"Lucy Sussex - Matricide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sussex Lucy)

"I know they call it morning sickness, but this is morning, noon, and night sickness!"

"It goes with the territory sometimes," the doctor says. "Pregnancy hormones, being overproduced.
Unpleasant, but nothing to worry about, unless …"

She walks up behind Sylvie, takes the skirt of her pleated Miyake pullover dress (asymmetric, no crush,
go anywhere), and pulls it tight. Revealed is a bulge, not the extent of Judge Judy's, but more than just
stomach flab, girly jelly-belly.

"Elsewhere I'm thin," Sylvie says helplessly. "And I used to be thin there too."

"When did you last have your period?"

"I told you, I don't notice such things, but I definitely last had intercourse two months ago. On the
fourteenth of July, the French holiday."

"And before that?"

I will not say "I only have sex in Paris," she decides. "Um, March."

The doctor releases the skirt, runs her hand over the bulge clinically, a noncaress.

"You look more than two months. Either you're hopeless with dates, or it's a multiple birth …"

At that Sylvie dry-retches into the basin.

"Or …" The doctor trails into silence, releasing her.

"Sorry," Sylvie mutters to the porcelain.

"It goes with the territory. But Ms. Lester, I'm sending you off for a scan, an ultrasound. If it is more than
one fetus, then you need to think hard about your options. You told me you hadn't decided what to do
yet."

"I have now." Of all things, it was the memory of a Paris shop, the delectable, tiny bébé things displayed
in the window, suddenly now terribly covetable, in all their frills and lace, unexpectedly necessary. If
that's a reason, she thinks, it's a bad one. But it is a deciding reason nonetheless.

"I'll take that as a yes?"

Sylvie nods, the motion setting off the nausea again.

"It's hard enough with one, on your own. Can't the father help?"

"Him?" She laughs without humor. "He's got a perfect life."

"Wife?"

"No, life. No room in it for a child."
Or me, being around all the time, she thinks. She starts to cry, and the bathroom blurs around her. In the