After everything that had gone down lately, she really didn’t want to know what happened to people who broke an agreement with the big guy.
And no, she wasn’t talking about Santa Claus.
SIXTY-THREE
Good thing Beth had never had a hypothetical fantasy about what it would be like to find out she was pregnant.
As she sat in a perfectly nice waiting room, surrounded by cushy, neutral-toned chairs, magazines about menopause and motherhood, and women who were either in their twenties or fifties, she was very clear that whatever came from this appointment, positive, negative or too-early-to-tell, she would never have cooked up this scenario:
Without her husband. Escorted by a Shadow with enough concealed weapons on him to blow up a tank—or maybe an aircraft carrier. Having taken a vein for blood, for chrissakes, some twenty minutes before leaving a house the size and make up of Versailles.
Yeah, not exactly shit that would get written up in, say … she picked up the nearest mag. Modern Motherhood, for example.
Flipping through the colorful pages, she saw all kinds of Happy, Satisfied Mothers holding their Heavenly Angels on Earth as they preached about the sanctity of breast-feeding, the importance of skin-to-skin contact, and making that critical, first postnatal doctor’s appointment.
“I’m going to be sick,” she muttered, tossing the propaganda aside.
“Shit,” iAm said as he leaped up. “I’ll find the loo—”
“No, no.” She pulled him back down. “I meant, yeah, no, it was just a comment.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. And next time I get annoyed, I promise to just say so. Not throw out a metaphor.”
iAm had to squeeze back into his own stuffed chair: The Shadow was so big, he overflowed the armrests and the back cushion—and he attracted a lot of attention.
Although not because of his size, necessarily.
Every single woman who came in, walked by, or worked at reception looked at him—in a way that proved you weren’t dead from the neck down even if you were pregnant or your ovaries were winding things up or you were frazzled from ringing phones, lots of patients and tons of paperwork.
“Have you ever been married?” she asked the guy.
Absently, he shook his head, those black eyes of his tracing around as if he were ready to defend her with his life.
Which was awfully sweet, really.
“Ever been in love?”
Another shake of the head.
“Do you want children?”
Looking over at her he laughed tightly. “Did I hear that you were once a reporter?”
“Is my who-what-where-why-when coming through again?”
“Yeah. But it’s cool, I got nothing to hide.” He crossed his legs ankle to knee. “You know, with everything going on with my brother all these years, I don’t ever think like that, you feel me? I gotta get him sorted, and shit knows, that ain’t been happenin’.”
“I’m really sorry.” She’d heard enough through the household gossip lines to get the gist of their situation. “To be honest, I keep expecting to come down one of these nights and find you both gone.”
He nodded. “Might well happen—”
“Marklon, Beth?” a nurse called out from an open door across the way.
“That’s me.” Getting to her feet, she put her purse up on her shoulder and headed over. “Right here.”
Jesus, talk about nausea: At the prospect of going in to actually meet the doctor, she thought, okay, now she really was going to throw up again—
The nurse smiled and stepped back, motioning to a little triage room behind her. “I’m just going to get your weight and blood pressure in here.”
“Can you hold this?” she asked iAm, holding out her Coach bag.
“Yup.”
As he took her purse, the nurse paused and pulled a head-to-toe on the Shadow. Then she flushed brilliant red, and had to clear her throat. “Welcome,” she said to him.
iAm just nodded and kept scanning the back area. Like maybe a matched set of ninjas was going to jump out of an exam room or something.
Beth had to smile as the nurse refocused and got into the business of taking vitals.
After that was done, the woman escorted them down a hallway that had a dozen or so numbered rooms opening off of it. As they went along, the decor was the same brown and cream of the waiting room, with similar kinds of glass mounted, fake-textured “art” doing its best to give a noninstitutional feel to a place filled with medical equipment, and people in scrubs and white coats.
“In five, please,” the nurse said, once again standing to the side.
As iAm passed by her, she took an extra step back, her eyes widening as if she liked the way he smelled.
The nurse shook herself and came in, closing the door. “If you could sit on the exam table, that would be great. And you can be anywhere you’d like, sir.”
The Shadow chose the seat right across from the entry, staring at the door as if he were daring somebody, anybody to come through it.
With another smile, Beth had to wonder what the nurse would think if she knew he was prepared to jump anyone he didn’t like the looks of. And kill them.
Maybe cut them up and put them into a stew.
God, she hoped it really had been chicken in that soup …
“Ms. Marklon? Hello?”
She shook herself. “Oh, sorry, what?”
The history part of things went fast, because before her transition she’d been perfectly healthy, and it wasn’t like she was going to tell them that a mere two years ago, she’d become a vampire.
Duh.
“And how far along do you think you are?” came the eventual question.
“I have no idea whether I’m even pregnant, to be honest. It’s a possibility, though, and I am having a lot of nausea—I just want some reassurance everything’s okay.”
“Have you taken an over-the-counter test?”
“No. Should I have?”
The nurse shook her head. “We can do a blood test here if the doctor wants one. And as for the nausea, if you are pregnant, a lot of women get morning sickness that’s more like all-day sickness in the first trimester—and yet it’s all perfectly fine.”
“Good Lord, I can’t believe I’m talking like this.”
The nurse just smiled and finished writing in the chart.
“Okay, now, if you’d like to change into this gown.” A paper square was placed in her lap. “I’ll send the doctor in.”