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May 29, 2017
My father and I were hard at work on one of our dining room windows, which had been painted shut before we purchased our home. A few days earlier, he decided to come south for an impromptu visit over the long Memorial Day weekend. Always in search of a project to tackle or a problem to fix, he was more than happy to help loose my window.
He dug the edge of a small paint scraper into the crack between the window frame and the sill, trying to break the hardened paint, while I, from the other side, used a large amount of strength in an effort to raise the aging window. Both of us panted on either side of the glass pane while the sun of an early North Carolina summer scorched down on our back porch.
“Mike,” Emily’s voice echoed off the wood floors of our long hallway with some urgency. “Can you come in here?”
My father’s focus was so trained on the window that he didn’t respond when I told him I’d be right back.
I bounded down the hall toward our bedroom.
“Em?”
“In here.”
I followed her voice to our bathroom where she stood, staring at the countertop. Three pink plastic pregnancy tests were arranged in a neat row, their color stark and vivid as they contrasted against the white tiles.
“What do you think those mean?” Emily motioned toward the sticks as I moved closer.
I was nervous and excited. I had never seen one of these things up close before and I especially had never looked forward to the possibility that one might read positive.
The first stick was a bit unclear. The control line was there but the pregnancy line, if there at all, was barely noticeable. The second stick was more obvious, though still somewhat inconclusive. Both lines existed, though faint, and if this pregnancy had been unplanned or unwanted, we might have found a dozen reasons to convince ourselves that the second line wasn’t there. The third stick, however, was beyond doubt. The lines were clear and each little circle on the little plastic stick contained a strong, thick, dark blue line.
“Should we ask Pop?” I said, figuring his three decades as an intensive care pulmonologist had outfitted him with the skills to read a fourteen-dollar pregnancy test.
“Yeah. Call him in,” Em said.
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