Free Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) by Toby Neal Page B

headed toward the hospital, Lei considered what he’d said. She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d last had her period, not that she’d ever paid much attention to it. Could she be pregnant? She was on the pill, but lately she’d been distracted and had missed a couple of doses. They’d stopped using condoms once they were exclusive, and somehow, Lei had never imagined the world’s oldest relationship complication could happen to her.
    T he weird way she’d been feeling lately was probably just stress with the case and planning the wedding.
    At the emergency room, she called Stevens. “Sorry, honey. I fell down a cliff. I’m at the ER.”
    “ Good God, woman. Can’t you get through the week without ending up in the hospital?”
    “ Don’t know. Never tried it,” she said, going for humor. “Nothing serious. I’ll be done by the time you come pick me up, I’m sure. They’re just x-raying my ribs.”
    At the radiology lab, the technician handed her a questionnaire, and Lei paused at the question Are you pregnant ?
    Her heart sped up, and the print of the letters danced in front of her eyes, turning to hieroglyphics. A wave of nausea swept over her, and she dropped the clipboard to reach for a nearby trash can. There wasn’t anything left in her belly, but when the technician came back, she said, “I could be pregnant. I better find out before I get the X-ray.”
    “ No problem. We have some pregnancy tests if you’d like one. You really shouldn’t have an X-ray unless you know.”
    Oh God. She wasn ’t even going to be able to procrastinate.
    Lei wasn ’t sure she could even pee on the little stick, but finally she was able to go. She set the plastic wand on a paper towel and wrapped it up so she didn’t have to look at it before she washed her hands.
    She ’d be a terrible mother. Lei felt sick at the thought of the responsibility, at the possibility of hurting a child as her mother had abused her.
    Lei also couldn’t ignore the leap of something like joy at the thought of a baby with Stevens’s eyes, with her curls. She splashed water on her face and hands, wondering if she had the courage to unwrap the plastic wand and look at it. She decided she didn’t. She put the wand, still wrapped in the paper towel, back in its original box and stuck it in her purse.
    “ I need to wait on an X-ray,” she told the technician. “Can the doctor check me out some other way?”

Chapter 9
     
    Lei was feeling better the next morning. Her ribs, examined by the ER doc by visual and touch exam, were “probably just bruised”—but that didn’t stop them from hurting every time she took a deep breath.
    “ No more chasing perps on foot until after the wedding,” Stevens had said when he picked her up, folding her into his arms and kissing the top of her head. “I don’t want you on crutches or something on the big day.”
    The pregnancy test felt like a lead weight in her purse. She still didn’t want to look at it—she’d open it with Stevens on the honeymoon if her period hadn’t started by then. That way, no matter what the test told them, she wasn’t dealing with it alone.
    Lei booted up her work compu ter. She had extra lieutenant duties to fit in, including reviewing a patrol’s scheduling, making sure trainees’ ongoing logs were looking good, and other departmental minutiae Captain Omura had lobbed her way. She slurped down a couple of Advil with her coffee, paused to wonder if that was okay if she was pregnant and decided it had to be; she wasn’t going to cut into more lifestyle choices until she knew for sure. Besides, she was in survival mode with her bruised ribs.
    Lei called down to the lab that was processing some of the trash she and Pono had picked up yesterday on the ‘Bow Hunter’ case, as they’d nicknamed the Waikamoi murder.
    “ Get anything off that cup and those wrappers we submitted yesterday?” Lei asked Roger Ciman, the island’s top trace analysis expert.