“Just a small poke,” the older lady tells me after wiping my arm down with an alcohol wipe. She pushes the needle into my arm, and the tube immediately starts filling with my blood. Since they’re only running the one test, she only needs the one small vial of blood. “Apply some pressure here for me,” she says after pressing a cotton ball over the needle before pulling it out of my arm. After shaking the tube with my blood back and forth a couple times, she places the label on it, then drops it into the bio-hazard bag. She offers me some medical tape to hold the gauze in place, now that my arm has stopped bleeding.
“Thanks, now I’ll have the results by close of business today?” I ask her.
“Yes, you should have them by five p.m. If you don’t, then, call the office. We’re open until eight, so it is possible they’ll go out after five, but we do our best to get same-day rush orders out by five.”
“Thanks,” I tell her, rubbing my palms along my pants. They’re damp from sweat as I worry about the outcome from this test.
I watch from a window as the nurse takes Abigail’s blood. I didn’t really want to see or talk to her today but watching with my own two eyes the blood being drawn helps calm my anxiety that she’d somehow tamper with the test to make it come out with fake results. I don’t know why I’m so convinced that she’s trying to trap me. Probably because since she made the announcement and my attorney contacted her, it was all about the money to her, added to the fact that I don’t remember this girl from anywhere.
With the blood draws done, I head for the gym. I need to do some heavy lifting or something to get my mind off watching the minutes tick by on the clock.
“How many more miles are you going?” JJ asks, jumping on the treadmill next to mine.
“Until my legs can’t go any farther,” I pant out between breaths. I look down and see that I’ve already put in about five miles. “Maybe another three or four?” I toss out.
“Any word yet?” he asks. The guys all knew what was going down today, and therefore have given me a wide birth as I await the results.
“Nope, still waiting,” I tell him. I hit the button and the belt slows me down, bringing me to a stop. I gulp down my bottle of Gatorade, then follow that up with a full bottle of water. With as much as I’ve sweated out today, I need all the hydration I can get.
“Just don’t kill yourself, in the meantime. No number of squats or miles run are going to make the results come in faster or change them.”
“Just trying to keep my mind focused on something other than the email that hasn’t arrived and the time on the clock,” I tell him honestly.
“Man, I know what it’s like to be waiting on that test. I’ve done it myself not that long ago. Yes, my situation was a little bit different, as the baby was already born and was in my care, but I still needed to know for sure that she was mine. The lab I used didn’t offer a same day rush option, so I had to wait a few days. They were the longest days of my life. Seriously, they were. When the results came in, I was almost too scared to open them. By that point, I didn’t want them to say that Evie wasn’t mine. I had already fallen in love with her by then, and in my heart, it didn’t really matter what a piece of paper said, I knew she was mine. She looked way too much like me to be anyone else’s kid.”
“I’m actually relieved that the kid isn’t born yet. I’d feel bad, I think, if it was, and I was here denying it was mine,” I tell him.
“If the test comes back and you are the dad, what are you going to do?” he asks.
“Whatever I have to do to provide for it.”
“And that proves that you’re a good man,” he tells me before putting his earbuds into his ears and turning up the speed on his treadmill.
Since slowing down, my legs have now turned to Jell-O, so I guess it is time to get off this treadmill and move on to something else.
I slip my own earbuds back in as I exit the gym and head for the locker room. I strip down to my boxers once in the locker room and sink into one of the ice baths that are always ready for us to use. The immediate sting of the cold water has my body shriveling up, trying to protect itself from the freezing cold water. It takes a minute or so before my body starts to relax, and the cold goes to work helping my muscles recover from the beating I put them through today in the gym. I don’t normally go that hard on gym days, but the situation at hand kind of dictated that.
“Everyone decent?” Coach’s voice calls out into the locker room. That usually means that a female is about to enter the room. Since you can get quite the eye full in this room at any given time, we make a ritual of checking before any females are allowed in.
“I’m in the ice bath in my boxers,” I call out, letting him know I’m in here.
“Do you have a towel?” he asks, poking his head into the area that our ice baths are in.
“Over there,” I tell him, pointing at one on the bench.
“How much longer until you’re out? Carmen needs to talk to you.”
“I
