EXISTING WAS NOT for the faint of heart.
Literally.
With that familiar buzz in her head, Talia stood up and swayed to one side, then to the other, unsure where the edge of the counter even was, as it blurred with the rest of the kitchen. Two arms slid underneath hers for what felt like the third time that week already, pulling her back into the only stability she could call her own.
"You okay?" Zaid murmured, dropping his head to the crook of her neck. She looked down and found his hands held in a white-knuckled grip. Breathing out a small sigh as her vision finally cleared, she nodded and rested the back of her head on his shoulder. "Don't you think you should go see a doctor at this point?"
"Maybe," she breathed. She eyed the small pot of hard-boiled eggs on the stove, bubbling water almost hitting the brim, but he simply pushed her down into a chair and went to deal with their breakfast himself. "It would be nice to at least put a name to this."
She'd once grown used to feeling lightheaded whenever she stood up, just needing a moment or two to breathe and let the blood rush back, but during these last few weeks, those symptoms had magnified.
The first few times Zaid had found her sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor on his half-asleep walk to the sink, he'd almost passed out himself. Each time he'd get her back to her feet, he'd nag her about seeking out a professional opinion; as, despite both having siblings in medical school, blood was still a solid no for her, and he'd actually failed biology in high school—a fact she only learned three years into their marriage.
Apparently, Zaid wasn't actually good at everything.
"I'll come with you, if you're worried," he said, pouring himself a generous cup of coffee. "I'm pretty sure I can work from home today, anyway."
She, on the other hand, couldn't. She had a lecture to give at one and then a department meeting an hour later, and the chances of finding an appointment in the next couple hours at the overbooked primary care office were probably slim. Although, the receptionists had taken a particular liking to Zaid during the few times he'd accompanied her—who hadn't, anyway—always finding a way to slip in a quick appointment for her.
As she nibbled on a dry piece of bread, she sorted through her thoughts. Was it POTS? Maybe orthostatic hypotension? She'd tried to remember the fancy jargon Calvin had thrown at her over the phone the other week, using her as practice for his clinical rotations coming up next year.
Zaid slid down on their small table for two next to her, mumbling something about the drizzling rain as he stared out the window. It was another dreary early December morning, the sky that signature milky-white-gray, color seeming to extend to eternity this many floors up. The only bit of brightness in their apartment was the small Christmas tree in their monochromatic living room, bright golds and reds reminding her that it was a festive season.
The joy in the air had gone right over her head in her complete and utter absorption with her new job, what little of her mind and body left offered to Zaid at nights, still their favorite time of day.
She turned her head to the left, offering him a weak smile.
"Don't worry," he reassured her in return, clasping her hand. "Whatever it is, it'll be okay."
***
Some bloodwork and a million questions later, she had a diagnosis—one that expired in exactly nine months.
Zaid and Talia left the clinic in a shared daze, saying nothing to each other since their stiff response to the warm congratulations from Dr. Wang. In fact, the only communication they'd exchanged had been equally horrified glances the moment they discovered how many weeks along she was. A little math, and they both knew this pregnancy was the result of those glorious three rounds on her birthday, a night that had left a pleasant ache between her legs and bruises on her hips for days afterwards.
They went their separate ways; he back to their apartment to wrap up a few last-minute projects, she to the sprawling urban campus. For once, she drowned out the blare of traffic and zeroed in on the conversations of carefree students ambling to class. Internally, she laughed at how many bemoaned the worst professor they'd ever taken—sincerely hoping that it wasn't her—or the epic hangover they'd had in the morning, or the mountain of homework awaiting them at night.
Pushing open the door to her building, she froze for a moment, fingers instinctively hovering over her midsection. A ditzy brunette whirred by her, a student of hers. She could have sworn that had just been her—but it wasn't.
She was actually done with school forever. She had two degrees, a husband, the job of the professors she once cursed out, and now...a child forming inside of her.
And despite every rite of passage ticked off that list in the distance, she'd never felt any smaller, only wanting to curl up into her dear father's side and be told that big scary adulthood wasn't real.
"Good afternoon, class." She set down her bag with a sigh on the table behind the podium and clasped her hands. "Today we'll be wrapping up our discussion of Stackelberg duopoly, before transitioning into a review for the final exam. And yes, before anyone asks again, it will be cumulative." Groans and grumbles echoed through the lecture hall, ones she couldn't say she didn't understand, but she had a reputation to build, not yet wanting to be known as the easy professor. But sometimes her inner college student did give way. "However, if we can get the response rate for the course evaluations up to eighty percent, I'll give everyone an extra point on the final."
A single hand shot up into the air, and she already knew that it was Aidan, the suit-wearing type of business major. She much preferred the Greek-letter kind, as at least they didn't aggressively challenge all of the theories formulated by senile white men, and not her.
"Professor Awwad, what if we hit only seventy-nine percent?"
"Dude, shut up," his friend grumbled from next to him, "before she takes away that offer, too."
By the time she returned home in the evening, the events of the morning had almost slipped her mind. That was, until she almost toppled over trying to take off her shoes, seeing double of the white door in front of her. She'd forgotten that pregnancy was only the explanation behind the myriad of symptoms she was experiencing—and finding out had almost made them worse.
"Zaid, habibi?" She walked through the living room, in the direction of their small shared office. "I'm home."
She slipped through the open door to find him slouched in the black chair, a bored hand at his cheek. The double monitors displayed some kind of funky mapping software—she was pretty sure she'd never understand what engineers actually did—but she didn't think that Zaid did either in the moment. Eyes glazing over, he pushed his chair away from the desk and heaved a small sigh.
She cupped his face from behind, resting her chin on his head and smelling fresh shampoo. It was hard to see exactly from her angle, but she was sure that signature boyish smile appeared on his lips as she pressed a soft kiss to his hair.
"I haven't been able to focus all day," he murmured, looking up at her through a curtain of long lashes. "Don't make it worse."
"Oh, come on," she replied, moving her hands down to his shoulders. "It's Friday. Even the workaholic in me says it's okay for you to end whatever"—she waved a hand in front of the screen—"this is."
"This is the lifeblood of civil engineering, Talia," he replied and once again began the long-winded explanation that lost her halfway through every time. "Oh well, not like I actually read your dissertation."
"But you promised me you did."
"There were Greek letters in there I didn't even know existed, Talia."
After more meaningless banter, he stood up and planted two hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes with beguiling interest. They both knew they'd been dancing around this morning's news all day, perhaps she more than he, as it seemed to have weighed him down enough to lose his usual diligence. Work was the only thing that made her forget the world, because with him, she could never forget it—he was her world.
"How do you feel?"
She shrugged. "I'm good, yeah. Definitely better than this morning, I guess."
Pursing his lips, he slid a gentle hand down her body and stopped at her midsection. His fingers lightly curled inwards, but they felt nothing but the ridges of her cable-knit sweater, then her flat stomach.
"No," he breathed, dropping his hand, "about the pregnancy."
She swallowed and glossed her eyes around the small room, starting with the photos on the wall, from their engagement, their wedding, and then of small snapshots of their different but blissful childhoods. She stopped on the bookcase, filled to the brim with textbooks, collections of journal articles, and theoretical musings, wondering, just for a moment, what it would look like full of colorful stories, instead.
"I wish we planned it... I never imagined it this way."
"Same here," he said softly, "but we don't plan most of life's good things, do we?"
The rest of the evening, they sat by their small tree, a makeshift charcuterie board serving as their dinner. They'd both lost their appetite for different reasons, but at least, there was no shortage of words between them, save for the ones she truly wanted to say.
Because they made her sound selfish.
"It's okay, you know?" he said, propping himself up on his elbow. He held an olive to her lips, but her once favorite delight seemed odious, threatening to send what little she'd eaten up her throat. "You can tell me."
"There's nothing to say," she lied, hand dancing over her sweater again. She didn't know why she couldn't bring herself to actually press down, to feel something that only had feeling in her head. "I'm sure we'll figure this all out along the way."
"You know, we aren't going to be alone in this," he reasoned, tracing mindless patterns on her calf. "Look at how many people we have around us."
"But I don't want to rely on other people," she said, shaking her head. "I don't want to feel like a burden on anyone."
"People who love you, Talia," he reassured, giving her leg a light squeeze. "My mother has been dying for another grandchild, for the record. You should hear the phone calls."
She lay down on the small rug next to him, and they lost themselves in a different part of the ceiling. Resting her head on his shoulder, she placed her hand over the one resting on his raised knee, but he took it in his. Bringing it to her midsection, he relaxed her fingers for her and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek.
"I'm scared, Zaid," she whispered after a lifetime of silence, but her love had already fallen asleep, leaving her alone with a new one.