Falling Walls (III)

Chapter 32

Two trains later, one little step down, over the gap, I felt lost on platform six in St Moritz. The Swiss air smelled foreign and with my small travel bag in hand, I was ready to turn around and board the regional train back towards Germany.
Whistles blew from different directions, announcing the arrival or departure of trains, as I slowly made my way to the taxi stands. I shouldn't have been there. I knew I shouldn't. Tom had made the choice to walk away. He made the choice to not call me and he chose to not answer my calls. I had promised myself to not ever run after a man again. I should have been with my kids. Those thoughts filled my head as I climbed into the nearest taxi and handed the driver Tom's address which Jan had given me. His Swiss accent was difficult to understand and so I smiled friendly and silently settled in the back seat.
I should be with Sam and Emma, not in a foreign country, chasing a man who had left me behind in the dark of the night. I should be with my kids. My kids.
They were the reason why I had decided to chase him. I was no longer a teenager, having lost the believe that I could reform a man, change him into the partner I wanted him to be. Painful experiences had taught me that this only ended in drama, in exhaustion, in the loss of my mind. I loved Tom, but if he wasn't ready to commit to us, then I knew I had to let him go to save us both and the kids the disastrous end that would come with it. My mind should have won over my heart. The lessons learned from experience should have been stronger than my phantasies.

The morning after Dave had booked me the train ticket I'd had my doubts about following Tom to Switzerland. The twins had asked for Tom every day but I had no answer apart from my standard lie that he was away on business. I had felt sick, as I had so many times in those stressful days and I had told Dave that I wasn't going to follow Tom. He knew where to find me. While I went on and on explaining more to myself than to Dave why I wasn't going to St. Moritz, out of nowhere Dave placed a pregnancy test in front of me.

At first I was surprised, stunned. Then anger came over me. "This is not the moment for a stupid joke, Dave," I had hissed at him. I had picked up the test and swung it in front of him. "I'm done. You can take this stupid test and take it where you got it from or take it yourself. My mood has nothing to do with my hormones."

Dave took the test but instead of putting it away, he kept on holding it with a stretched out arm at me, his face set hard as stone. "Lisa, it's not just your mood. I know you've been stressed, but you've been sick constantly, feeling dizzy and not that I'm looking, but when I see you standing there in your pajamas, it does look like your breasts have gotten bigger - sorry, firmer." Now there was a hint of a smile I couldn't join in. I stared back at Dave, my eyes forming two small slits. At the same time my mind wandered back over the past days. He had been right. I grabbed the test from his hand and went to the bathroom without another word before slamming the door shut.

When I was pregnant with the twins I had also been sitting in a bathroom by myself. The difference was that nobody had been waiting for me outside. While I prepared the test I remembered how I had seen the first, then the second red line appear. I had felt shocked, disbelieving the evidence I had held in front of me. Straight after taking the test, I had gone back to the pharmacy to get a new test. For another four days I had kept my pregnancy from everyone, including Peter.

Dave was waiting outside, I reaffirmed myself while I pushed the lid on the test. With a disinfectant wipe I cleaned the stick. I couldn't bare the idea of handing it to Dave otherwise.
My heart began racing faster and faster as I forced my eyes not to look at the test. I held it out to Dave, my arm stretched out wide, my eyes trying to catch a glimpse of the two windows on the stick. I saw some red from the corner of my eye. There's a control window, I assured myself. One window always had a red line.
I couldn't bare it any longer. I needed to look. But as soon as I allowed myself a glance, Dave already held it up, the two windows facing him.

The seconds it took Dave to turn the test around for me to see seemed like an eternity.
"Two lines," Dave commented his presentation of the pregnancy test.
Two lines. I was pregnant. And that's why I was in Switzerland in a taxi chasing the man I loved. And that's why my heart not entirely won. I owed it to myself, to Tom, to the twins and my unborn child, which I so foolishly had planned to have with a man I thought I knew. I owed it to all of us to inform Tom and then make a decisions.