Shattered Dreams

Chapter One

After making everything in the Master bedroom dust-free and gleaming, Felicia took her paper towels, Windex, can of Pledge, and preoccupied expression to the living room, where she got on her haunches, and squirted glass cleaner on the coffee table.

When she spread the mist around with her dust rag, she realized what she had done.

"Damn," she muttered, quickly wiping up the Windex with a paper towel. She was relieved to see that it didn't harm the coffee table's finish. Just left it looking a little dull, but a few shots of Pledge gave it the radiance she wanted.

She stood, sighed. She knew why she was so lost in thought, mistaking her coffee table for a mirror.

This morning she learned the awful truth.

Her dreams had been dashed.

Pulverized.

Shattered.

For the past few days, she had thought she was pregnant. But about ninety minutes ago, her period arrived, telling her that she had been wrong, giving her proof of her mistake in red letters, so to speak.

She moaned unhappily. What a huge disappointment; she had so desperately wanted to be pregnant.

And her husband Warren wanted to be a father just as much as she wanted to be a mother. And when she told him that they weren't going to be parents, after all, he'd be as let down as she was.

But he had warned her that it could be a false alarm.

And she had become annoyed with him for not sharing her optimism. "Thanks, Warren," she had said flatly. "You really know how to look on the bright side of things."

"Felicia, I want you to be pregnant. You know that," he had said. "But you have to consider that you could simply be late."

She had shaken her head vigorously. "I'm never late." She placed her hand on her stomach. "I'm going to have a baby." Her tone was resolute.

"But you have to consider the possibility that you aren't," he continued to argue. "So, don't get all excited until you get it confirmed."

But she had just known. A woman always knew something like that. And later that morning, she was going to dash to the drug store and buy a pregnancy test, which would have provided substantiation.

But then her period arrived, making the trip to the pharmacy unnecessary.

Of course, she had sighed unhappily and her eyes filled with tears, and she tried banishing the disappointment from her mind by engaging in housecleaning.

You and Warren have to see a doctor, counseled her inner voice.

That was true. They had to find out why she had not become pregnant. It had been over a year since she stopped using her diaphragm.

And they had been making love four/five times a week, so by now, she should be taking prenatal vitamins, lumbering around with a protruding abdomen, experiencing cravings.

But alas, that was not the case.

And there was a reason.

And she had to find out what it was.