Page 71 of His Forever
“Mamá is worried you did too much this weekend. She told me I needed to make sure to take care of you, and also that she approved of your moveandthat she would call the clinic to let them know we were on our way.”
Her giggles had him glancing at her, and when she caught his eye, she laughed harder. “I absolutely love your mother,” she said. “She managed to cover everything in a short, two-minute phone call.”
“That’s Mamá,” he replied as he joined her in laughing.
***
At the clinic, she filled out a mountain of paperwork and requested her medical records from her last doctor and then sat next to Zeus to wait. “I hate waiting,” she said.
“I know, mi siempre hermosa.”
They waited for at least thirty minutes before they heard a nurse call out, “Marleigh Cross?”
“Here,” she replied as she got up. When Zeus followed, she shook her head but took his hand in hers.
Weighed and measured –what woman wants to do that when her man is around– she sat in a patient room. When she described her symptoms, she was handed a cup and directed to leave a sample in the door.
Back in the room, they waited for the doctor. “Marleigh?” he asked.
“Hmm?”
“Is this my fault?”
“What? No! How can you think like that?” she asked him.
“Well, we’ve been kind of busy these past few days. Can’t that cause a problem?”
“I have no clue. Let’s just wait to see the doctor, okay?”
When the doctor came in, she said, “I’m sorry it took so long, when I saw your prior history I put a call in to your doctor since you only have one kidney. Looking at your test results, you do have cystitis. Are you sexually active?”
As a blush covered her face, she glanced at Zeus before saying, “Um, yes.”
“Been busier lately?”
Kill me now. “Yeah, we um…we finally got together this past weekend.”
The doctor, seeing her blush, said, “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re going to have to take a break for at least a week while you’re on the antibiotics. And moving forward, because you’ve only got one kidney, there are some things you need to do to make sure you don’t come down with this again and again, okay?”
Nodding her head, she listened as the doctor told them both what to do in order to avoid repeat infections. When a nurse came in with an ultrasound machine, she looked at the doctor and asked, “What is that for?”
“I want to get a picture of your kidney so we have it and I also want to put you in touch with a nephrologist so we can keep an eye on the overall function, okay? Now, since you’re sexually active, what about birth control?”
“Um, after the chemotherapy and radiation, they told my parents I probably wouldn’t be able to get pregnant so I’m not on anything.”
“Did you use condoms?” the doctor asked Zeus.
“No because I had the mumps and was told my sperm count was too low to father children.”
The doctor looked at them both and shook her head. “Alright, so you’ve had a weekend of unbridled, unprotected sex, correct?”
At their nods, she continued, “So, we can’t start you on anything, Marleigh, at least not until we know whether or not you are pregnant. That means, you need to use condoms.”
Zeus finally spoke up and said, “No condoms. If we end up pregnant, we will deal with it at that time.”
***
Once the doctor was done and the ultrasound complete, she wrote out a few prescriptions and said, “Okay, follow up with me in a week. I’ll have the front desk get you set up with the nephrologist. I hope you feel better, Marleigh, but if you start spiking a fever or anything, go to the emergency room.”