital pregnancy tests, of course. 

Got back to my apartment and AGAIN, piddled on a stick.  By this point, I had kind of lost enthusiasm for this whole exercise so I deposited the test on my bathroom counter and went back into my living room to finish watching tv.  I think it probably stayed on my counter for 20 minutes.  When I went back into the bathroom and saw what the test said, I was pissed.  ANOTHER damn test was broken.  With this type of test, a positive result would say "Pregnant" and a negative result would say "Not Pregnant".  Mine was broken. It was missing the "Not".  I called my friend back and told her that I had bought another pack of defective tests because this one was missing the "Not".  She got very very quiet (I think she was waiting to see if I would finally come to the conclusion on my own--I'm slow--I didn't) and after a minute or two, she quietly said "Sweetie, I don't think the test is broken.  I think you're pregnant".  Now, it was my time to get quiet.  And quiet, I got. 

All of a sudden, the full force of what was happening sunk in.  Actually, it hit me like an 18-wheeler truck.  I didn't start crying, I started freaking out.  As in full out sobbing, couldn't catch my breath, shaking uncontrollably f-r-e-a-k out.  I probably screamed "OH-MY-GOD" over and over for 10 minutes.  Since my friend was 2000 miles away and probably wasn't sure what to say, she begged me to call my mom.  So, I did what any sensible girl would do after just finding out that she was unexpectedly pregnant. . .I curled up in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, rocked myself back and forth and begged the test to be wrong. 

After I had convinced myself that it was just a false positive (yes, because those things happen ALL the time--clearly denial was not a part of my life at the time), I grabbed the other test in the pack and took that one.  This time, I didn't leave it on the counter and walk away.  This time, I laid it on the counter, squeezed my eyes shut and said 180 prayers to God before opening my eyes again.  When I opened them again, I was met with the same result (DUH!) but this time, my denial card had run out and I started to realize that I might have actually fallen victim to an alien invasion of my uterus.  I called my mom.  I think the only coherent words that she got out of the conversation were that I was pregnant, that this wasn't supposed to happen, and that I needed to get to D.'s house and tell him.  She begged me not to drive two hours to his house.  At this point, it was 10:00 at night and by time I got to his house, it would be midnight.  She reasoned with me that I was in no condition to drive.  That, instead, I should wait until Friday when I was already scheduled to go to see him and give myself some time to let this sink in.  That way, she said, I would already had some time to be able to figure out my own thoughts on it (yeah, because two days is plenty of time to process your own internal thoughts about a completely unexpected pregnancy!) and could break the news to him in a less emotionally charged state.  Plus, she said she was worried about me being on the roads that late. What can I say?  She made sense.  So, I told her that I wouldn't go and promised to call her the next day. 

Then, I called my boss, told him that I wouldn't be in the office on Thursday or Friday.  I didn't even tell him why.  I just told him that I was going to be out.  I still remember clearly what he said: "I'm sorry, sweetie.  Believe me, it will be okay in the end.  You'll see."  Then, I packed a bag and headed to see D. 

I know I had told my Mom that I wouldn't go, but I had to.  There was no way that I was going to make it two whole days knowing what I knew and not tell him.  Plus, I needed to know what his reaction was going to be.  If he was going to laugh in my face and tell me to get lost, I figured it was better to know earlier rather than later. 

I cried the entire two hours to his house.  By time I arrived, my face resembled a sunburnt marshmallow.  With smeared mascara and tear stains.  Oh yeah, and I was clutching a plastic trashbag for dear life because I was all of a sudden convinced that I was going to throw up at any minute.  When I pulled up to his house, I didn't have a plan.  In fact, it wasn't until I pulled into the driveway that I considered whether he was even awake.  Afterall, it was after midnight.  Rather than ring the doorbell and wake him up, I just let myself into the house (I had a key).  He and a friend of his were in the kitchen drinking beer.  When he heard his front door open, he immediately came out into the hallway and his face registered straight shock.  I'm not sure whether it was the shock of seeing me standing in his house when I lived two hours away, the fact that it was after midnight on a Wednesday (now Thursday) and I was standing in his house, or the fact that my face looked like I'd gotten into a fight with a beehive (red, swollen, & misshapen).  As soon as I saw him, I immediately broke down again.

And then, I ran.