Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 85272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“Garlic humus? On apple pie?” Liv raised her eyebrows doubtfully.
“I know it sounds weird but it tasted amazing—you have to try it!” Danni gushed. “I think I’ve discovered a whole new taste sensation—maybe it’s the next food trend—hummus on pie, you know?”
Liv laughed. “Uh, thanks but I think I’ll stick with my spaghetti and meatballs. Baird made it for supper again last night.” She sighed. “So of course I brought the leftovers for lunch.”
“Oh, the famous spaghetti and meatballs!” Dannie grinned. “I keep hearing about this—you have to let me try a bite.”
“Gladly. For once he didn’t put anything weird in it.” They had reached the Med Center break room by now. Liv took a small container out of the cold storage unit and popped open the lid. She held it out, right under Danni’s nose. “Smells delicious, right?”
A terrible, metallic odor drifted from the innocent-looking red sauce and noodles that caught Danni completely by surprise. Suddenly, her stomach rolled and she was certain she was going to be sick again.
“Oh my God!” she gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth and nose. “Oh no—please, Liv—put it away!”
“What is it?” Liv quickly put the lid back on her lunch and stored it back in the cold unit.
“I…I don’t know.” Danni shook her head. “My sense of smell has just been crazy strong lately and that just…I’m sorry, it just hit me the wrong way.” Now that the container was closed and put away, the rotten, metallic odor had mostly dissipated and her stomach was slowly calming down. “I’m really sorry,” she said apologetically. “I don’t mean to say that your husband isn’t a good cook—I’m sure he’s wonderful. That’s just…not for me.”
She stopped because Liv was looking at her strangely, with a faint, appraising gleam in her silver-gray eyes.
“What? What is it?” Danni asked. “Are you angry with me now? I promised I didn’t mean to offend you!”
“I’m not offended,” Liv assured her. “I’m just curious.”
“Curious?” Danni frowned. “Curious about what?”
“Curious about your symptoms.” Liv started ticking them off on her fingers. “First, you tell me you’re getting sick in the mornings for about a week now. Then you say you’ve been craving things you could never stand before. Also, your sense of smell is suddenly much stronger than it was and things that you used to like smell wrong to you now—like tomato sauce, am I right?”
“Well…I guess so,” Danni said cautiously. “But what are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that it sounds an awful lot like you’re pregnant.” Liv pointed at the cold storage unit. “The only time I couldn’t stand the smell of Baird’s spaghetti and meatballs was when I was preggers with Daniel. There were all kinds of things I couldn’t stand that I had liked previously and I had the weirdest cravings too.”
“But Liv, I told you, I had a hysterectomy in my twenties,” Danni reminded her. “There’s no way I could be pregnant. Absolutely no way.”
“Well, maybe something happened while you were on Soluu Four,” Liv pointed out.
Danni put a hand on her hip and frowned at her friend.
“Something like me somehow regrowing my womb? Be reasonable, Liv.”
“Is it really that much weirder than you suddenly becoming twenty to twenty-five years younger?” her friend asked, raising an eyebrow. “Come on, Danielle—humor me. Let’s go get you a test.”
“A pregnancy test?” Danni wanted to laugh but there was a strange feeling in her gut that made the sound come out sounding high and uncertain. “You’re not serious!”
But Liv already had her by the arm and was dragging her out of the break room and back to the small lab where they kept the hematology equipment.
“I’m dead serious,” she said, pushing Danni firmly but gently into a stool in the corner and getting out a tourniquet and syringe. “Come on, just let me do a test and then I won’t bother you anymore, I promise.”
“Well…it seems completely ridiculous but I guess if it will make you happy…” Danni sighed and rolled up her sleeve. She held out her arm. “Test away.”
“Thanks.” Liv was good at drawing blood—all her years of nursing before going back to become a doctor, Danni thought—and in no time at all the small machine which detected pregnancy was humming quietly to itself as it digested the sample.
“This is really crazy, you know,” Danni said uneasily. The longer she sat there, waiting for the test, the more anxious she became.
“Just humor me,” Liv said soothingly. “You know this is a new machine?” she added, nodding at the pregnancy tester. “It can show early pregnancy—only a few weeks in—and it can also show what kind of Kindred the father is.”
“Really?” Danni asked, interested. “That’s amazing. Kindred medical technology gets better every day.”
“It’s too bad you can’t remember anything about your visit to Soluu Four,” Liv remarked. “I remember you telling me the H’raken people were supposed to have a way of healing people that didn’t require any kind of med tech at all.”