Chapter Text
This winter we're counting on YOU to donate blood
It's not just a lump. Make sure to get checked regularly.
Nursing offers men a good career. Call us now to find out more!
Violet scans the posters on the clinic wall for the third time in five minutes. She's not particularly interested in giving blood or jumping careers, but they have the helpful benefit of being stuck above the shelf she's doesn't want to draw attention towards. Family planning. Particularly the tests resting like little pink boxes of grenades by her hands.
The clinic offers two brands. Another sneaky glance down reveals that the more expensive is almost four times the price of the other. Probably because of the digital display. She clicks her tongue. What was the point of that? regardless of any flashy tech, both tests do the same thing. Pee on stick. Wait. Then Congrats… or not.
She flicks her gaze to the other end of the room. It's empty but she can make out Charles jabbing at a microwavable burrito in the staff room behind the dispensary.
She brushes the top of each box. The more expensive one has a rose blooming on the front, thorns and all. She certainly doesn't feel rosy right now… maybe it was a metaphor about beauty coming through pain. And maybe the digital display was worth it. And maybe she doesn't even need to waste her money because her period was probably going to come the moment she paid.
"You okay, Vi?" Yuri walks out from the back and rests her elbows on the pharmacy counter. There's a pen trapped between her lips, another resting behind her ear.
"Yup. Fine," Violet says, jerking her eyes to the blocky red letters of the blood drive posters again.
"You sure?"
"Mhhhmmm."
Yuri pulls the pen from her mouth but doesn't comment on the obvious lie.
The blue string of her bikini peeks above her scrubs. Unsurprising. Summer had already hit it's peak and the ocean was one of the few places to avoid the sun's syrupy weight. Violet had caught her diving in the past few mornings and zipping around like some green-haired dolphin between the waves. She'd considered going for a swim before coming to a screeching realisation in the bathroom this morning.
"Hellooooo, Earth to Vi?" Yuri waves towards her. "You looking for anything in particular or—"
"Tampons!" The word comes out much louder than it should have.
She hears Charles choke on his burrito through the door. Yuri sucks her top lip to stifle a laugh.
"Same place as always," she says, tapping the shelf under the counter.
Violet takes a box, flicks her eyes back to the tests and also grabs a random handful of items from that wall. "Just these please," she mumbles, fishing in her shorts for her purse. She's not 100% sure she remembered it when she jogged out of the house, mainly because she's been counting then recounting the days since she'd last needed to actually buy tampons.
She'd definitely forgotten to clean the coop this morning. Can she be around chickens if she's…
"Hey, do you know of any illnesses you might get if you spend a lot of time around chickens?" she asks as casually as she can.
Yuri cocks her head. "I'm not sure…"
"Or ducks. Or poultry in general I guess."
"Uh…"
"Well, there's a few." Charles emerges from the backroom, rubbing a spot of hot sauce from his tie. It's a lime green number today, one she recognises as Scott's most recent birthday gift to him. She still hadn't figured out if the wide smile he'd given in return was genuine or not considering that was far from the ugliest one he owns. "Just off the top of my head, there's E. coli, Avian Influenza, Campylobacter bacteria and then there's all the parasites that can live in soil…"
"Charles." Yuri shoots him a sharper look. "I don't think that's helping."
He glances up and pales when he catches Violet's dinner-plate eyes.
"Ah, Sorry Vi. Living on this island it's important to know all the possibilities of illness even if they're unlikely. Incredibly unlikely considering how clean you keep that farm. But have you been having any symptoms? Nausea? Headaches? Joint pain?"
Yes yes yes and I know why. "No," she says.
Yuri looks at the random assortment of items on the counter and turns back to Charles.
"Hey can you please check if we have more ibuprofen in the stockroom?" Her smile hardens when he gestures to a box of what Violet assumes is said ibuprofen by the door. "Now."
He glances between the two women again, but retreats into the stockroom with a slightly awkward cough.
Yuri leans forward and rests both elbows on the counter. Her dark eyes bore softly into Violet's. "Okay Vi, what's up? Really?"
Violet bites her lip. Goddess does she want to spill. The thought had been gnawing at her gut with pointy little teeth all morning. Scott was somewhere in the caverns for the next twelve hours but the thought of having that conversation with him felt like ice water flushing through her veins.
Why? The thought bites harder.
Yuri puts a hand on hers, gently stopping her fingers from fiddling with her wedding ring. "You can tell me." Her voice is cotton soft, the kind of soothing that probably came from dealing with people in crisis situations. Like this.
Wow, she wants to slap herself for thinking that. Missing two periods and having a stupid panic was not the same as working in a literal war zone.
Again. Why does it feel like that?
"Morning all!" The quiet of the clinic is shattered by Mayor Connor's jaunty greeting. Hot air batters Violet's side as the door swings closed. He strides to her side, sunny as always. "Ah Violet I was hoping to catch you. With the animal festival coming up I was hoping you and Scott could—"
She slams a handful of money on the counter before he can finish. "Sorry I really have to go. The heat in here is really… and I have to walk the chickens," she garbles before grabbing her stuff and jogging out the door. She's halfway out of town before she looks at the stuff she bought.
A pack of twelve catheters, dandruff shampoo and old looking sakura candy.
Wonderful.
The bathroom in the Beluga Bay mall is, in a word, dingy. The smell of cheap toilet cleaner and vape clings to every surface, the florescent lights flickering against tiles that were probably once pink but now a greasy shade of grey. She's barricaded herself in the one stall with a working lock, bag and jacket shoved against the door with a healthy layer of toilet paper protecting them from the floor.
She hadn't meant to come all the way here but her erratic escape from the Starlet clinic had somehow ended on the next boat out of town. Away from anyone who might know her name. Even so, she'd still shoved every strand of purple hair in a beanie and put on the first pair on sunglasses she'd found outside the Bay's pharmacy.
She'd only noticed that this was a slightly burglar-looking aesthetic when she'd passed the bathroom mirror. The sweaty brow on the pharmacist made a lot more sense after that.
Violet stares up at the brown starbursts of what she hopes is cigarette smoke on the ceiling. Anything to avoid looking at the strips of slightly damp plastic resting by her feet. Three tests. Sixty seconds until her answer. She thumbs the buttons on her watch for a moment before glancing at the timer.
45 seconds
Her stomach twists under her hands. Partly from the boat ride, mostly from the probably-expired Sakura candy she'd downed while waiting for cast off.
There are any number of reasons she could be this late. Stress for one. It's hard to remember a time she hasn't been stressed since moving to the island, even after she'd managed to reliably sell more than whatever bendy roots she could scrouge up every day. Demand had only gotten higher for her artisan products, some delightfully stubborn fungus would not leave her banana cuttings alone... not to mention the wedding. Violet closes her eyes. It was over three months ago and pockets of anxiety still rip her from sleep every other night. Visions of her mother's taut face, nails tap tap tapping on her purse, coralled lips pulled into a pitying smile as she glanced down the aisle to her future son-in-law.
'You can do better.'
30 seconds
She reads the back of the boxes again. Each has a one percent chance of a false positive— well, less than one percent but rounding up is easier. So the chance of all three showing one would be… she delves in her mind for her fossilised math skills. Would they compound? No. All three showing something wrong would have to be less… so 0.01 cubed?
She grabs her phone to use the calculator, but pauses as Scott's picture brightens the background. He's covered in brick-red dust and pointing to a plesiosaur skull he excavated himself. She gently rubs her thumb over his face. Her wonderful handsome incredibly dense husband. What would he say right now? She'd been avoiding thinking about the upcoming conversation all afternoon, but for this exact scenario she can picture it perfectly.
'It's a 50/50 chance, babe. You either are or you aren't.'
The first real smile of the day tugs at her mouth. She wants him here. Maybe not in the women's restroom, but still here. His head resting on her shoulder or her lap while he stares up with those infuriatingly adorable eyes. Would they be scared? Happy? Confused? This isn't something they'd really talked about in detail. She knows that she wants… wanted this, but it was always someday. Maybe. Wouldn't it be nice. The idea lives in the fantasy realm of later along with his Masters degree and her fully automated barn.
Her forehead touches her knees.
It's so easy to want things in the abstract. Real life, however, is a different place entirely.
20 seconds
Violet swallows the rest of sakura candy in her pocket without really tasting any of them.
Logically, she knows this shouldn't be a big deal. It isn't the coffee-induced-panic test she'd taken in college when she'd missed one period. She's thirty, she's married, she's a homeowner. This was the next step, or what the picture books she'd read as a child said was the next step. She remembers the illustrations: vaguely human shaped blobs— one in a blocky shirt and tie, the other in a overly frilly dress, both surrounded by tiny clones of themselves. Mummy and Daddy and their children. And they always seemed happy.
She wonders if those cartoon blobs ever nauseously sat on a mall toilet, waiting to know if their life was about to change.
Or if any of them actually knew what sex was.
10 seconds.
She stares at Scott's photo again, zooming in on that slightly dopey smile. She's going to kill him. She's actually going to kill him. Always walking around shirtless because 'farm work is sweaty' and then hitting her with the 'hey babe can you work this knot out of my neck' like that didn't always end with her pushing them both into the bedroom or shower. Sometimes one after the other.
But they were always careful. Or… she always tried to remember to be careful. Maybe she was always going to end up here. Waiting to know if—
Her watch beeps as the timer finishes. She swallows and nudges all three tests into view with the tip of her shoe.
The first shows a plus sign. The second, two lines. The third, a smiley face.
The candy in her stomach shifts around like mulch.
Yup. Okay. No denying the truth written there in plain pink plastic.
She drops her head against the cold tiles of the wall, then jerks back when she smells the mould. There's a phone number and some faded text scrawled above the grout: Call Gladys for a good time.
Violet stares at the numbers and deeply deeply hopes that wherever Gladys is, she's having a really good time.
Three sharp raps against the stall door.
"It's been twenty minutes," comes a pinched voice. "Other people need to use this bathroom, you know."
Violet stuffs the tests into the stall bin, flushes and staggers out. An older woman glowers at her with a face as tan and leathery as the handbag hanging off her arm.
"Thank you," the woman says flatly before glancing at the toilet and sighing. "And there's no more paper, wonderful."
Her stare needles against Violet's temple, clearly waiting for some kind of apology. She grips the edge of the sink to steady herself. The floor feels like its about a mile away, the walls wobbly in her periphery. "Sorry. I didn't mean… I'm just…"
"What?" the woman snaps.
Violet swallows. The word cloys, sharp and sticky like a piece of the sakura candy got caught in her throat.
"Pregnant."
"Oh. Well. Congratulations then, miss."
The woman's eyes wrinkle as they shift from Violet's purple braid, to her lip ring, to her tattooed forearms. They visibly soften when they land on her wedding band. "Ah, Missus. Good. Apologies, I just assumed…" she fixes an overlined smile on her face rather than continuing.
Violet forces herself to smile back. Judgemental cow.
The woman reaches into her bag and spritzes herself with a neon can of body mist. A cloud of plasticky fruit scent fills the room— cheap and sickly. Violet's eyes water.
She steps towards the door, but the woman blocks her path.
"So how far along are you?"
Violet's hand clenches to a fist in her pocket. "I don't know."
"Let's see if I can find out."
Violet grabs her stomach before the woman's leathery fingers reach her. Equal parts anxiety and expired candy swirls underneath and she'd rather not make it worse.
The woman sucks her teeth, clearly offended that she couldn't rub a random stranger's belly.
"First time then?"
Violet nods, silently begging for this woman to just go in the stall and leave her and her brewing panic attack alone. She takes a breath. Bad idea. The thick scents of toilet cleaner and artificial fruit spill down her throat into her angry gut.
The grimy walls start to wobble more.
"I can tell. You look like a deer in the headlights," the woman continues, oblivious. "And a word of advice. Avoid all dairy, start taking peppermint oil now and sleep as much as you can. He's not going to let you when he's born."
Violet's stomach twists harder. "He?"
"Old trick," the woman says with a wink. "It's a sad truth that girls steal your beauty and your face is still fresh as a bedsheet. Although with how you're standing now…" she steps closer and her body mist assaults Violet's nose even harder. "Could be twins."
Her head spins. Twins. She watches Scott walk into at least three doors a day, how could he possibly hold two children? She thinks of her sword collection, her brewery, of every animal and machine on her property that could possibly get a tiny hand caught in it…
Her stomach finally loses the battle. She bolts back into the stall and pukes up every lump of candy until her throat is sandpaper and her skin is pale and wet as old cheese.
Behind her, the woman sighs and presses a pack of tissues into her clammy hand. "Yup. Definitely twins."