The Killing Game(4)

Dr. Ferante cut off what she was about to say and nodded instead. “I understand this is overwhelming. You’ve been through a lot in a very short time. But I think this is good news, right?” she said gently.

“But the IVFs failed.”

“You’ve said you’ve been lacking in energy. That you haven’t been able to focus. This is why. This and your grief,” she said. “Call your gynecologist and make an appointment.”

Andi couldn’t process. Boggled, she quit arguing with Dr. Ferante and allowed herself to be led toward the door. Her brain was whirling like a top. Three months . . . the baby, of course, was Greg’s. They’d had that attempt at reconciliation after the horror of learning about Mimi Quade’s pregnancy, which Greg had furiously denied being any part of. Greg had died before any testing could prove otherwise, and in the three months since, there had been no contact with Mimi or her brother, Scott.

Andi’s hands felt cold and numb and she stared down at them as if they weren’t attached to her arms. She climbed into her Hyundai Tucson and sat there for a moment, staring through the windshield. Then she pulled out her cell phone, scrolling to her gynecologist, Dr. Schuster’s, number. When the receptionist answered, she said in a bemused voice, “This is Andrea Wren and I’ve been told I’m pregnant, so I guess I need an appointment.”

“Wonderful!” the woman said warmly. Carrie. Her name was Carrie, Andi recalled.

“I’m having trouble processing this. I just want to be sure.”

“How far away are you? Dr. Schuster had a last-minute cancellation today, but the appointment’s right now.”

“Oh God. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Will that work?”

“Just,” Carrie said, then added, “Drive carefully.”

Andi aimed her car out of the medical complex and toward the familiar offices of Dr. Schuster’s IVF offices, which were across the Willamette River to Portland’s east side. She made the trip in twenty-three minutes, gnashing her teeth when it took several more minutes to find a parking spot. Slamming out of the SUV, she remote locked it as she hurried toward the covered stairs on the west side of the building, refusing to wait for the elevator. She hadn’t felt this much urgency since before Greg’s death.

When she entered the reception room, her face was flushed and her heartbeat light and fast. She scanned the room and settled on the woman at the curved reception counter. Carrie, who was somewhere in her forties, with straight, brown hair clipped at her nape, about Andi’s same shade and length, though Andi’s was currently hanging limply to her shoulders. She’d combed it this morning, but that was about as far as she’d gotten after showering, brushing her teeth, and getting dressed. She’d thrown on some mascara, the extent of her makeup.

“Go on through,” Carrie urged her, coming around the desk to hold open the door to the hallway beyond. “Second door on your right.”

“Thank you.”

She seated herself on the end of the examining table. Suddenly her body felt hot all over, and she sensed she was going to throw up. It was as if her mind, having accepted this new truth, had convinced her body. She knew where the nearest bathroom was and ran for the door. Too late. She was already heaving. She grabbed the nearest waste can, with its white plastic kitchen bag, moments before losing the remains of her earlier coffee and a muffin.

When her stomach stopped feeling as if it were turning itself inside out, she grabbed some tissues from the box of Kleenex on the counter and wiped her lips. Then she leaned under the faucet at the small stainless-steel sink and washed the sour taste from her mouth. Pregnant, she thought again, struggling to process. Pregnant!

Her eye fell on a pictorial representation of a woman’s body in the last trimester, the position of the fetus, the swelling of the mother’s abdomen. Tentatively, she placed her hand over her still quivering midsection.

The doctor bustled in a few minutes later. She was in her fifties, with thick, steel-gray hair that curved beneath her chin and looked surprisingly chic and healthy. Behind frameless glasses, her eyes were a startling light blue and peered at you as if you were a specimen in ajar. Dr. Schuster worked hard to effect pregnancies, but she didn’t exhibit a warm and fuzzy manner.

Andi confessed, “I threw up in your trash can.”

“We’ll take care of it. I understand you think you’re pregnant?”

“My doctor, Dr. Ferante, just told me I was.”

“Okay.”

She gave Andi a routine exam, and once again her blood was drawn. The doctor looked thoughtful but wasn’t going to give out any answers before she was ready. It was another ten minutes before she returned to the room and, holding Andi’s file to her chest, said with a slight softening of her manner, “Yes, you are pregnant.”

Heat flooded Andi’s system. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Greg’s been gone for three months.”

“That’s about how far along you are.”

“After all this time . . . all the effort,” Andi said now, swallowing.

“When the stress is off, sometimes it happens like this.”

Andi knew that. She just hadn’t completely believed it.

She and Dr. Schuster talked about what was in store in the next few months: a healthy diet, light exercise, plenty of rest. At the reception desk Andi consulted the calendar on her cell phone and lined up future appointments. She left the medical offices in a state of wonderment, driving back toward her house, the one she’d just sold, feeling like she was living a dream. She wondered briefly if she should have held on to the house, but it was too late now. She’d purchased one of the older cabins on Schultz Lake, the very lake that was the scene of Wren Development’s latest endeavor—a lodge at the north end that had just begun construction—and her real estate agent had delivered the keys the night before. She’d sold the house she’d shared with Greg because that part of her life was over.