No I'm not pregnant

CHAPTER 2

     Jackie sat next to me, afraid to ask questions and me more afraid of the answers. I had to tell her. She was waiting. There was nothing for her to say. She didn’t want to know about the weather. I couldn’t even tell her that. I hadn’t felt the air touch my skin, hadn’t seen if there were clouds in the sky, didn’t know if the sun was shining. She wanted to know what happened. I looked away for a second trying to gather my thoughts, staring at the suitcases and garbage bags. I wanted to know what happened. There was so much to tell, to admit, to confess. The dryness of my throat must have been apparent to my sister or maybe she wanted to give me more time, but she got up to get me a glass of water.

     It was cliché to say where do I begin, but that was what I wanted to say. I wanted to sound together and intelligent. Jackie set the glass down on the coffee table. A few drops of water rolled from the lip of the glass down to circle the rim. Picking up the glass, I ran the bottom of it on my pant leg and wiped the table with my sleeve so there wouldn’t be a white mark left on the wood. Environmentally we should leave a small foot print; I didn’t want to traipse all over her life, but I had nowhere to go. No one to look after me and I couldn’t look after myself. I looked over at the garbage bags feeling like those big round mounds of forgotten life: sagging, plopping, and spreading their girth, useless.

     “I left Bob. But he pushed me out. I didn’t want to stay. He doesn’t want me anymore. I am sick. The doctor says I’m not, but I know I am. Bob believes the doctor; he didn’t have my back. Bob is respected. Owning the biggest company in town, does that for you. It doesn’t matter that he’s retired, people still listened to him. All he had to do was tell the doctor to give me the test. But Bob didn’t say anything. He sat there while I begged and pleaded with the doctor to do the testing and he never gave me one word of support. I always thought Bob was there for me. That we protected each other, but he has thrown me under the bus so many times.

     I feel like I’m going to collapse all the time and like I’m eighty years old. I’m just dragging my body around. I couldn’t even look after the house anymore. I don’t want to end up in a nursing home. I have no strength. I can barely walk but they say there is nothing wrong with me. There has to be something wrong with me; something to fix. I feel so sick.”

      “Take your time. There’s no need to rush.” She handed me the glass of water. “Have a drink.”

     I wasn’t telling it right. It was so confusing; so much to explain. I could hear Bob’s voice mocking in that superior tone he had with me when I got excited trying to tell a story and things came out all jumbly like this and he would scowl and say my sentences were like verbal diarrhea. I didn’t want it to be that way.  I had to make sense of it all.

     Jackie waited until I put the glass down. “Now start from the beginning. When did you first notice you weren’t feeling well?”

I fingered the edge of my sweater touching my wrist bone, brushing against the smoothness of my titanium watch band.

     “It wasn’t so much not feeling well as just not being right. But I know it started there at the Curling Club at our banquet. Everything was just so strange and I was so different but it wasn’t the booze. You know I can drink a bottle of wine and am still fine. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t me.”

     Jackie leaned in closer her eyes squinty in concentration. “Okay, I’m not getting it. Tell me exactly what happened at the Curling Club to make you sick.”  

     “It was even before the Curling Club, but I really noticed it when I was getting ready to go there. I lost twenty-six pounds and was going to wear pants with a matching top and floral cover up. I hadn’t been able to get into it for a while but it fit me perfectly when I tried it on in the morning, but when I put it back on to go out at four o’clock, I bulged out of the seams. I could barely pull the top down over my stomach, and it was so tight I couldn’t even move. But it was loose in the morning.”