Full Bloom

First Appointment

 "So I just want to clarify, we're getting ice cream after this, no matter what, right?" Karen asked.

"Of course. I hope they still have the watermelon sherbet flavor," I said, opening the door.

A week after hanging out at the video store, Karen and I were playing a little hookey. We made my OBGYN appointment and then made a plan to skip the last period of school today. Nassi didn't want to get in trouble, so she didn't come.

Karen made a deal with her college-aged neighbor Jack, who she'd had a crush on forever, to come pick us up and drop us at the doctors' office. We told Karen's mom that we'd be "shopping" in the plaza across the way from the office and to pick us up before five.

We walked into the office and I went up to the counter. The secretary gave me a clipboard with a slew of paperwork to fill out. It became pretty clear that I wasn't supposed to be going to this appointment without a legal guardian, since I was under the age of eighteen. I may or may not have made Karen my twenty-two-year-old sister that I lived with.

When I finished all the paperwork that I had Karen sign, I brought it back up to the counter and just kind of waited. The waiting room looked like it had just been redone with fresh wallpaper and new seats. There was a big fishtank on the wall across from me, which was still wrapped up, like it just got purchased.

A TV was sitting on a mount that came down from the ceiling. The Oprah Winfrey Show was just starting. Grandma Poppy was probably sitting on our living room couch, watching Oprah walk out in her beautiful sweater on a stage that was perfectly decorated for Christmas, with giant, lavish trees and present box props in the background.

I turned to look at Karen, but she was completely busy putting her Britney Spears CD in her new Sony walkman. I took the massive brick out of my backpack that was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Annie and I were trying to get through all the books together, and I had to tackle this one so I'd be caught up for when I took her to the movie later on. I liked to read ahead a little so I'd be faster when I read to Annie, it would go more smoothly. I'd struggled with reading since first grade, and I didn't want to look silly in front of Annie when reading aloud.

When I got through the first page of the third chapter, a nurse called my name. I nudged Karen, who was deep into humming along with her hero Britney and reading a soap opera magazine from the table next to her.

"Good luck," she said a little too loudly.

I got up and went over to the nurse, who gave me a warm smile.

"Hi, you can come back with me," she said.

She brought me back to an examination room. There were old paintings of flowers and seagulls on the walls. A fancy teal-and-white iMac was sitting over in the corner. It was literally the exact one I wanted for my bedroom. The computer I had was so slow. All I wanted was to instant message my friends without my computer crashing. Ugh.

The nurse asked me about my last period and any symptoms I'd been having. I told her about my weird cravings for sweets. I just wanted all the sugar. She made a few notes on her clipboard and then typed up everything on the iMac...very slowly.

"Don't mind me here. We're switching all our charts to digital and I'm so used to a typewriter; this thing feels like something out of The Jetsons to me!" she said, chuckling to herself.

I laughed along with her. "You should see my grandpa trying to play the games I have on my cell phone."

The nurse had me pee into a cup, then get changed into a fabric gown. I waited there for a little bit, but got bored, so I took out my little Nokia cellphone and played my favorite game (of all three games my phone had) which was Snake 2.

I was doing really well until there was a knock on the door. I closed out of the game and looked over. A woman with brown hair and big glasses peeked her head in.

"Hello there! I have a student with me. Is it alright if she comes in?" she asked.

"Uhh...sure," I said.

The woman and a younger girl walked in. The girl definitely looked a little bit like her.

"It's nice to meet you. I'm Doctor Ann Marie Andrews, and this is my oldest daughter, Alyssa. She's going to start med school next fall, so I'm teaching her a little about my practice," said Dr. Andrews.

"I know I want to be a doctor, I just don't know what kind yet," Alyssa said.

"So, Jennifer, you're sixteen?" asked Dr. Andrews. I started to feel a little embarrassed. No, really embarrassed, and ashamed. Like I was a dumb slut or something. "Your test came back positive. You're pregnant."

These past few weeks I'd been thinking about this on and off, always considering the possibility that I wasn't actually pregnant, just super late and super hungry for sweets, but this hit differently. This wasn't me and my friends goofing off, joking about it in the video store. This was a doctor who was confirming that I was pregnant. I had a baby, or cell clump, according to Karen, inside of me. Right now.

This just got real.