Her Story

It was morning, but she didn't care it's been morning before. She sat half way up from her friends floor and grabbed her stomach. All she could think about was last night. She looked over to find her friend passed out on the couch like she usually was. Head so close to the floor you thought she would of woke up from smelling dust. The girl reached over to try and wake her up but all she did was move a couple inches, just enough that the rest of the bottle had enough wiggle room to finally slip through her grasp and onto the hard wood flooring. That's what woke her. Her eyes squinted as she stretched her shoulders out and tried to sit up. Her belly got up before the rest of her body and her feet gripped the floor for balance. "where's the bottle?". She had both elbows on her knees and started looking around the room at everything accept her friend who was sitting next to her. Still holding her stomach. "Hey, I think somethings wrong. I think I need to go see the doctor or something". Her friend, picking up the spilled bottle from the floor looks at her with one eye and while swaying says "What?, girl you're just hung over from last night aint nothing wrong with you calm down". "No seriously I think somethings really wrong with me my stomach really hurts" she swings both legs up onto the couch and lays her head on the couch coochin arm rest. "What you on your period or sum?". She's done with her games. She is in to much pain to argue and can clearly see her friend isn't going to be of any help. She gets up half way hunched over and grabs her bag from the chair at the table with the rest of last night still left on it, steps over one of the half awake zombies on the way out and slams the door. She knows the difference, between hung over and when something is actually wrong. this wasn't her being hung over, this wasn't her period, and she wasn't overreacting. She got to the bus stop and realized everyone else had been up a lot longer already then her. The woman who stood just on the other side of the bus sign looked like she was from another planet. One where people get up at 6:30 and drink coffee in the mornings. One where you step into your shoes and don't have to bend over to tie any laces. "The good life" she called it. But apparently not good enough because she's still here, also waiting for the bus to hurry up.

The ride was long, probably because it had to stop at every stop and at every stop she had to keep her head up to see who was getting on. This wasn't her favorite neighborhood and she wasn't exactly the most popular person at the moment. She thought about a month or two ago when she had got jumped by a group of girls. Two of them she went to school with and the other two looked like they wouldn't know their school mascot if you said it to them to try and remember. The "friend" she was with just watched and she wasn't in the mood to feel that powerless again. Although after getting jumped like that, for no reason that she could change, everywhere you go you feel powerless. The bus finally got to her stop and she got off. She starts walking down the street and sees a silhouette of someone. Tall and fit, big clothes but not in a doesn't fit type of way. She thought it was him so she cut a fast corner and didn't dare look back. If she could of done that night over again she would of. She wouldn't of gotten all dressed up. She wouldn't of let her friend talk her into going to the hotel, and she definitely wouldn't of stayed long enough to let him figure out she really didn't want to be there. her stomach keeps pulsing and this hill is getting longer. Still she can't stop thinking about him, about the way he feels so inclined, and entitled to still feel like he can wave at her on the street if he sees her. That he can even confidently mention her name in the same sentence of other words without tripping over his own feet. How does a man like that still get to walk around free after so coldly and blatantly committing an act like the one he did.

She reaches the doors to the hospital. The handle is cold and she feels like everyone in the room is staring at her, like everyone who looks her way knows something about her that she doesn't even know herself yet. She reaches the front desk. The woman immediately looks up and through her. "Yes, how can I help you?". "I need to see a doctor, I've been having some really bad stomach cramps". The front desk woman looks at her up and down, And her, forgetting that it's 3 in the afternoon and she looks like she's been up all night was not in position to return the favor. She just takes her seat and tries to disappear in it. The doctor comes out a couple times and calls in an old couple, one in a wheel chair. A family with a child on a gurney, and a old woman who was immediately freaking out that she hadn't taken her heart medication. She started asking herself if she really needed to be here. That cramps weren't really that bad and this was probably all for nothing. But maybe it was the hungover paranoia from last night talking or the fact that this pain just felt different in some way but she stayed there seated, and waited. The doctor peered out again from behind the door with his tall white coat and called out "Hannah?". That was her. She stood up to fast and caught another cramp that turned her face red. As she walked towards him she couldn't help but think of what he might be like outside of work. Once he went home and took the lab coat off and the penny loafers to rest, who did he turn into when nobody was looking?. And it wasn't that she cared, it's that she's been surprised more then once and now she's just learned to expect the unexpected. He takes her down a long hallway to a door where there is a single hospital bed, a chair, and the rest of the usual doctor criteria. "Have a seat and I'll take your vitals". He seems cold, and usually in a situation were you're still half asleep and anxious that might not seem the best but she was actually preferring it in this moment. She held out her arm and he took her blood pressure and pulse. When he asked her why she was there she left out the part about last night and the months before that and just said she wasn't feeling herself this morning. Once she had said that, she realized that maybe it was just all the running from herself she'd been doing that had finally caught up to her. That maybe this is what she deserved. To be sitting here, like this, right now. "I'll be back in a minuet". He walks away. She's alone again. In another space that feels unfamiliar, these places are starting to feel a lot more peaceful to her then the ones she remembers. He comes back in with a nurse and a ultrasound. The nurse looks at her with eyes of concern. And the doctor takes a step back. "Okay I'm just going to take a look here with this machine just so we can make sure nothing to serious is going on, okay?". She takes the long walky talky wand thing and dumps it in blue jelly all over her stomach. The girls head hits the pillow and her arms are crossed over her chest. She take a deep breath to try and exhale the fact that this nurse clearly thinks her Job is saving the world and the girl laying down on the hospital bed is her next victim, accept she's supposed to be grateful to her in this moment so she can't let her see the eyes of disgust. "That's it, take a deeeeep breath". The girl tightens her arms to hold back an eye roll. "ahh, okay do you see here, this picture here". She points at a little dot on the screen. Maybe she was right maybe there really is something wrong, maybe this is what months away from home gets you. To your death bed, maybe her father was right all along, maybe she couldn't survive without him. Everything in her body hurt now, She started squeezing her arms so tight that she didn't even care if her shirt started to wrinkle as long as it would keep her from crying. "you're pregnant".