Different Circles

“Thanks,” Laura said. “But we’re pretty early in the process. The test might be a false positive. And even if it’s not, the first six weeks are ... you know ... the most likely for something to go wrong. I really don’t want to start getting attached to the little zygote until we know for sure that there really is one and that it’s going to be hanging around.”

“Understood,” Celia said solemnly. “Mum is the word for now.”

But, of course, it was just too out of character for Laura not to have her wine or her evening tokes on the pipe, so it wasn’t long until other people began to suspect what was going on as well. Sharon was the next one to draw the conclusion.

“Are you pregnant?” she asked bluntly as she, Nerdly and Laura manned the soundboard one morning while they cued up one of the tracks for primary mixing.

Laura looked at her intently. “Why do you ask that?” she demanded.

“Well ... you stopped drinking and smoking your pot,” she said. “That, coupled with the fact that you always seem to look ill in the mornings suggests that you might be.”

She sighed. “Elementary, Watson,” she grunted.

“Is it true?” Nerdly asked. “She suggested this to me last night, but I was more inclined to believe that you might be suffering from irritable bowel syndrome or perhaps an inflammatory bowel disorder such as Crohn’s disease.”

Laura raised her eyebrows. “You thought it more likely that I had a disease instead of being pregnant?” she asked.

“Naturally,” he said. “I am certain that Jake would have told me if he had conceived a child ... unless, of course, the child is not his and you have not informed him of its existence because of this. If that is the case, forget we asked.”

She shook her head. “The child is Jake’s,” she said. “We haven’t told anyone yet because we just found out ourselves.”

“I see,” Nerdly said. “And how did you diagnose the condition?”

“We’ve been trying to get me pregnant for a few months now,” she explained. “I haven’t taken my birth control pills since December. The other morning, I woke up and started vomiting so I peed on a stick and it came back positive. It was a faint positive but a positive nonetheless. There is a possibility that it is a false positive since I would be awfully early in the process at this point. I’m not even due for my period for another four days.”

“I beg to differ,” Nerdly said. “False negatives are quite common with home pregnancy tests, but false positives are almost unheard of. True, you are early in the process, but if you used the first morning urination for the test there likely would have been enough hCG in the sample for detection. Did you use the first morning urination for the sample?”

“Uh ... yeah,” she said, blushing. “I did.”

“Then it is likely that you really are pregnant. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Bill,” she said. “And, just so you know, we’re keeping this close for now.”

“Understood,” Bill said.

But everyone else in the house picked up on it in the next forty-eight hours. And Pauline and Obie, who were staying at Obie’s house in Coos Bay for now, picked up on it when the four of them went out for dinner one night. Again, the illuminating factor was the fact that Laura was not drinking any wine with her steak.

“That’s badass,” Pauline declared when they confirmed the facts for her. “Tabby will have a little cousin! I just know they’ll grow up close to each other.”

“Probably,” Laura agreed, feeling a little overwhelmed by this point.

“You’ve got to tell Mom and Dad soon,” Pauline said. “They’ll be so happy to hear about this.”

“We’re going to wait until we get home and have confirmation that all is well before we start telling people,” Jake said. “You know? Just in case?”

“Oh ... right,” Pauline said. “I guess that makes sense.”

Over the next few weeks, Laura got more and more evidence that she was, in fact, knocked up. Every time she peed on a stick—and she did so with each morning urination for five days straight—it showed positive, the vertical bar showing a little more prominently with each successive test. And then her period did not come when she was expecting it. And then her breasts became tender and sore. And she continued to regularly barf in the mornings, though she usually felt better by the time breakfast was served, at which point her appetite would swell significantly and she would be watched with astonishment at the amount of food she was consuming.

“It looks like you got a little zygote in there all right,” Jake commented, though at this point in the game, it was no longer a zygote at all.

“Yep,” Laura agreed, growing happier with her condition by the day. “My little Ziggy.”

And that was what their name for it became. Pauline and Obie had called the fetal Tabitha ‘The Clump’ after their doctor told them she was a clump of rapidly replicating cells, and Jake and Laura called her little clump Ziggy. They would, naturally, come up with a more suitable name later.