Free Heteroflexibility by Mary Beth Daniels Page A

bottom stuck with me as I got my meager cash and spent half of it on gas. I hadn’t been brought up religious, so I didn’t have any spiritual guides. Jesus sounded pretty useful at times like this. Mom had invoked him a time or two, although she’d never dragged me to church.
    Grandma had been full of euphemisms. Count your blessings. Every cloud has a silver lining. When God closes a door, he always opens a window. I had missed her funeral, five years ago, off on my honeymoon cruise without a cell phone or email.
    Did all the women in my family die young? Grandma had been maybe 62. Mom had been a mere 37. Both had died of cancer.
    A car cut in front of me on the freeway and I slammed on my brakes, narrowly missing his bumper. I pulled over, breathing hard. Count your blessings, Zest. I could be dead right now. I could be sick, dying of cancer. At that very moment, a pain shot up my body, originating in the most tender of places.
    I almost let my foot off the brake but held on. I knew that pain. I’d been ignoring it for a couple weeks, realizing with each one that I should call my OB for my annual exam, which was overdue.
    I knew not to miss. Mom had died of cervical cancer a mere seven weeks after her diagnosis. It was a silent killer. The signs were easy to ignore, especially if, like her, you didn’t bother to go in for pap smears. And hereditary as hell.
    I shifted in my seat. Another pain shot up. I’d given up my health insurance to get on Cade’s. Which would be gone with the divorce.
    I slammed my hands on the steering wheel. Karma had caught up with me. I’d said and thought too many mean things. I was going to rot away, starting with my sex organs. Just like my mother. We would meet up on Bitch Lane in hell.
    Traffic whizzed by on Mopac. It was dangerous to sit here in the narrow shoulder. But it was dangerous to pull out. Dangerous to live. I glanced over the side of the freeway. The barrier was strong, but a truck had gone over the side a year or so ago, blown right through the concrete. The police said there were no brake marks. He’d meant to go sailing into the sky.
    I sat back and another pain jabbed me. Death. Accelerating. My breathing came faster. I tried to calm it down. Don’t overreact.
    I threw the car into drive and gunned it, darting into the traffic lanes and blasting through town. My gynecologist was three exits away. I’d make him see me. He’d see me. He knew my family history. Maybe the stress had been the last straw, letting the cancer overtake me.
    The car had barely chugged silent before I flung my body out of it and hurtled across the parking lot. Dr. White was the nicest doctor I’d ever known, often running behind schedule because he wanted to make sure every one of his patients felt as through they had their questions answered.
    The waiting room teemed with pregnant women in various states of belly balloons. Suddenly I was certain Cade’s woman was here, rubbing her happy bump, and he might even be with her. She would have a baby, and I would be dead.
    I felt woozy. I kept my eyes straight ahead as I rushed the front desk. “I need to see Dr. White. It’s an emergency.”
    The receptionist glanced at my belly, which I tried to pooch out, this time glad for the extra heft. Maybe if she thought I was pregnant, it would get me in.
    “What’s the problem?”
    “I’m in pain,” I said, willing the sharp stab to return, to justify my freak-out. It hadn’t happened during my mad run into the office. “Down there.”
    “Are you pregnant?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She frowned. “But it’s possible?”
    I hadn’t had sex with Cade in, Holy Cow, two months. How had that happened? Why hadn’t I noticed? “Yes.”
    She pushed a form toward me. “Fill this out. We’ll try to work you in.”
    The wait was agonizing. Mothers with babies surrounded me. Every time the door opened, I was sure it would be Cade’s woman.
    I dug through a pile of magazines and paused on one.