Her

Chapter six: Pregnant (Edited)

Chapter six: Pregnant

Abigail found out she was pregnant three weeks later. She was furious. But just like Christina had said, she couldn't complain because still, the vomiting hadn't stopped. Abigail threw up everything she ate and though she vomited it up, she couldn't stop eating because of the health of her baby. And so, after every meal, the sound of her vomiting into the bucket set up beside our table filled the cafeteria, was heard by everyone. It was the same thing day after day; Abigail eats breakfast and vomits, Abigail eats lunch and vomits, Abigail eats dinner and vomits. Every meal, without fail, Abigail would vomit it all up again and I was beginning to worry that the same thing would happen to me after I would learn that I was pregnant. Dianne and Christina had tried to soothe my worries by saying that every pregnancy was different and every person's body is different in how it reacts to it. But still I was worried. I even worried now with the contraption shaking in my hands.

"Are you okay Leah?" Patricia asks from the other side of the bathroom door. But the thing is, I was, but I shouldn't be. I had been sitting here on the toilet staring at it like the thing I was holding in my hand was like some type of alien device when in reality Patricia had explained to me exactly what it was. It's a pregnancy test, she had said when she showed it to me.

It was a white, long stick, which was fat at one end and pointed at the other. It had a small screen on the top where the results would be red and a lid on the pointed end that you had to pull off before you used it. But it still looked so foreign to me. You need to take this into the bathroom and pee on the end, Patricia had instructed me and the whole concept had seriously freaked me out. Why did I need to pee on a stick to find out I was pregnant? I'm sure there was a better way to do this. I had red the instructions on the pregnancy test over and over again. A minus sign meant negative and a pink plus sign meant positive. Positive meant pregnant. The thought alone terrified me. Was I going to be like Abigail throwing up all the time as soon as I found out I was pregnant? Was I not going to be able to eat? The thought alone made my stomach churn uncomfortably.

"Leah," Patricia tried again with a knock at the door. "There's nothing to be afraid of." I let out a long breath I didn't know I had been holding. But there was something to be afraid of because what if this, if me finding out I was pregnant was going to change my whole life? Well that was a given. Of course it was going to change my whole life because I would having something growing inside of me for the next nine months. The thought alone made me shiver. Something growing inside of me, something moving and breathing and it's heart beating. It made me feel weird that somehow I would have a little human floating around inside of me, that I would be responsible for another living life. That mere thought alone made all the hairs on my body stand on end.

I had never really thought about what it would mean to be a Breeder, not really, though I knew what it entailed. I knew I would be getting pregnant and giving birth to babies for the rest of my life. I knew that was the job and yet I had never really thought about it, in depth, like I was doing right now. I never thought about what it would feel like to have something growing inside me or how it would effect my body or how it would change the way I lived my life or the way my body functioned. I never thought about any of it. I guess I had just been going along, getting to know the girls and this new place I was in, that the thought that soon something would be living inside of me had simply... gone from my mind. As strange as it sounds. I don't know how anyone could forget a thing like that, simply ride it off like it was nothing. But I guess I hadn't thought about it because it hadn't actually been happening, whereas now it was happening. Right now.

"Do you want me to come into help you?" Patricia tries again. But I shake my head, when I realise she can't see me.

"No," I say loud enough for her to hear me. "I can do it," and I take the lid, off the test.