Chapter 13

There was a lot going on during August, after her student teaching was done. Cecelia had three weeks of staying with her parents before she went back to school. She had not yet had the courage to tell her mother she had a boyfriend, because of who that boyfriend was. She felt silly calling him a "boy" friend anyway.

It was tough for Bob and her to get any real quality time together. Bob insisted that everybody but her parents knew what was going on, but she still resisted telling them, or making it public, particularly until she could make Horace Grimes admit to her that he wasn't going to offer her a job.

That happened a week before she had to go back to school. She'd been trying to get an appointment with him for two weeks when he finally said he had time to see her.

"You did splendidly in your student teaching," he said, smiling. "As I knew you would."

"So does that mean I have a chance at a position here at Harper High?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"Unfortunately, the requirement for you to finish your degree prevents that," he said. "I don't have any vacancies at mid term that I'm aware of now but of course you could check back with me any time you're in town on break this semester. I really don't expect anything to open up, but you never know."

"I see," she said, subdued by his skill in making it look like he really didn't have any openings.

She cried to Bob, who held her at first, and then distracted her in other ways, telling her that they still had lots of options and just needed to be patient.

"Besides," he said at one point. "You might meet some ripped young stud your own age back at school and fall madly in love."

He yelped as his balls were suddenly squeezed firmly.

"Don't you ever say anything like that again," she hissed.

"Yes ma'am," he winced.

The mood was broken, though, and she said she had to go home.

They only got, in fact, one more opportunity to spend more than a few hours together before she climbed into her car and drove back to school.

Back at the university, about to start her last semester of college, Cecelia decided to get in to see the doctor in the clinic before classes started. She'd had a persistent touch of stomach flu and wanted to get it under control before she had to sit in class again. It had actually been bothering her back in Harper, but she wasn't on her parents' insurance any more, so she had to wait to get back to the student clinic, where her tuition gave her coverage in the student clinic.

She'd never actually been to the clinic before, because she almost never got sick. So she didn't know the middle-aged dumpy man who eventually saw her and asked her dozens of questions.

Finally he asked if she was sexually active.

"I beg your pardon?" she gasped. Some of his other questions were personal enough to bother her. This was even worse.

"Have you been engaging in sexual intercourse?" asked the doctor patiently.

She flushed dark red.

"I'll take that as a yes," said the doctor, who saw this kind of thing all the time. "What kind of protection did you use, if any?"

"Sup-p-positories," she whispered finally.

"I'll need a urine sample," he said. "Go see the nurse and she'll tell you what to do."

"Aren't you going to give me something?" she asked.

"Depends on the tests," he said. "If I need to write you a prescription I'll have the nurse call you. In the meantime, get yourself a box of saltines. If you start feeling nauseous eat one or two. Sometimes it helps settle the stomach."

So she peed in a little plastic cup, which was unsettling because it was so small and she got some on her hand. Then after the nurse made sure she had a good working phone number, she was told to go home. All in all she thought it was a pretty rinky dink operation, considering nobody had done anything for her at all except tell her to eat crackers.

Which was why, four days later when she found a voice mail from the clinic and called them back, she was completely unprepared to be told she was pregnant.

"I can't be pregnant," she moaned to the doctor, who had already silently congratulated himself for calling it right before the test even came back.

"You can be pregnant," said the doctor. "It happens all the time."

"But I used those spermicidal things!" she moaned.

"That works about thirty percent of the time," said the doctor. "How many times do you have intercourse per month, on average?"

"I DON'T have intercourse!" she started, because, in fact, she wasn't. The only man she'd have it with was three hundred miles away. "I mean I'm not now. I was with my boyfriend over the summer."

"And what was the average per week you had intercourse?" he asked.

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," she objected.

"You wanted to know how you could be pregnant," he said, shrugging. "Other than saying you are, I can't be of much help if I don't have the facts."

"Every day," she said stiffly.

"OK, then," said the doctor smoothly. "For all but five or six of those days each month you were relatively safe anyway, which means you had sex roughly ten or fifteen times when you were fertile. Since spermicidal alone is only effective 30% of the time anyway, that means that, for all intents and purposes, you had unprotected sex ten times. That's probably how you got pregnant."

"But..." She didn't know what else to say.

"Read the instructions," he said. "Every method of birth control except the pill suggests that you use multiple barriers and never depend on only one. If you had used the spermicidal with a diaphragm or a condom, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation." He stared at her. "So ... what do you want to do?"

"What do I want to do?" She sounded confused.

"I'm required by law to spell out all your options," he sighed. "I can refer you to another doctor for an abortion, if you like."

"No!" Her answer was instant and very firm.

"Then I can set you up for regular prenatal care and counseling. If you like I can refer you to an adoption agency too. There are several who work with the university on a non profit basis."

"Prenatal care is all I'll be needing," she said tightly. Her mind was whirling and it wouldn't be until much, much later that she thought about adoption. Right now she was just trying to cope with the fact that her world had fallen in around her.

"When was your last period?" he asked.

She didn't see what that had to do with anything, considering if he was right it didn't matter when her last period was.

"It helps to know when calculating the due date," he said patiently.

Age is thought to impart wisdom, but that's a crock. Maybe OLD age imparts some wisdom, but not just any age. A lot of people, particularly young people, seem to think that if you just don't pay any attention to a problem, it might go away.

This is not to say that Cecelia was hoping for a miscarriage, or anything like that. She just hoped the test was wrong, and decided to ignore it for now.

That meant she didn't tell her parents about it, nor did she call Bob, who she knew had started school again and was too busy to deal with something like this ... especially if it was all a false alarm. The morning sickness went away in fact, which only supported her firm resolve to believe she wasn't pregnant.