His cheek bulged as he clenched his jaw. “I have a lot of questions for the doctor.”
“But—but he’s going to do an examination and…”
Ridiculous. I sounded half out of my mind. Well, I was beyond exhausted but… the thought of letting him see me with my shirt off…no. Just no.
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye—probably to determine if I was serious or not. I took a deep breath, hoping he wasn’t in the mood for an argument, because I sure as hell wasn’t.
He pulled into the parking lot and parked. Then, before getting out, he turned to me. “Please let me be there. I’ll wait until you get undressed to come in the room but…I really would like to be there.”
I looked out the window for a long time. It was only fair, really. This affected his future, too. “Okay. I…”
He took my hand in his. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I understand. But this is important. We need to have all the facts, okay?”
I looked down and nodded, swallowing. I knew what “getting all the facts” meant. Adam was on a mission to convince me that my decision to carry the baby to term was the wrong one. Sure, he’d assured me that it was my decision, that he’d agree with whatever I ultimately decided, but I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure he wasn’t going to step in and dominate this situation like he always did. I took a deep breath.
He touched my cheek with a brush of featherlight fingers and then turned and opened the door. Before he could come around to get mine, I’d opened it and sprung out. He didn’t say anything when he came around to my side, raised his brows and shut the door behind me.
“Adam…”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for being here… but I need for you to not do your thing where you try to take over.”
His lips thinned, but he nodded. “I’ll behave myself. I promise.”
I kissed him on the cheek and he gave me a faint smile. He took my hand and we walked in together.
Things were still weird with us, but better than they had been in months. We were at least trying to hold it together during this wretched turn of events in our lives. We’d spent the last few days constantly in each other’s presence and things were strained but okay.
But the tension in that doctor’s examining room could be cut with a knife.
Once Dr. Metcalfe entered and asked me to open my paper gown for my exam, I cast a self-conscious glance in Adam’s direction. He lowered his head, focusing on his tablet. The doctor looked over the scar and indentation on my left breast, where the tissue had been removed, and commented that it was “nicely healed.” Then he performed the usual breast exam.
“Any tenderness?” he asked.
I pressed my lips together, then swallowed the nervous lump in my throat. “Yes, actually.”
The doctor straightened and I adjusted the paper to cover myself again. “Which breast?” he asked.
“Both.”
“Any specific location?”
I cleared my throat, avoided Adam’s gaze from across the room. “All over.”
The doctor frowned at me. “Could you—”
“I’m pregnant,” I blurted before he could finish his sentence.
Dr. Metcalfe sucked in his bottom lip and looked at my chart again. “It doesn’t say—”
“I just found out. Home pregnancy test.”
“And your last period was…?”
And then I had to go into detail about how I hadn’t had a period in months because of the hormonal treatment I’d been on. How I’d thought that meant I wasn’t at risk of getting pregnant. He shook his head. “You can still ovulate even with the hormone therapy.”
Yeah, obviously. I swallowed a sob of frustration and rubbed my forehead. Dr. Metcalfe seemed to get over his momentary astonishment.
“Well, this certainly means we can’t start the chemotherapy as planned…”
I saw Adam stiffen in his seat out of the corner of my eye. He cleared his throat and stood, moved to stand beside my examination table. I pulled the stupid paper frock tighter around me.
“What are her options?” Adam asked.
The doctor cast a furtive glance at me before answering. “It depends on whether or not she decides to terminate the pregnancy.”
“If I don’t?”
“Then we wait until fourteen weeks—how far along did you say you were?”
“Six weeks,” Adam answered. I jerked a look at him. He’d figured all that out, apparently. Thank goodness, because I’d had no idea.