The Pregnancy Scare

Damn you Fridays. I am supposed to be off work already. How can there possibly be another dozen mails to reply to. Friggin' IT.

*phone rings*

Great, of course it's going to be some guy from NY office wanting help on something. 

'Hello, Amar here'

'Hi, Priya speaking'

'Hey, doll. How you doing?'

'I'm good, are you busy?'

Of course not, a dude never says he is busy, when it is a girl asking. 

Amar replies, 'Nah, usual stuff. Go on, wassup.'

'No, if you are busy we can talk later.' She trails off.

That gets our hero's attention. 'No I am not, kiddo. Um, gimme a minute.'

He locks up his machine and goes over to one of the empty conference rooms and closes the door behind him. 'Yup, now tell me what's happening.'

'I am just a little nervous. It is a girlie thing. I am not sure what to do, and there is nobody else I can talk about this right now.'

'Yeah, sure Priya. But tell me what exactly the problem is.'

She barely whispered her question. 'What do you know about iPill?'

As any guy in this situation, Amar gets a little defensive right about now. Even though he definitely knows he hasn't been around this girl, in that way. 'The contraceptive pill? Yeah I know a bit about those. Is anything the matter, Priya?'

As any girl in this situation, Priya starts weeping. Not the frequent sob-and-sniffle girlie cry, but the wholehearted my-favorite-Twilight-character-has-died weep. Amar looks around to be sure nobody's overhearing this conversation and even reduces the volume of his phone for good measure.

She somehow finds gets around to reducing her weep to an occasional blurting of 'I am so stupid'. Eventually becomes more or less clearheaded to say, 'You remember VJ, I introduced him to you when we met last time?'

'Yeah, the law school guy? Dude, you're kidding me. That guy?'

Amar could feel her going red on her face now. 'Yes, that guy. Well we went to Lavasa for a weekend and things happened.'

'Of course things did, Priya. A guy and a girl shacked up in a hotel room in a hill station. What else did you think would happen?' Typical jerk move.

'Why are you scolding me?' She again goes on a cry spree. Typical girl move.

Amar takes a breath. Realizes this was probably the reason she called him instead of her other guy friends. He was supposed to be the practical one. 'I am sorry, hun. That reaction was just reflex. Just stop crying now, calm down a bit and tell me what is happening with you.'

Priya stops sobbing, clears her throat a couple times, takes another moment just to gather herself and tells how things lay right then.

Apparently, she and this Vijay dude went on a weekend 'getaway' to Lavasa, a quaint hillside resort place out of town. They had planned to stay just one night in the hotel, and spend the rest of the time roaming around sightseeing, discover places and stuff. In all honesty they did do a lot of sightseeing and discovering, just not the touristy places kind. They practically stayed indoors the whole time they were there. And that was two weeks ago. She was supposed to have her Red Wedding this week. And she isn't having her pains yet, making her scared shitless.

Amar was never completely comfortable with this aspect of the female biology. As most guys generally do, for the sake of convenience, he put away all thoughts of the female cycle from his mind for now. And only asked Priya when was she due and did they take the necessary precautions during their tryst.

'We did. But I am scared now. I am due today. But I don't feel anything now. I am just really worried. I had taken the U72 pill instead of iPill. Is that good enough? Is there a way to know if the rubber broke?'

'Now? I don't think anybody keeps them stored up for future research, kiddo. And don't worry I am sure things would be normal tomorrow. Maybe you're just a bit late. That does happen sometimes, don't it?'

She is almost normal now, 'I guess so. You really think everything is fine?'

'I do. And in any case there is really not much we can do now is there. You say you had taken the necessary precautions, and all we can do now is trust in science to do its shit. If anything did go wrong. We'll.. think about it then. You remember Tina?'

'Akash's girl from Pune?'

'Yup, she is studying OBGYN. I will send you her number, I'll tell her you will be calling her. She can help you more on the medical angle. But as far as I can tell, things seem to be safe now.'

She smiles a bit now. 'Thank you, ji'

Amar sighs a bit at this. She is back being normal again. 'I don't want to be preaching you on these things, but dude, you need to be extra careful with these stuff. This thing is no joking matter. Imagine how bad you'd have mess things up.

She unsurprisingly doesn't weep this time. She comfortably lashed out at Amar, as was usual. 'Don't you preach about this to me. Weren't you the one asking me and Asha to come out of our comfort zone and live a little. You were the one who introduced Asha to her boyfriend remember? Do you think they don't do it? Who do you think I got my pills from?'

Asha was Amar's first cousin.

'Asha. Pills. What??'

'See that's the thing about you boys. You want your girlfriends to be all loose and cosy with you, but when you know that the same is being expected of your sisters and women close to you. You immediately go on a rage.'

'Dude, what are you talking about? Is Asha messing around with Vicky?'

Priya holds her tongue now, 'I am not talking any more about it. I have spoken to much already. You will have to ask her yourself.'

Amar didn't talk much of anything after that. They said their goodbyes and he reminded her to call the OBGYN friend whose number he'd shared. And as for her, she asked him to not tell Asha that she was the one who spilled about her and Vicky. He said yes, he would have said yes to anything at that point. He was already on auto-pilot.

Amar wasn't sure how he felt about all this. Nor was he sure how he should handle this. Should he speak with Asha directly, or let her elder brother know about this. He didn't like to think what her brother would act like, probably go bash Vicky's head in. He was psycho like that. And he wasn't exactly close with Asha all that much to get her to openly talk about this with him. He was sure had to do something to help her.

Amar came out of the conference room, got back to his work. Hoping it would distract him from his personal crap. And as usual, it did. It was nearly close to midnight. He'd done a bit of overtime today. But at least nobody would be bothering him over the weekend. He packed up his stuff and was about to get up from his desk.

*phone vibrates*

A text message from this girl he was seeing -

"Roommate out of town. Wanna come over?"