The Art of Keeping Faith Page 34

  That is completely gross and very embarrassing.

  “Lilah, are you okay?” It’s Meredith who has crept up behind me and is rubbing a hand up and down my back.

  “Don’t come any closer, I think I have a bug.”

  “I’ll go get your stuff.”

  After she is gone I stand with my hands on my hips taking deep breaths. It’s okay I feel a little better. I start to pick up the basket to go and find a big bin to put it in, but before I find one I throw up again.

  “Come on, Lilah, let’s get you home.”

  Meredith is back and standing expectantly with the keys to Deathtrap Cooper in her hand.

  This time I haven’t got the strength to fight her on it. She can just drive and I will hope I can make it home alive.

  20th March

  Dead. I am officially dead.

  There is no way this is a tummy bug, I must have e-coli or something. Every time I try to move I throw up. I haven’t eaten since Monday morning, the metallic taste is so much worse even when I have not eaten anything.

  Meredith wants me to go to the doctors but what is the point? It is just a bug and it will pass eventually.

  Oh God, must not think about being sick too much.

  22nd March

  Ben just called.

  I couldn’t talk to him. If I speak or move I am sick.

  Meredith sat on the end of my bed and chatted with him, and I nodded here and there trying to keep my gaze focused on the ceiling, silent tears coursing down my face.

  This sucks so bad.

  Tristan had to ring Baz and tell him that I was still really ill. He probably thinks I have a terrible hangover and am too scared to tell him. Although, if he knows me as well as I think he does he would know I am not one to hide my hangovers. I like to embrace them.

  I wish this was a hangover because then I would know it would be over soon. This is bloody ridiculous.

  24th March

  “I said you would catch cooties, you must have had them and then given them to me.” I scowl. I can just about manage a scowl so long as I don’t move my head when performing it.

  Richard laughs and sits down on the edge of my bed. “How would I have given them to you?”

  “I don’t know, it must have been when you handed me that slice of pizza the other week.”

  Oh, God. Don’t think about pizza.

  “Blimey, Lilah, I thought Meredith was exaggerating, but you really are rather sick.”

  I can’t turn my head to look at him because that would take my gaze off the ceiling, which would undoubtedly cause me to be ill. Again.

  I made that mistake this morning when I got up to go to the loo and then had to make the alarming decision of whether to be sick in the toilet or pee on the floor.

  I sat on the toilet and threw up on the floor. It was the best choice.

  “Pritchard sent you some work,” Richard tells me. I just give a groan in response. Bloody Pilchard can shove his work up his arse.

  We sit in silence for a few minutes longer.

  “I’m sorry you are sick, Lilah. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, but thank you for offering. I think I just need to try to sleep.”

  Sleep is my friend. It is the only time I don’t want to be violently ill.

  Richard pats my leg again. “Okay, Lilah, I’ll check on you soon, okay?”

  “Nah, it’s cool I’ll be much better soon,” I assure him.

  Except I am not.

  25th March

  Sick.

  26th March

  More sick.

  27th March

  Hold on a minute!

  Nope.

  Still sick.

  28th March

  “Lilah, we are going to the doctors. Where can I find you clean clothes?”

  “Meredith, we have been through this. It’s fine.”

  “No, Lilah, it’s not. I am bloody worried about you. I am taking you to the doctors otherwise Tristan is going to call Ben and make him come home so he can sort you out.”

  I struggle up onto one elbow. The vertigo hits straight away.

  “No! Don’t do that. I will go to the doctors.”

  “So pleased you are seeing sense!”

  Cow.

  The Doctors of Truth

  Chairman Mao. Sorry, Doctor Mao is staring at the screen reading my notes.

  “And how long did you say you have been having this sickness?”

  “Two weeks or so?” I offer.

  It is killing me to be upright, a fact I tried to explain to the doctor but I ended up demonstrating by being sick in one of those cardboard kidney shaped bowls.

  “Two weeks, and you are only coming to see us now?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And you can’t think of a reason why you might be this ill, no meal that it has followed, or any sickness bug that your flat mates have picked up?”

  “No.”

  This is actually strange. If I am this ill then why hasn’t Meredith or Tristan caught it yet? Or Beth and Jayne, they have been visiting. Well they have been sitting in the lounge and drinking wine occasionally poking their heads through the door to check on me.

  “And your last period was when?”

  What a bloody ridiculous question. I don’t have time for stupidity like this. I’m about to die.

  “Oh I don’t know, a few weeks back?”

  “How many weeks exactly?” he prompts further.

  I think. When was my last period?

  Oh I remember now, Gladiator day. I was trying to use my period pain as an excuse to get out of watching the film.

  “Can I ask my friend? She is just outside.”

  Chairman Mao. Sorry, Doctor Mao looks most bemused. “Be my guest.” He waves his hand.

  I stand up ignoring the wave of dizziness that hits me and open the door. “Mer, come here,” I call at her in the waiting room.

  She gives me a quizzical look but walks into the consulting room.

  “When did we watch Gladiator?” I ask with no explanation.

  “Last week of Jan,” she assures me.

  I turn to the doctor who is staring at the screen some more. “See I told you a few weeks ago.”

  He looks at me, peering over his glasses. “It’s the end of March.”

  “So?”

  “Oh!” exclaims Meredith just as his suggestions clicks in my brain.

  “No! No way. Absolutely not. My boyfriend lives in America.”

  “And you last saw him?”

  “Valentine’s Day,” my words are nothing more than a whisper.

  He opens his drawer and pulls out a plastic pot.

  “Pee in this and then bring it back in, although my mind is made up and I am never ever wrong.”

  I take the pot and walk to the door.

  “Be prepared to be surprised,” I tell him with a tone of superiority.

  Five minutes later

  Holy shit balls.

  One hour later

  Fuck.

  It seems he is never wrong.

  Eight weeks.

  I am eight weeks pregnant.

  If I look at that line enough I may start to believe it.

  Oh, crap. I am going to be sick again.

  29th March

  I have tried to call the doctor. I just want to check. You know make sure that he was 100 percent sure that I am most definitely having a baby.

  The surgery was closed. Bloody inconvenient for them not to be open on a Saturday. Don’t they know that there are some people out there that struggle to process large life changing chunks of information. I.E. “Yes, it is just as I thought, Lilah you are pregnant, about eight weeks I would guess.”

  Yep, some people have trouble dealing with news like that.

  I AM ONE OF THEM.

  I’m in a state of panic, which is not being made any better by the fact that, a) I cannot speak to a health professional, and b) I have already thrown up six times this morning and it is
only ten.

  Meredith sat with me the whole of last night and rubbed my back as I was quite spectacularly sick. I don’t think it was morning sickness which is what I am apparently suffering from, but more a case of being in complete and utter shock.

  At about seven o’clock I had a moment of clarity when I sat bolt upright and said something along the lines of, “Oh my God, what about all the Budweiser and wine?” This was closely followed by. “Oh, my God, what about the vodka and cigarettes?”

  Meredith just laughed and picked up my hand in hers. “Lilah, it’s okay, that was all weeks ago, you’ll be fine.”

  Then I said something I may never forgive myself for. “But you weren’t.”

  The moment the words were out of my mouth I wanted to take them back.

  She thought about it for a moment before leaning forward and grabbing me in a hug. “That was me. You are you, and some things are just meant to be.”

  We both started to cry and then I was sick again.

  Funnily enough I’m not going to work today. I’m just going to stare at the ceiling, try and keep my head still and wonder just what the hell I am going to do.

  April

  1st April

  What the hell am I going to do?

  I am a University student for God’s sake and not a particularly good one. Ben is away doing his mega tour, I can’t even get hold of him. I tried to call him last night but there was no answer. I want to tell him the news but I am scared. Scared he is going to be cross. Scared that he’s going to want to come back and leave the band in the lurch. Scared that he is going to give up on all of his dreams just because of me, just because I was stupid and made a mistake.

  It was a mistake. I have been lying here looking at patterns in the paint work on the ceiling and wondering just what happened on Valentine’s Day. Clearly Ben and I did not use any protection at all, and now I think back I am not sure when we last did.

  I haven’t been on the pill for a year, not since the last time I forgot to take it and ended up thinking I may be pregnant.

  It seems that some lessons can only be learnt the hard way.

  Since then, after we’d had an embarrassing conversation regarding the fact that I can’t really be trusted with sole responsibility of child prevention, we have been sharing the duty.

  Except Valentine’s. When it slipped both our minds and I have been slipped a baby instead.

  What on earth am I going to do?

  I mean, I have only seen him, what ten days in the last few months? Maybe even less! The odds have surely got to be against that happening.

  2nd April

  I’ve had to call the faculty and tell them I have a highly contagious disease and that is why I am not on campus.

  I have been told I need to provide a doctor’s certificate. Crap.

  I haven’t told Tristan, but I believe Meredith may have as he is being suspiciously un-arsy. This morning after she left for class, he came and sat on the end of my bed with his laptop.

  “You okay, Lil?”

  “Mm. Fine.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  Yes. Please can you rewind time to Valentine’s Day and remind Ben to pack a bumper pack of condoms and also stop Dirty Lilah from coming out to play. I’m more than aware I was a key instigator in the events of that day.

  Maybe not.

  “No, I am okay.”

  As he got up to leave I called him back.

  “No, Trist. Can you sit with me, please?”

  He settled back down and I lay on my back while tears escaped out of my eyes soaking silently into my pillow.

  5th April

  It’s no good. I think I may be dying.

  Either that or I am dead and already in hell.

  Baz is going to sack me. I had to miss work again yesterday. The thought got me near hysterical and in the end Meredith went in and explained to him that I genuinely have a terrible bug and she would cover some of my hours.

  She came home completely shit faced and slurred at me that my “shecrets were shafe with her.”

  Then she fell over.

  8th April

  I can hear Tristan and Meredith whispering outside my room. At least I believe they think they are whispering but I have supersonic hearing at the moment. My hearing is the only part of me still working.

  “It’s not right,” says Tristan.

  “What?”

  “No one should be this sick,” he tells her.

  There is a moment of silence where they both think about this; they are probably standing there watching me, I just can’t turn my head to check.

  “Let’s give it another week and if it’s still this bad then we will take her back to the doctors. She may have to go into hospital.”

  More silence.

  “We need to tell him,” Tristan lowers his voice even more.

  “Give her a few more days,” Meredith whispers back even lower.

  “Whaaaat!” I screech. “If you guys call Ben I will never ever talk to either of you ever, ever again over my soon to be dead body.”

  9th April

  Still dead.

  But I managed to scramble my way from my bed to the sofa so they would not call the doctor or Ben.

  I need to speak to Ben but I don’t want to have to keep putting him on hold to throw up while I try to tell him the good news.

  10th April

  It is good news, isn’t it?

  I think it is. I have a whole thirty minutes of clarity every so often where I think this is great. I mean it can’t be wrong. It is Ben and me; there is nothing wrong with that. I keep thinking about last year when we found out that there never was a McCannon/Chambers baby and how disappointed we both were.

  It has got to be a good thing.

  Then I throw up again and spend the next ten minutes heaving, shaking and sweating, and I curse Valentine’s Day all over again.

  It’s a box of condoms. It’s not that hard to bloody remember.

  11th April

  End of Spring term. Everyone is out celebrating apart from me. I’m just throwing up instead. This is so not the way I thought my second year was going to go.

  12th April

  Meredith has been to work again for me. This means Meredith is drunk again for me.

  Tristan is not impressed. Tristan is being a bit of a stress at the moment; every time I get sick he gets all agitated and starts huffing and puffing about the house.

  If I didn’t know better I would think he was worried about me.

  He keeps following me about looking at me in despair. Even when I am being sick.

  “Lilah, seriously, you have got to get some help, you look terrible. Mum and Dad are going to bloody kill me when they find out that I’ve let you go on like this.”

  See he is not worried about me at all. Just himself.

  “Just don’t tell them, please,” I beg as I walk across the bathroom floor on my knees to wipe my face on a towel.

  “Okay, but you need to speak to Ben as quick as you can. He is also going to go nuts, and I don’t want him doing that whole weird protective thing he does when he finds out that I have let you sit at home for three weeks suffering without him.”

  “What weird protective thing?” I hold out my hand for him to help me off the floor.

  “You know, he gets all possessive and protective when he thinks that there is something wrong with you, something that he can’t fix or make go away.”

  I think about this for a moment. “I don’t know what you are talking about,”