SONYA POV
I recognized the last one right away. When you're dealing with infertility, you can draw from memory the logos of all the companies that produce pregnancy tests.
"That's not necessary," I growled. Well, in this state, I don't care who I ruin their mood for. No one cared about me either, so I can stop playing politely.
"Trust an old wise woman, I have intuition."
"And I have infertility," I said firmly in response. "I can't be pregnant, do you understand?"
Well, that's it. No matter what company Max and I went to, someone was sure to ask when such a wonderful couple would have children. When our family becomes a family "in the full sense of the word."
In other words, society reproached me for not being pregnant. And I always answered point-blank that I wanted to, but could not give birth to a child. The reaction to this was predictable in every frame.
Silence, sighs, sympathy, stories about how someone else also did not succeed, and then a miracle happened and completed this parade of tactlessness, my favorite: contacts of the best doctors, sorcerers, and priests who would definitely help me.
I could predict the reaction of the interlocutor with the accuracy of a turn of the head.
And I did not expect that they would laugh at me in response.
"She's infertile, of course." The woman in the cap wiped away the tears that were streaming down her unattractive, pockmarked face. "I sent my infertility to the seventh grade this year. These doctors just want to make diagnoses, and we women believe them, right?"
"Not true," I snapped and paid for the purchase.
I tumbled out of the drugstore and pressed my back against the brick wall, trying to catch my breath. There was no air in my lungs, like after a marathon. Lord, who am I trying to prove anything to? I wish I had lectured that crazy woman on tactlessness, like I did at the very beginning.
Nobody needs my admonitions. And they don't need my answers, because the main goal of such questions is to hurt someone's feelings.
Somehow, I got home. I piled all the bags on the table, turned on the speaker, the TV, the lights in all the rooms, and the garland. The apartment immediately became bright and noisy, as if guests had come to visit me. As if I wasn't alone with my pain.
I threw the champagne in the freezer, opened the candies, and put the salad in a crystal bowl. We bought an expensive set of dishes to make fruit salads and custard, but in fact, everything was still lying in boxes.
When I decorated the table and changed my clothes, I did the most important thing: I turned off the phone and the doorbell. No uninvited guests tonight. Just me and my new life.
At that moment, another attack of nausea hit me again. Not sharp, like when you're poisoned. No, a dull, itchy feeling that only intensified from time to time. I emptied the first-aid bag. Four boxes landed on the table to slow music. The last one with a pregnancy test.
"What a bitch! I'll sue the idiot!" I paced the kitchen angrily, while new forms of torture for a drunken fool of a pharmacist were spinning in my head! "I'll demand moral damages, so that she'll have to devote her whole life to me!"
I threw my head back to the ceiling so that tears wouldn't ruin my makeup. What a bitch! After all, she did it her way. Cursing, I reached into my wallet to find the receipt, with which I would write a complaint right now, but having found it, I exhaled.
I didn't take the test.
Which means I won't be able to prove that this was done on purpose to humiliate me. You never know, maybe I got confused and added something unnecessary.
Or maybe it's true that the saleswoman mistakenly gave me a stupid test, and now I think of her like that. Oh my God, my nerves are completely shot.
I opened the blister pack with the pills. I'll drink them all at once and give myself a shot, this is the kind of party that awaits me. I drew the medicine into the syringe, took out the alcohol wipes, and looked at this whole kit of a novice drug addict.
And then at the test.
Oh no.
It can't be.
Because this can never be.
Or?
I didn't go to the toilet, I crept like a bashful thief. I looked around, looking at the windows from which New Year's fun was coming.
I didn't even follow the instructions. No point. I've taken a thousand tests in my life, each one shattering my heart into pieces. Hold for a few seconds, wait three to five minutes, and so on and so forth. I've always done everything as I should, and my body does it as it wants.
And this time I decided to break the rules. Because none of this is real, and anyway, I'm just stalling for time before the painful injection. I hate injecting my ass. The bruises from preparing for IVF had just disappeared.
I held the test in front of my eyes and didn't count the required three minutes. What the hell difference does it make if the result is the same?
And there is one stripe. And next to it... another.
Over the years of planning, I saw different stripes. Phantom stripes, invented by me, ghost stripes that were only visible at a certain angle, stripes of hope that Max and I saw because we wanted to see them, and finally, shimmering stripes that are only visible in the light and disappear if you try to photograph them on your phone.
I saw many, many tests and stripes on them.
But never such bright ones.
***