Not What I Expected

Part 20

Nicole woke up with a start and groaned when she saw that it was only 4:30 a.m. She was covered in a cold sweat and her whole body was shaking. She couldn't recall if she had been dreaming, but whatever it was, it was unsettling. She had had a similar feeling yesterday after she had left Anna's place. Anna had told her that she had miscarried and after that Nicole had felt incredibly uneasy.

Just as her stomach gurgled her uneasiness suddenly began to make sense. She jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom just in time. She kneeled on the floor as her body rejected the dinner she had eaten the night before with Hudson, Beth, Alex and Ryan. She gripped the sides of the toilet as she retched and her body convulsed. She puked until she was just throwing up bile and dry heaving. The tears were streaming down her face and she fell onto the floor and leaned against the wall, her body was spent. Vomiting, in her opinion, was one of the worst feelings in the world, well, right after lying in bed with your husband as he dies peacefully in his sleep.

"It's impossible," Nicole whispered to herself as she pulled a towel off the hook and wiped her mouth with it, "The doctor even said it was very unlikely without medical help..."

She got on her hands and knees and slowly crawled over to the bathroom cupboard and yanked open the doors. She peered inside but it was so cluttered that she couldn't see what was in there. She began yanking stuff out impatiently until she found what she was looking for. She stared at the box for a moment before she pulled the last package out of the box and forced herself to stand up. Her body was shaking and she was sweating and she was terrified to confirm what was so clearly obvious to her. Nicole knew it, deep down inside of herself, that Chad had left her one last parting gift.

Nicole sat down on the toilet, ripped the package open and pulled the stick out. She closed her eyes as she went to the bathroom, her heart pounding in her chest and mixed feelings flowing through her at the speed of light. After she was done, she couldn't bring herself to look at it, she wasn't ready to do this without Chad.

After a couple minutes, Nicole took a deep breath, pulled the stick out and looked down at it. One single tear fell down her cheek as she saw the plus sign staring back at her.

Nicole closed the front door behind her and dropped her keys in the bowl on the table by the door. For the last 5 hours she had been moving around in a daze, not really paying attention to what she was doing, but getting things done nonetheless. She had managed to clean two out of three bathrooms, the kitchen, her bedroom, get Hudson ready to go over to grandma and grandpa's and drop him off, all before 9:45 a.m. Now she was in the kitchen making a pot of tea and eating a granola bar while she waited for Dr. Mason to show up.

She was still in shock about the positive result when she took the test. She had mentally done the math in her head that morning and she knew that she had to be approximately 9 weeks pregnant, but there was no way to know for sure until she went to her doctor.

Nicole sat down on a bar stool in the kitchen and stared into space. The sun was shining in through the big kitchen windows, but inside it still felt gloomy and lonely. It was Saturday and she should have been getting ready to take her little boy to the park, but instead she was alone while her child was with her parents and she was unsure of what her future held for her.

Nicole jumped with a start when the doorbell rang. She made her way to the front door and opened it to see Dr. Mason standing there with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. The bright colors of the flowers instantly brightened her morning and the scent instantly filled the hallway. It smelled of spring and fruit.

"Hi Dr. Mason, come on in," Nicole said with a small smile, "I really appreciate you coming to see me."

"It's the least I could do," Dr. Mason replied as she handed the flowers to Nicole, "Again, I'm so sorry for your loss. No one was expecting this blow."