Chapter 5: A Ride to the Doctor

On Monday morning I threw up in Jo's bathroom, sat on the tile with my cheek on the cold rim of the tub, and decided I should not drive.

My first ultrasound was at ten.

Jo had worked all night and was snoring, with her scrub top still on, under a blanket on the couch.

I stood in her tiny kitchen and held my phone.

There was only one Colburn whose number I wanted.

He picked up on the first ring.

"It's Althea," I said. "I need a ride to an appointment. I know it's a strange thing to ask you."

"Where?" Padraig said.

"I haven't told you the where."

"I'm already getting my keys."

He pulled up in front of Jo's building in twelve minutes, in the gray truck, parked crooked across two spaces.

He had a ginger ale in the cupholder and a sleeve of saltine crackers on the dash.

"I guessed," he said, when he saw my face.

"Guessed what?"

"My mother says you looked pale on Saturday and she's never wrong about pale."

"Dorothy did not tell you that."

"No." He pulled out into traffic. "My sister-in-law is a teacher. When she goes quiet, I notice."

I ate a cracker and said nothing for three blocks.

Then I took out my phone and showed him the credit card app.

I had screenshotted March.

"In March your brother told me he had a conference in Cleveland," I said. "There's no hotel on the card. There's only this."

Padraig glanced at the screen at a red light.

I watched him read the name of the lab, and I watched his hands tighten on the wheel.

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