Preg test? Follow me….

It was the 16th day of the month, a week and a half after the prescribed date….and yet…the blood had not come. Now, much as I’d like to believe otherwise such an anomaly tended to be caused by life situations I was not, by any standards, ready to handle. In other words, if I was pregnant and thus skipping out the old period routine I was in serious shit.

Till the 7th I was letting the ‘if’ factor provide some much required solace. There was absolutely no chance of it happening, I was repeating like a clockwork parrot. And the fact that I was sitting here, on my knees, unbleeding was just one of those unexplained things in nature…. somewhat like the Bermuda triangle, which would, no doubt, soon be rationalized in some long thesis paper by some old fellow sitting in a lab.

So I could sip my Bloody Mary with relaxed ease and throw caution to the wind. I told myself.

But the modern woman’s conviction tends to be shaken easily. Thus, the storm clouds of panic began settling in on the 10th. Something (I heard myself mumbling, reluctantly) was grievously wrong here. One could not blame me of having skipped any essential step. Every measure had been taken with algorithmic precision. Every advice followed with merciless exactitude. And yet……

Hamlet like I spent the whole morning expertly gnawing at my nails. ‘To do’ or ‘not to do’, that was the question, I had the preg test right in my hand. But I hadn’t the courage to carry out the judgment here in the apartment. If I fainted, or worse still burst a blood cell or had a heart attack I would probably stay stuck here till the neighbours dogs smelt me out.
Nothing doing, if I were to know I would know amongst other people, amidst the populace.
Swiftly I got my purse and hastened to the clinic.
No, I certainly couldn’t wait for an appointment till tomorrow I would sit here on one of these unwelcome looking chairs till eternity instead, I told the pink-clad nurse. She seemed amused (!!!!) and sent a creature of a clerk to note down my details.

“Praig-naint?” the creature asked joyously as if it were a source of personal triumph for him.
“No…” I said with a touch of vinegar.
“Then?”
“Just …checking”
“Oh!…………..” he burst into a flame of laughter. The man was certainly devoid of a trace of common politeness. “No father I am sure?” he added, once the cackle fizzled out.

Now, I did have a number of choice ideas which I would have easily suggested to the man as an answer to this inane question. If they didn’t suffice, I would have even willfully succumbed to my rather primitive instinct and stuffed his posterior with his punched in face. But I resisted the temptation and managed a hoarse “No” as an after thought.

“No matter” he said, still exuberant, “Lot of girls with babies and no father….all okay”.

After having enlightened me with that piece of precious information he went on to write down my name and address, occasionally interrupting his job to stroke my back, either to console me or to check whether I had a bra on under my shirt, neither idea would seem odd to him.

The results were to be picked up 4 hours later.
But I couldn’t wait.
I stayed put on the blue plastic chair watching bonny babies bobbing up and down at their mother’s bosom. The whole place was grotesquely covered with baby wallpapers. Babies in diapers, in nothing, on toy carts, with pouty mouths stared sachharinely out of glossy pics.
This was going to be one looooooooong wait.
Coffee and cigarettes flowed like a running nose.
A baby.
A baby?
A BABY ? *&^%$
My head was throbbing with the pounding of my heart.
Pacing around on the balcony I was trying to propose the idea of motherhood to myself as cozily as I could.
Motherhood = Pastel shades
I was mumbling like a clown.
Motherhood = empire line dresses
Motherhood = ice cream at 4 in the morning
Utter buffoonery!!

When the test results came I was busily telling myself that labor doesn’t hurt anymore, what with the water bath and all………..
The caffeine had made me so sick I could hardly read the results.
It was a negative.
With a sigh of relief strong enough to have shaken the Great Wall of China…. I stamped out of the dreary place.
Empty-bellied, I was a free woman again.
Sipping my customary glass of Bloody Mary at night, I went to sleep, a satisfied, unmothered, unbleeding girl.

Peace is often just a blood drop away.