“You’ll have to ask the Duke that question,” Lydia shrugged.
“Maybe I will.”
“Maybe you’ll go get me a cup of coffee,” Lydia retorted. Kiss-ass that he was, it totally worked to get rid of him after a few seconds of the boss staring him down.
I could practically feel him pouting a room away.
“Now you!” Lydia crowed, more excited than I had ever seen her. “All you gotta do is sign on the dotted line.” She held up the check. “Life as you know it, my dear, is about to change.”
I had to do a double take. Was I seeing things? I had gone from woozy to delusional. “How many commas is that?” I heard myself asking, almost in slow motion, as I wilted right to the floor.
Oddly, my mind returned to Fifty Oaks, and to Auggie. I was wearing a gown of all things, dancing with him in some elegant ballroom. But the music warped and bent until everything was pulled longways and distorted. As soon as the walls came crashing in, I came to. I was startled to find myself on the floor of Lydia’s office, surrounded by one of the security guards and a very anxious Lydia. “Will she be okay to travel?” she kept asking.
I grimaced as I tried to sit up. “What’s going on?”
“You fainted,” the kindly guard said with a gentle pat.
“Faint on your own time, McPhee,” Lydia grated. “Sign the damn check. Then pass out!”
I thought about all those zeros and did exactly that.
The next time I came to, I was in the back of the ambulance. I knew better than to say anything. I just breathed slow and deep.
Fern met us as we got to the emergency room. “Oh, my God! Pea!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “I woke up to your note, and then they were calling me saying you had passed out and did you have any known medical complications…”
She was beside herself. I took her hand. “I’m sorry. I just fainted. I haven’t eaten and you wouldn’t believe what happened with The Duke.”
“Yeah, I got your note,” she snapped. “What the hell were you thinking going out in the middle of the night to meet some famous wacko? ‘The Duke of Mayhem.’ My God!”
I could see how worried she’d been. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
She relented. She could never stay mad at me. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.” I wanted to tell her about the check but didn’t want to pass out again. It still took the wind out of me to think about it. It was like winning a lottery or something. It was impossible to process.
“Should I call Mom?”
“No,” I shook my head. “Like I said I’m okay. Probably dehydrated or something. No sense worrying her.”
Fern begrudgingly agreed. She also didn’t leave my side from the moment we headed back to an examination room. When the doctor finally came in, she took all my information, asked me questions about my flu, then decided to run some tests.
“Any chance you could be pregnant?” she asked as she took her notes.
I chuckled. “Don’t you still have to have sex for that?” I joked, referring to my annoying 15-month slump.
Fern cleared her throat and elbowed me.
“What?”
She raised her eyebrows. “A month ago?” I furrowed my brow. She raised her eyebrows higher. “Never have I ever…?”
I groaned. She meant the Three-Minute-Wonder known as Christopher. “That so doesn’t count. It was only once. And we used protection.”
“What kind of protection?” the doctor asked.
“Condom,” I responded. “That’s got what… a 98% effective rate?”
The doctor nodded, “In a perfect world. In the real world, not so much.”
My stomach sank and things got a lot less funny. “How much is not so much?”
“I think the current statistics are about 82%, factoring in human error.”
I felt all the air escape out of my lungs at once. That was a 16% variable that depended on Christopher not fucking it up. While drunk. And in a hurry. And he hadn’t wanted to be bothered with it in the first place. I gulped hard.
“Hey, that’s still a B, right?” Fern joked. I glared her direction.
“Let me run a blood test, just to rule it out of nothing else.”
“Fine,” I said, praying to any god who would listen that it would prove to be a waste of time.
“You don’t think…?” Fern started.
I shook my head. “No. Can you imagine?” I asked, thinking of having a permanent tie with Christopher Tyler.