Richelle Mead - Iron Crowned

“Antibiotics can negate birth control pills,” she said. “Didn’t you know that?”

“I … What? No. That’s not … No.” A mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.

“Women taking both need to use some other form of contraception until the antibiotics have run their course.”

A horrible, cold feeling began spreading over me. “How was I supposed to know that?” I asked in a small voice.

“Your pharmacist should have told you when you got the antibiotics. The interaction would have shown up in your records.”

I thought back to that night, how my mom and I had stopped at the place closest to the hospital. “I didn’t go to my usual pharmacy….” And I had gotten out of there as fast as I could, not bothering to talk to the pharmacist because I’d taken antibiotics lots of times in my life. I certainly hadn’t bothered with the enclosed pamphlets.

Dr. Moore seemed to think she’d gotten through to me. “Now, we can figure out how far along you are if you know when your last period—”

“No,” I exclaimed. “No, no, no. I can’t be pregnant! Don’t you understand? I can’t be. I can’t have a baby. I can’t! ” I was shouting again and wondered if this place had security.

“Calm down,” Dr. Moore said. “Everything will be all right.”

No, no, it wouldn’t. Everything wouldn’t be all right. Nausea welled in me, nausea I’d felt for a few weeks or so—and that had nothing to do with inheriting the Rowan Land. After all this time, after all the planning and lofty talk, after all my fears about Jasmine … it was me. Human medicine had screwed me over. No, I had screwed me over. I’d fucked up. My own carelessness had brought this about. Everything anyone had ever said about the Storm King prophecy began to run through my mind. Sformi, King’s first grandson. An invasion of the human world. Led by his mother. Domination and blood. And I, I was bringing it about…. I was the instrument….

“Eugenie!”

Dr. Moore was supporting me, and I had a feeling she’d said my name a few times. She glanced at the door and opened her mouth, about to call her nurse.

“No!” I clutched at her white coat. “Don’t. Listen to me.” My voice was raspy and desperate. “I can’t. I can’t have a baby. Don’t you understand?”

She peered at me through her glasses, regarding me knowingly. “Then you don’t have to. There are options—”

You can’t have a boy, some voice inside me said. What if it’s a girl?

“Wait,” I interrupted her. “When can you tell the gender?”

That got a shocked look. “You’d base an abortion on gender?”

“I—no, wait.” Fuck. I couldn’t think. I was panicked and scared and confused. I needed to get my head together. What did I do? I had to get rid of this baby, pure and simple. People did it all the time. It was easy in this day and age, right? “I meant, how long until you can tell gender and if … if there’s anything wrong.” I groped for something reasonable, something that wouldn’t make me seem like a heartless woman who’d kill her son. “You can do those tests, right? Like, genetic tests? I … I’m so afraid of having a baby and having there be something wrong. My family has a bad history. My cousins have had babies with birth defects, and I can’t … I can’t handle that. I have to know. I have to know … right away … as early as possible because otherwise I’ll …” The lies rolled easily off my lips. Anything. Anything to know the gender.

Dr. Moore studied me again. I still sounded crazy and scattered, I knew, but a little less than before. “When was your last period?” she asked quietly.

I turned to her wall calendar. The numbers swam before me. I couldn’t focus. How the hell could I remember that when the fate of the world was on the line? I thought about my last period and tried to link it to some event, something that would trigger a date.

“There.” I pointed. “It started on the fifth.”

She nodded, doing mental calculations. “Which lines up with the antibiotics. You’re almost nine weeks along, as the reckoning goes, though technically only seven since conception.”

Seven. Seven weeks …

“You’re almost in the range for chorionic villus sampling,” she said. Chorionic what? “They don’t like to do it unless it’s necessary, though. There are risks for the fetus. They almost never do it for someone your age, who’s in good health….”

“But it can tell me?” I said urgently. “It can tell me what I need to know?”

“It can tell you a lot. No test can tell you everything, but it can give you peace of mind … especially if you really do have a bad family history …”

Did I ever.

“I do,” I said. “Please.”

I held my breath, knowing she was wavering here. Finally, she turned to her filing cabinet, rifling through it until she found a carbon form. She scrawled something in doctor’s handwriting on it and handed it over. “Here.”

It was a referral to an OB-GYN’s office nearby. The form had my name, some boxes checked, and a few illegible words. I did make out CVS and emergency.

“Emergency?” I asked. I mean, it was, but I was surprised she’d nailed it.

“It means you’ll get scheduled in right away. Most of these tests are backed up—because they aren’t done this early. Give it to my nurse when you leave.” She was writing something else as she spoke. “She’ll call them and schedule you—but you need to be aware they may refuse it when you’re there, based on their judgment. I meant it: this isn’t routine.”

My next words were hesitant. “Then why are you doing it?”

“Because I believe that in pregnancy, the mother’s health outweighs everything else.”

Mother’s health. I didn’t like thinking of myself as a mother. Fuck. This shouldn’t even be an issue at all! We should be discussing abortions. Why did I care about gender? I didn’t want a baby. I wasn’t ready for a baby. Certainly not one who’d fulfill a world-conquering prophecy.

“In this case,” said Dr. Moore. “Your mental health is especially concerning. Which is what this is for.” She handed me the other piece of paper. It was a referral for a psychologist.

“I don’t need—”

“Eugenie, shock over an unplanned pregnancy is normal. Expected. But it’s clear … you have some very serious issues around this.”

She had no idea.

“Have my nurse call for the test. Then schedule yourself a therapist appointment and a follow-up with me.”

There was no way I could tell her I had no intention of going to therapy. I wasn’t even sure about the follow-up. But I’d gotten away with something, and I knew it. I nodded meekly. “Thank you.” I left before she could change her mind.

Jasmine’s face was filled with irritation and impatience when I finally returned. “That took forever,” she said, tossing a magazine aside. “How deep were those stitches?”

“Not that deep,” I murmured. I walked toward my car on autopilot, still stunned. “She was worried about how tired I was, that’s all.”

“Well, you can fix that when we go back to the Otherworld.”

I started the car, staring off into space for a few ponderous moments as numbers floated around in my head. Nine weeks, seven weeks. Two days. That was how long until my test. Two days.

I refocused on my surroundings so I wouldn’t get us into an accident. “We aren’t going to the Otherworld anytime soon,” I replied.

Jasmine shot me a look that clearly expressed her feelings on that, but there must have been something in my own face that answered back because she didn’t fight the issue anymore.