A soft knock sounds at the door.
“Come in,” I shout.
The doctor, a woman who looks to be in her thirties, walks in. She has black hair and is wearing black pants with her white coat over the top.
“Hi, Eva. I’m Dr. Bryant.” She closes the door, holding my file, then extends her hand toward me.
I place my hand in hers and shake. “Nice to meet you.”
She leans against the counter and opens my file. My hands are in my lap, turning red as they clutch each other, while I brace for what comes next.
“Eva, it looks like you’re pregnant. Your test came back positive. I’m going to do an exam to confirm.”
I nod my head in response. Relief. That’s what I feel. My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away. I knew I had conflicting emotions about this, but this confirms it for me. I want this baby. I’m excited about this baby.
“Go ahead and lie down,” she tells me as she washes her hands. “This will just take a minute.”
She grabs two rubber gloves. I watch as she stretches them over her hands. I lie back on the table, the paper below me crinkling underneath my weight.
“Just scoot down a bit. Place your feet here,” she instructs.
It’s such an odd thing to open yourself up like this to a total stranger. Fortunately, she has a very calming presence. It makes this feel a little less awkward.
“I’m going to place two fingers inside of you and feel your uterus.”
“Okay,” I reply softly.
She does the examination, which takes less than twenty seconds.
“All right, you can sit back up.”
She takes the gloves off and tosses them in the trash, then washes her hands. As she dries them off, she turns toward me. “I’d say you are five weeks along.”
I bite my lip as I try not to bawl my eyes out in front of her. “Wow. Okay.”
“Is this a surprise to you?” she asks gently.
“It is,” I tell her honestly. “I was on birth control. I’m pretty strict about taking it too.”
“Hmm. There are some things that can happen that make it less effective.”
“I know the standard things. I didn’t get sick and throw up or take any new medications that would have interacted with it.”
“Is there anything you were doing out of the ordinary five weeks ago?” she asks. “It helps to identify if there was a reason, so you know next time you’re on birth control.”
I try to do the math. Five weeks. That would put me at the end of July, which was … Paris.
“The only thing out of the ordinary was traveling. I was in Paris for a couple of days.”
“Ah, and did you adjust the time you took your birth control, so it was still the same time you took it here?”
My eyebrows rise as I try to understand what she’s saying.
She smiles. “Did you take it at the same time you usually do, but Paris time?”
“Yes.”
“That means you went thirty hours at one point without birth control, which can mess with its effectiveness. Were you sexually active in Paris?”