All Eternity

Reckoning

Eventually I get up and put myself back in bed. I feel like I could throw up again at any minute. But I suppose that's probably normal when your marriage ends unexpectedly. I've never handled stress well, why should this be any different?

I toss and turn, sleeping in 20 minute intervals. Every time I wake up I remember what's happening and cry until I fall asleep again.

Finally I realize I can't sleep anymore and decide to get up. It feels like someone's squeezed all of my insides out. I'm so weak and dizzy it's hard to even walk down the stairs. But everything I see makes me think of Justin and I just cry.

I know I need to eat even though I really don't want to so I pour myself some cereal and sit down. For ten minutes I sit there, staring at the bowl before I get up and dump it all out. Then I make some toast and the same thing happens. I can't take my eyes off the clock.

How do I go on from here? I can't stay in this house with all the stuff he's bought me. But where can I go? I have nothing. Just thinking about the few things I could do makes it hard to breathe. I grab the cereal box and start reading. When I finish reading that I grab a box of granola bars. I just need to keep my mind off everything and as long as I have something to distract me I'm able to take a few bites of my toast.

It seems like as long as I stay calm I can get myself to eat so I keep grabbing random things from around the kitchen and reading the labels. The Clorox wipes, a receipt from grocery shopping, my leftover antibiotics from my sore throat. It's only as I'm reading through the warnings that I wonder why I still have this bottle. I was sick just over a month ago.

Sighing I get up to throw it away when one line of the warning catches my eye: may render birth control ineffective. My heart stops. What if these pills made it so my birth control didn't work? How could I have not noticed this sooner? And why didn't my doctor warn me about this?

I run for my bathroom where I lose all the toast I made myself eat and then try to produce enough pee for a test. There's still one test leftover from Sarah's box and I set it on my sink to wait. My legs won't hold me up so I just sit down on the floor. How many times have I done this before?

For some reason I start laughing. I'm such an idiot. What are the odds that out of every single time I've thought I was pregnant now would be the time? I've taken so many tests since I married Justin and if I didn't get pregnant that time Hope stole my pills I'm sure I'm not pregnant now. This is just stupid.

I drop the test in the trash can before it's done testing and turn off the bathroom light. My bed looks really comfortable so I get back in and curl up. I can't sleep since I've already slept so much. Thoughts just keep running through my head. Things Justin said and did. How could he have just left like that? What am I going to do now?

I flip over so I don't have to look at his empty side of the bed. But now I'm staring at the bathroom door and a little voice in the back of my mind asks about the test. That's when it hits me. I've been dizzy and felt weird for weeks. My clothes are tighter and all I want to do is sleep. The list of symptoms goes on and on. I throw the covers back and get up.

My hands shake as I reach into the trash can. I keep telling myself to relax because there's no way but then I see the little pink lines – they're solid and strong. There's no mistaking it. I'm definitely pregnant. At first I just stare but then I feel the test flying out of my hands at the mirror and I'm falling forward.

I shove everything off my sink, watching as my perfume bottle smashes and the fragrance spills everywhere. Then I try to smash the mirror but I'm not strong enough. It's hard to breathe because I'm crying so hard. I just keep seeing Justin's face and picturing it on a little baby.