When the time turned to zero, she was sure that this was it. She was going to walk back into the bathroom and the little screen would read “pregnant”. She’d pull the super secret bag of “you’re going to be a daddy” gifts from the top of the closet in her office and rush down the steps to hand the perfectly wrapped and well thought out gift, and of course, the test, the proof that they’d done it, they’d finally made a baby. They would be parents. She was sure that this was it, she’d been four days late, four whole days of forcing herself to wait to test. She wanted to make sure, she couldn’t take another negative sign on that stupid piece of plastic. It’s funny, if the test would give her the result she wanted, it wouldn’t be a stupid piece of plastic any more, it’d be everything. 

She skipped back to the bathroom with her phone in hand, she’d already turned off the sound from the timer. She made her way to the counter, she caught her reflection in the mirror, her eyes were bright and wide with a look of hopeful joy that would only last a few moments longer…because when she flipped the test back over, and the result stared her in the face. Her stomach dropped faster than her smile, the test read “not pregnant.”

She was still for a while, she stared down at it, willing it to change but it wouldn’t. It wasn’t magic and she couldn’t force it to turn anymore than she could force her body to do what it was supposed to do and give them a baby. The more she stared at it, the more that her vision started to blur, was it the tears? Or was it the anger? The anger at herself for not being able to get pregnant, was it something she did? How was it so easy for so many of the people around her to conceive? It was like all Caroline could conceive was negative signs of disappointment on tiny screens. 

She threw it across the room, missing the trash can completely resulting in another frustrated groan from the small woman tucked away in the guest bathroom. She stomped over to the trash can, accidentally kicking it over causing a loud bang  from the metal hitting the bathroom tile. “Goddamn it.” she said, quickly falling to her knees trying to fix the mess that was created. It was metaphorical almost as she threw the things back into the bin, it was like how Caroline was shoving her feelings back in the box in her mind. The anger at herself, the worry that if she couldn’t get pregnant that Abel would love her less, that he’d resent her for it, because the man deserved and wanted a child, a beautiful child who looked like him and probably filled the house with just as much singing as Abel did. Caroline loved when he sang. The disappointment. The jealousy that her friends and people she followed on social media seemed to have babies so easily. She was starting to lose hope, maybe the universe didn’t think she was good enough to be a mother, perhaps there’s a quota of bad mothers allowed to exist at one time and it had been met, so Caroline couldn’t be chosen. 

It was just that in her heart of hearts, in this far too quiet moment of crying on the bathroom floor wondering what was wrong with her, she knew that she had so much love to give. She had learned how not to parent from her birth father, and she felt like she could fill in the rest with trying and the aid of her husband. Her heart felt ready to love a baby, it was like her body couldn’t keep up, her mind was racing and her thoughts were bleak. She needed to stand up, she needed to brush herself off, and close the box of feelings, keep them all neat and tidy, folded and organized…she was a neat freak afterall.