Contest entry

Melissa tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she waited at the light. She was impatient to be on her way. A breeze blew past, carrying with it one brown withered leaf, which dragged slowly past the front of her car, taking its sweet time. She focused on that leaf for one brief second and looked up to see that the light had changed. She fervently hoped that dried up dead leaf wasn’t a harbinger.

She was so anxious to get to home to her phone that she found herself speeding through the quiet sleepy streets. She forced herself to slow down. It would not do to wind up with a speeding ticket. She had a lot to do today, and very little time, as usual. It made her wonder how she would ever fit a newborn baby into her crazy life.

She banished that thought. “No use getting too excited.”, she thought. “That baby doesn’t even exist yet, and gods only know if he or she ever will, although not for lack of trying, that’s for sure.”

She had endured weeks of fertility drugs, bravely stabbing herself with needles every morning, forcing under her skin the hormones that her own body stubbornly refused to create, that were so needed for a baby to grow. Today they had drawn the bloodwork that would tell them if it had worked, if any of the embryos they had implanted had survived.

Her cell phone jangled and startled her. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Delaney?”

“Yes.” Melissa could barely breathe as she waited.

“Your numbers have doubled, Mrs. Delaney. That means you’re pregnant. Congratulations.”

She pulled off the road, tears of joy in her eyes, as she placed her palms on her belly. “I love you,” she whispered. “Already… I love you.”