* * *
A horn honked, sending me jumping about five feet into the air. I had been sitting on a bench outside the nursing building, flipping through my flash cards for the exams. I knew all this stuff by now, but every time I thought of what would happen after I graduated, I started to shake.
My professors all thought highly of me, and one had even taken me aside to suggest I think about becoming a nurse practitioner. That was pretty great praise, but I wanted more. I didn’t tell anyone, of course, but I wanted med school. I wanted the M.D. after my name. Dr. Zenobia Jones, M.D. Imagine! Wouldn’t my mom be proud, if she were still around to see?
But real life came crashing back down the way it always did. Honest to God, I had been lucky to get the scholarship that had paid for nursing school to begin with. There was no way medical school could be anything more than a pie-in-the-sky kind of dream. Two hundred grand? Who had that kind of cash?
I had just paid my rent, and I only had one hundred twelve dollars left to my name, which meant living on ramen for the next few days. I hated ramen, and after my nutrition course, I knew exactly how bad it was for you. But what choice did I have?
Not like billionaire Grant Beal would ever have to worry about anything like that. What couldn’t he have in all the world?
I shoved the thought of that passionate night with him three weeks ago out of my mind. It already felt so unreal, like a fantasy, and I had reality to deal with. Graduating into joblessness wasn’t the only thing I was worried about, but I didn’t have time to think about it right now.
Maybe, I thought, gulping, maybe it’ll come tonight.
I sighed and glanced at my watch. I’d already made it through my comp lab yesterday—and gone home and crashed—but I still had to get through the written final today. It started in fifteen minutes.
Some of the other students in my class hurried past me. Everyone looked exhausted. I recognized a redhead named Janet who had deep, dark circles under her eyes. “Janet! Hey, Janet!”
“Oh, hey, Zenobia,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“Girl, how are we going to do this thing?” I asked.
Janet made a face. “You got me. I’ve studied my behind off, and I’m still not sure I can pass this.”
I realized pretty quickly that Janet and I didn’t mean the same thing. She was a few years younger than me, and had a husband who made decent, if not great, bank. She also worked part time as a bank teller. She could always go full time if she had to.
I had . . . me.
“But I don’t know why you’d be worried,” she said, making me glad she couldn’t read minds. “Dr. Klein clearly thinks you’re the star of the class. You’re gonna pass with no problem, just you wait.”
My cheeks flamed. Good thing she couldn’t see. “I guess,” I said. “It’s no big deal. After all, we all still gotta find actual jobs after this.”
“Yeah, I guess. It’ll all work out, you’ll see.” She waved and went inside the building.
I followed, praying for my belly to start its monthly ache. Normally that hurt like anything, but today I would have welcomed it with open arms.
Janet was right. I was the star student of the class. I had spent every waking minute I had studying, but now that everything had changed, I wasn’t sure if that was going to matter at all.
I took a seat near the middle of the room, and the proctor passed out our booklets. “You have seventy-five minutes,” he announced. “Good luck.”
I threw myself into full nursing mode, tackling the sample scenarios with every bit of knowledge I’d acquired over the course of my studies. How to deal with a rowdy patient who just wanted to cause trouble? Got it. How to work in tandem with a doctor who was under a lot of stress in an emergency department? Piece of cake. What were the classic symptoms of influenza as opposed to a cold? I knew them all, and plenty of the atypical ones, too.
I finished the exam in half an hour and spent the remaining time going back over my answers. I’d aced it, and I knew it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to smile. Normally I would have been grinning to beat the sun as I dropped the booklet on the proctor’s desk and left the room.
But what was there to smile about? If things didn’t shape up fast, I’d be begging for them to give me back my job at Mickey D’s.
A prayer on my lips, I popped into the restroom to check. Please, God.
Still nothing.
Pasting a smile on my face and keeping all my trembling inside where no one else could see, I got into my car and drove to the drugstore by my house. I kept my head down and used some of my remaining money to buy the thing I had hoped and prayed I wouldn’t need.
Then I went home. Luckily Mrs. Basil was out somewhere, so I was able to duck into my basement bedroom without having to talk to anyone.
I peed on the stick per the instructions and waited.
My period was three weeks late. I was due the day after that wild night with billionaire Grant Beal.
I had refused to let myself think about it until now. My period would come any day now. Of course it would. Never mind that I had been regular as clockwork until now. Even now, I insisted to the bathroom walls that the test would come back negative. They would! It was just one time. I refused to believe I could be that fertile. That was just crazy talk.
The instructions said to wait six minutes. I waited ten, then twelve.
At fifteen minutes, I swallowed my fear and picked up the stick. Two pink stripes.
That meant . . . I glanced at the instructions, then at the strip, then back at the instructions. No doubt about it.
Oh, damn. I sat down hard on the toilet lid. Impregnated by the billionaire.