The Tales of a Future Hockey Wife

Chapter 30: The Bathroom Tiles

~Eleanor~

Time is a weird thing. It can go super-fast when you don't want it to, and it can also be super-slow when you don't want it too. This is one of those moments. One minute. Sixty seconds are between us and our answer. I am sitting on the closed toilet seat, and he sits on the floor beside me. Should I tell him that I sat in that exact spot merely hours ago, vomiting my expensive bowl of pasta? I decide against it, my eyes going back to the tiles in the bathtub. I started counting them when we put the pregnancy test on the sink counter. I was at six when Ben set the timer on his iPhone.

I am at forty-seven when my heart starts beating as fast as if I was running the 100-meter at the Olympics.

I am at fifty-one when Ben's hand falls on my lap, rubbing circles into my thigh.

I am at fifty-six when the tears in my eyes blur the tiles too much for me to count them. If I counted a tile a second, Ben's timer should go off any second now. I start counting backwards in my head from fifty-six to focus on something else than the growing lump in my throat.

I am at forty-two when I hear the beeping noise.

At thirty-nine, Ben grabs my hand in his, holding it way too tight for it to be comfortable but I don't care. If I could, I would hold his tighter.

At thirty-four, he grabs the test from the counter.

At thirty-two, he looks at me, and I nod.

At twenty-nine, I see the two parallel pink lines confirming what I dreaded.

At twenty-nine, my heart stops beating for a really long time before coming back in force.

At twenty-nine, Ben gets up on his knees to wrap his arms around me tightly. I think I feel him cry, but the feeling is numbed by my own tears. We stay like this long enough for me to start counting the tiles again. I start from the beginning once again.

One, two, three, four, five.

I am at fifteen when I stop crying.

When I get to twenty-eight, anger floods through me. I go straight from twenty-eight to thirty even skipping a tile. From this day forward, I decide that I hate the number that comes after twenty-eight. It doesn't exist anymore.

I am at eighty-seven when I grab Ben's hand, helping him get up from the floor. I lead him to the bedroom where we both lay on the small bed, holding each other as tight as we could. I count backwards, starting at eighty-seven, promising myself to be asleep by the time I get to zero.