Chapter 1: Trouble

Tess met Josh at the most unlikely of places: a baptism.

Tess had only come because Liz had begged her to. She had blown off a party that she'd much rather go to, but sometimes you just had to do family things. Liz was her cousin after all, through her father's brother Peter, and once they had been the closest of friends, and it was Liz who was getting baptized.

Tess had gone searching through her clothes looking for something demure enough to wear to a baptism, and had only just succeeded. The skirt was too short, and the blouse too thin, but it would have to do. Once she wouldn't have had a problem finding the right clothes; Tess had grown up going to the church, a good little Sunday school girl, and best friends with Liz. But on the day after her sixteenth birthday, she had announced to her parents that she was no longer going to go to church, no longer interested in that boring religious crap, and she was now in charge of her own life, thank you very much. They wept, and wailed, and threatened to throw her out of the house, but when she'd called their bluff and gone to start packing, they'd backed down, and after that Tess had done her own thing.

When she first got to the baptism she hung out at the back of the church, feeling so very much out of place. After two and a half years of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, she had half expected that she'd be thrown out, but instead people had been quite welcoming of her, though she could still feel their judgment in the air. But she knew most of the kids well, and when Liz and her friends drew her into their circle, and she found that she was having an unexpectedly good time. There were some new kids in the circle, but the one she really noticed was a tall energetic guy with a glint in his eye. When Liz had introduced her, Josh did something completely unexpected — he had taken her hand and kissed the back of it, as if she was a lady. Tess knew better, she was no lady in any sense of the word, but she had still got shivers down her spine.

After Liz had been baptized, Josh had gone out the front with a guitar. Tess hadn't known the song, but she watched in awe as Josh carried off the tune in a beautifully smooth voice. It was a gentle song with a haunting melody, and full of words of love and compassion. It was about Jesus and how he cared for his loved ones, and though Tess knew she wasn't one of them, it still spoke strongly to her. Tess was doing a music journalism degree, counted herself part of the local music scene, and she'd done the whole band girl/groupie thing, but nothing had reached into her heart like this song. Anywhere else, and Tess would've gone up to him afterwards, thrust her pelvis out, and said "fly me!" Tess very much doubted that this would work with Josh.

After the baptism, a circle of friends hung at the church playing games and singing. Several of them, including Josh, had guitars, and Tess had blown off the party she'd intended to go to afterwards, and she'd stayed, just part of the circle, enjoying it much more than she had expected.

The next day, she went round to catch up with Liz, and they had long chat. At the end, Tess said, "You know, I've been thinking, I might start coming along to church a little."

"Oh, why's that?"

"Everyone was so nice to each other; they really cared how each other felt and made sure they were included. I never really appreciated it before, but my friends are not like that."

"How can they be your friends?"

Tess shrugged. Maybe they weren't really friends, just people that had screwed around with each other in the past, and maybe would again if it suited.

"I think that there's another reason," said Liz, with a smirk in her eyes.

"Was I that obvious?"

"Tess, the way you looked at him, the way your mouth hung open while he was singing?"

Tess sighed, and then Liz had told her all about Josh. Tess knew that this was a guy she could really fall for. Sporting — he played volleyball, musical, clever, outgoing, no current girlfriend, what was not to like?

Liz could see it too. "Tess, don't get your hopes up. Josh really believes, he's given his life to Jesus. You don't really have any basis for a relationship with him."

In her mind Tess knew how true that was, but her heart was not going to listen. It never had, that was how she ended up where she was. She had been starting to feel like her life was spinning out of control. Perhaps it was time to take a break, pull up and re-assess what she wanted from life.

On Sunday she went to church. Her mum cried at the breakfast table when she announced that she was going. Josh smiled when he saw her, and when he brought her into his group of friends, her heart leapt.

As she was leaving church, she realized that chasing Josh was going to be different to all the other boys she'd had. Usually she just offered up her body, and made sure that the guy had a good time, she knew how to do that. But Josh was going to be harder; he'd reach much further into her heart before even getting interested in her. He'd talked to her, let her be around him. But when the chance had come and she'd leaned into him and, without thinking, pushed her breast into his side, he'd just pulled away and created some space, but he'd also smiled at her. If Tess hadn't grown up in the church, she mightn't have known how to interpret those mixed signals.

"I'll do whatever it takes", she said to herself. And if whatever it took was to go to church, then she'd happily do that. She had lost it bad for Josh already, she knew, but it made Tess nervous. She had never had a relationship not based on sex, and she wasn't sure that any guy would want her without the sex - it was the only thing she was really good at.

The next Saturday night, she went to Group, which was the weekly Saturday night gathering, mainly for teenagers, with games, Bible readings and singing. She hadn't felt good all day, some tummy pain thing. Though her period was overdue, it hadn't felt like normal cramping at all; but she took a couple of pills and went anyway. She'd enjoyed the night, and had even spent some time talking to people who were not Josh, but the pain had been getting worse, and eventually she had to go and curl up in the corner by herself. Liz had noticed almost immediately, and when Tess had not been very responsive, she'd got her boyfriend Sam to carry Tess out to his car and take them both to hospital.

The emergency department admitted her quite quickly, and once they'd given her some pain medication, she started to respond a little. The female doctor had given her a once over, and then asked her when her last period had been.

"About 6 weeks ago."

"Is it possible that you're pregnant?"

"No. No way." Tess was indignant, as if she was a virgin.

The doctor paused. "When I see a teenage girl who's shaved her pubic hair off and replaced it with a tattoo of a snake, I figure that she is sexually active."

Liz, who'd been sitting with Tess holding her hand, stood up and said "Perhaps I better leave", but Tess had grabbed her hand tightly.

"No, don't. Ok, I am quite sexually active, but I'm on the pill, and I always do safe sex."

The doctor snorted in dismissal. She took some blood, and then disappeared. Tess turned to Liz. "No way I'm pregnant. It's just not possible." Liz kept her opinions to herself, and they talked about other things, much better than they'd talked for years, only pausing when the nurses came occasionally to check on Tess.

Eventually the doctor came back, and sat down next to the bed.

"Tess, you're pregnant, about 6 weeks."

Tess felt herself sliding away. There was no way she could deal with this. Pregnant? Oh no. But how? She cast her mind back four weeks, and then remembered. "Oh no, the gang bang", she whispered.

"It looks to me like you have an ectopic pregnancy."

"What's that?" Tess asked.

"It means that instead of being implanted in the uterus like it's supposed to, the egg has gotten implanted in the wrong place, one of your tubes, and now that it's trying to grow into a baby, you're getting pain and probably bleeding. We have to confirm this with an ultrasound, which I'm going to go and organize now. If it is an ectopic pregnancy, it won't be viable."

"Baby" and "not viable" were pretty much the only words that Tess heard in all that. Once the doctor finally left to go and organize the ultrasound, Tess burst into tears. A baby? Pregnant? And not viable? Tess had absolutely no idea how to feel. She didn't know whether she wanted to lose the baby or not, didn't know how to think about it at all. She told Liz about the gang bang. Really, it would have been rape if it was anyone else, but she'd bragged about how she'd try anything and do anyone so often, that when the guys she was with decided that a gang bang was a good idea, she hadn't really known how to say no, and the drugs and alcohol hadn't helped. There were seven of them, and while it had been fun in a bizarre Tess-really-will-do-anything way, in another way, the how-Tess-really-feels way, it had been decidedly the worst experience of her life.

Finally, it was time for the ultrasound, and it confirmed the Tess really did have an ectopic pregnancy. The doctor said that the drugs, alcohol and some other medicine she'd taken earlier when she was sick must have stopped the pill from working properly, and one of the guys must have not worn a condom or it broke or something, so the doctor was also testing her for STDs. She said that there was no chance for the pregnancy, and that she would admit her, and give her a drug to help terminate the pregnancy as quickly as possible, and that Tess would be in hospital for a few days for observation.

Liz finally called her dad to come and pick her up about 5 am, when Tess had finally stopped talking and crying and gone to sleep under sedation.

Liz was the first visitor the next day. When she walked in, she could see that Tess had been crying. Immediately, Tess launched into the offensive. "Where's my family? Why didn't they come to see me? I bet they went to church instead!"