Kat Fight (24 page)

One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand, five-one thousand.

Fourth: Replace the Overcap, and lay the stick on a flat surface with the Result Window facing up.

Mission complete.

Fifth: Wait three minutes before reading results.

Wait on the toilet? Wait in the kitchen? Where was step six explaining how to maintain composure and process said results?

Five seconds passed.

I stood, pulled my sweat pants up, rolled the top to keep them from slipping, and checked the stick. Nothing.

Common sense whispered to me, “Move away from the stick.”

Fifteen seconds passed.

A flash of warm nausea came and went, so I walked to the kitchen for some cold water. Two ice cubes that were fused together slipped out of my hands onto the floor, and I just stood and watched them begin their transformation into a small puddle. I had only one concern.

One minute down.

I walked back to the bathroom and sat on the floor opposite the sink with my toes pushed up against the white porcelain base. The air felt heavy and absent of oxygen. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly through my nose.

Two minutes passed.

By that point I’d convinced myself that looking at the stick prematurely would no doubt be misleading and uninformative. I pictured it like a slot machine, with various pink lines spinning around the tiny results window.

Two and a half minutes passed.

My lungs were contracting so I walked back to the kitchen, but sadly the air in there wasn’t any better, and my socks were wet. I glanced at the clock on the microwave. Three minutes had passed.

I don’t recall ever walking back into the bathroom… only sitting on the toilet staring at the stick on the edge of my sink. My shoulders slumped and heavy, keeping me from lifting my neck and properly viewing the window. I leaned forward, grabbed the stick tentatively like a shard of glass, and just as I brought it toward me, two bright pink lines appeared in the results window.

“Holy shit,” I said aloud.

I held the little test stick, which now seemed so technologically un-advanced, that I could hardly believe something so disposable was capable of delivering such life-altering information. But there they were, two gleaming, fuchsia lines, and neither one were remotely pale in color or incomplete. I placed it back on the sink and buried my head in my hands, because as if seeing those neon stripes staring back at me wasn’t bad enough, next came the realization of who the father was.

The slowest three minutes of my life were then followed by the passing of two hours in the blink of an eye. I sat on the floor, catatonic in front of my books until after midnight when I took my phone off the hook and went to bed.

Two Tylenol PM’s and a Bud Light were all it took to get me to sleep.