Charlotte nods, confirming my crazy explanation and then pulls me into the bathroom, slamming the door closed in the poor, confused nurse’s face.
I hand her the little plastic cup and lean against the wall, bending forward with my hands on my knees to take a few calming breaths while Charlotte goes to work.
“I think I’m going to hyperventilate,” I tell her. “Do you think I could go to jail for insurance fraud from filling out all those medical forms when we got here? I can’t go to jail; I’d never survive. In theory I feel like I have enough balls to make someone my bitch, but I don’t know if I could actually do it. I can make an amazing sugar display, but I don’t know if that will translate well when I need to make a toothbrush shank.”
I realize I’m rambling and it suddenly occurs to me that I might not be as different from my sisters as I always thought considering I’m acting just as insane as they usually do. None of this makes me feel any better about what is happening right now.
“You’re not going to jail. Stop freaking out or you’re going to make me freak out, and it’s not good for the baby,” Charlotte tells me as she flushes the toilet and washes her hands. “Personally, I think you’d make a great badass in jail. You’d have plenty of bitches offering to make toothbrush shanks for you.”
I stand up and scowl at her. “You’re not helping.”
She picks up her cup of pee, walks over to me, and holds it out in front of her.
“Eeeew, get that thing away from me,” I complain, scrunching up my nose.
“You have to take it out there to the nurse. Technically, this is your pee,” she reminds me.
With a sigh, I tentatively reach out and take the cup from her, trying not to drop it as soon as my hands wrap around it. Charlotte opens the bathroom door and I walk as slowly as I can behind her, holding the cup out as far away from me as possible.
“Oh, my God, it’s so warm,” I whisper in disgust. “And why does my hand feel wet?”
Charlotte glares at me over her shoulder as we make our way down the hall to the nurse’s station.
“I might have dribbled a little down the sides, it’s fine,” she whispers back to me like it’s no big deal.
“I have your pee on my hands?!” I hiss a little too loudly and she stops quickly, almost causing me to slam into her with my pee-covered hands holding her warm cup of pee.
“Will you keep your voice down?” she scolds quietly. “It’s just a couple tiny drops of liquid. Just pretend it’s water.”
“But it’s not water, it’s your warm, wet pee! And it’s touching me!” I reply, wondering if I’ll ever be able to look at my hand again and not picture Charlotte pissing all over it like a dog marking its territory. “I cook with this hand, and now it’s a pee hand! You had one job to do—piss in a fucking cup without getting pee on my hand. This is why we can’t have nice things, Charlotte, because you piss all over everything, and now I smell like pee!”
She rolls her eyes and grabs my wrist holding the cup, dragging me the rest of the way down the hall to the waiting nurse. I sigh in relief when the nurse takes the cup from my hand and tells us to head right across the hall to examine room number four, letting me know she’ll be in as soon as she processes the urine sample.
I run to the room without saying a word, racing to the sink in the small room and start scrubbing my hand as Charlotte follows me and closes the door behind her.
When I’m satisfied that there are no lingering traces of Charlotte pee on my skin, I dry my hands, and the door opens right as I’m throwing away the paper towel.
“Okay, Molly, I just need you to get fully undressed and put on the paper robe on the exam table,” she explains as she walks to the table and starts pulling the stirrups out of their hiding spots inside it.
I shoot a worried look at my sister and she just shrugs, her expression mirroring my own as we watch the nurse move to a side table and start extracting things out of the drawers.
“Um, I thought I’d just be peeing in a cup today,” I mutter.
The nurse turns around and Charlotte and I both gasp loudly when we see the world’s biggest vibrator in the nurse’s hand. And that’s saying a lot considering my mother owns one of the largest sex toy stores in the world and I’ve been around those things since birth. I still have nightmares about Chocolate Thunder.
“What the hell is that for?” I ask, pointing at the huge, white phallic object in her hand that the nurse is busy putting an equally huge condom over top of.
She laughs sympathetically.
“It’s an internal ultrasound wand. According to the date of your last period you put on the medical form, you’re not very far along in your pregnancy. Ultrasounds done on the stomach won’t be very accurate at this point, so the doctor will use this internally to get a better reading,” she says with a smile.
“That thing has to go inside me?!” I screech loudly.
“Believe me, it looks much worse than it actually is,” she explains. “It’s really no different than having sex, maybe just a tad more uncomfortable, but it won’t hurt.”
I’m willing to do a lot of things for a KitchenAid mixer and money for an apartment, but having a tree stump shoved up my vagina is not one of them.
While I try my best not to hyperventilate again, the nurse finishes setting everything up for the doctor and leaves Charlotte and I alone to wait for him.
“That thing is not going in me, Charlotte,” I warn her as soon as the door closes behind the scrub-clad woman. “You better figure something out before the doctor gets in here, or I will lose my shit all over this exam room!”
Charlotte starts to pace next to the paper-covered table.
“Well, obviously you can’t let him give you that ultrasound or he’ll figure out right away you’re not pregnant,” she says. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out. It’s not like you’ve never had a penis in there before, and like the nurse said, it’s not much different than that.”
My silence immediately gives me away and Charlotte stops pacing to stare at me. “Holy shit, there’s no way you’re still a virgin. What about prom and Quinn Curtis?”
I growl at her and point an accusing finger her way. “I knew you read the texts on my phone that weekend, you lying slutbag!”
The morning after that disastrous prom night I walked into my bedroom after taking a shower and caught Charlotte standing by my dresser with my phone in her hands. She told me she accidentally erased all her contacts and needed Gavin’s number.
“How else was I supposed to find out how it went? You refused to answer any of my questions, dick-face vagina-hole!” she fires back.
“Maybe because it wasn’t any of your business, you asshole fuck face!”
We stare at each other angrily for a few minutes before we both burst into laughter.
“Oh, my God, we sound like Mom and Aunt Claire,” Charlotte giggles.
“Dick-face vagina-hole?” I ask through my laughter.
“Oh, please, like asshole fuck-face was any better,” she smiles. “Grandpa George would be so disappointed in our lack of follow through with strings of curse words.”
Charlotte hops up on the examine table, the paper cover crinkling noisily under her. When the room is silent again after she gets situated, I sigh heavily and move to lean against the table next to her.
“According to Quinn, it was amazing,” I tell her. “According to me, his picture is now in the dictionary next to the words ‘just the tip.’”
Charlotte laughs, looking at me questioningly.
“Seriously. He barely got the tip in before he came, screaming to God about how good it felt. Tampons have gone in my body further than that boy’s tiny penis,” I complain.
“So, technically you’re a pregnant virgin,” she smiles.
“Just call me the Virgin Mary,” I reply sarcastically.