The longest five minutes of Mads’s life

“‘Remove the test from the foil. Take off the cap’,” Mads murmured as she scanned the instructions on the cardboard box. “‘Hold the test with the absorbent tip pointing downward. Place just the tip in either your urine stream for 5 seconds or in a urine sample collected in a clean, dry container up to where the tip meets the plastic housing for 20 seconds.’ Yeah, clearly that’s not an option,” she mumbled, eyeing the cramped confines of the convenience store’s restroom. “So, straight to the source for me, I s’pose.” She resumed reading. “‘Wait 5 FULL MINUTES before reading your results. IMPORTANT! Read your result within 10 minutes of testing. Do not read results after 10 minutes.’ Okay,” she chirped, trying to muster some enthusiasm. “Let’s do this!”

She set the box on the small sink, the test carefully balanced over it, open tip directed away from her. She then started to undo her jeans and lower her underwear, positioning her body so that her backside hovered just above the toilet seat while her nose remained an inch from the sink’s basin.

I’m just a fart away from a concussion, she thought, and the snort that burst from her nose nearly sent her tumbling. Focus, Mads, focus, she scolded herself, adjusting her posture and spreading her feet apart like a sumo wrestler. She took a deep breath and released it slowly, squeezing her bladder as she did so. Nothing. She changed her stance, angling her body more to the right and deepening her squat. Nichts. Nada. As dry as the Sahara. Where is a sneeze when you need it? C’mon, c’mon. Her thighs began to shake Bambi-style as she balanced on her tiptoes, rear high and head low.

“Oh, piss on it!” she hissed, just as a trickle of urine finally hit the bowl. She snatched up the test, fumbling it around in the general direction of the stream. Once she was confident that she had hit the target, she grabbed the cap and secured it over the soaked tip. She cautiously stood up, her quads protesting as if she had just broken the world record for squats. I’m too old for this, she thought, battling a wave of dizziness. She lifted her gaze, her eyes landing on the small mirror over the wall-mounted sink. Her own reflection stared back at her from the mottled surface, and she leaned in, observing her features with clinical detachment. She looked tired, her long nose and sharp cheekbones casting bruise-like shadows in the harsh neon light. Her eyes traveled over the planes of her face, taking in the fine wrinkles spreading like cracks on thin ice and the faint discoloration of the upper lip, finally settling on the deep crease that ran vertically between her brows. I should really consider doing some Botox. She placed her fingertips at either side of line and gently pulled it apart to smooth the skin. At least my mouth is still the same, she mused, giving herself a faint smile. Big enough to get me into trouble. She straightened and began digging through her oversized coat for her smartphone. She found it in the left inner pocket, together with some mints. She unwrapped one of candies and popped it into her mouth, before checking the time on the device’s lock screen.

“1.38. This is going to be the longest five minutes of my life,” she grunted.

She slipped the phone into her jeans’ back pocket and made herself comfortable. Or at least, she tried. A maddening itch started just above her left shoulder blade, and it took her several awkward arm flails to scratch it. She breathed a sigh of relief, dropping her hands on the sink, but soon her fingers began tapping a steady beat on the grayish acrylic surface, her gaze flickering to the control panel every few seconds. A watched pot never boils, Mads. She forced her hands to stop drumming and let her eyes roam over the cramped restroom, gliding over the faded walls, with their flaking paint and scrawled doodles, and the ripped flyers on the battered door. “Bet you’ve gone through a lot too, um?” she murmured as she felt a rush of tenderness for the place. I found my spiritual sanctuary in a loo. Well, it figures, she thought dryly, snickering away her unease, as she always did.

“You excel at sidestepping issues, Madison, but eventually, you will have to confront the reality you keep avoiding.” She hadn’t appreciated Patricia’s assessment when she first heard it that morning, and she sure as hell did not now.

Mads’s eyes darted at the control window. Again. She groaned in frustration, flipping the plastic case over to resist the urge to glance at it, then took her phone and unlocked it.

Mark and Liam’s cheerful faces greeted her from the home screen, but she quickly swiped down to check the notifications.

Two emails, one from Dr. Hart’s studio to confirm her upcoming appointment and the other an automated reminder to renew her gym subscription. She got rid of both, filing the first and deleting the second, before returning to the notification tab.

She sifted through a missed call from a suspected spam number and a text from a delivery service, all the way to the final notification on her list. It was an audio message from Mark. Her thumb hovered briefly over the icon before she decided to close the window.

The digits above Mark and Liam’s heads read 1.40. Three minutes still. She locked the phone and set it on the sink, the test perched on the other side of the faucet.

Mads folded her arms and propped herself against the wall, chin tucked in and thoughts drifting elsewhere. She couldn’t help but place this entire toilet fiasco at Patricia’s feet. After all, it had been her, the renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Patricia Hart, to put a flea in Mads’s ear that morning.

“You look pale, Madison. Are you sure you’re alright?” Patricia’s gentle tone masked a fair amount of skepticism, as she cast an inquisitive look at Mads. She had just emptied her stomach in Patricia’s paper bin and was now surreptitiously eyeing a nearby vase, setting the other woman’s nerves understandably on edge.

“It’s just an upset stomach. I must have eaten something bad last night. You know me – never one to pass on an All-You-Can-Eat offer!” Mads blurted as her face shifted to a concerning shade of green.

“You’ve been complaining of bouts of nausea for weeks, Madison,” Patricia remarked, leaning back in her chair. “How are things with Mark?” she asked, abruptly.

Mads flinched inwardly. “Um. Good. As I mentioned, we’ve decided to take some time off. It’s for the best. Things haven’t been working for a while, not since…” she paused, then added, “We haven’t met since the memorial, but we parted on friendly terms, so I believe we’re good.”

Patricia sat silently, waiting for her to speak. Mads fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat, feeling a rush of heat rising within her. To cool down, she picked up a magazine from the nearby tea table and began to fan herself.

“Look at you, making me all flustered,” she laughed awkwardly, but Patricia remained expressionless.

“Do you recall our discussion about attachment styles and how yours is different from Mark’s?” she inquired, proceeding without waiting for Mads’s response. “An association between an avoidant dismissive person like you and a more anxious individual like Mark offers significant opportunities for mutual development, as long as neither of you allows your fears to dominate. You tend to offer your partners the reassurance they need out of a sense of duty, but this can lead to you becoming more emotionally distant from them as time goes on. Has that been the case this time too, Madison? With Mark?” Patricia inquired.

“What…um, I…” Mads faltered, her thoughts racing back to that afternoon, two months ago. To Mark.

Patricia’s gaze bore into hers. “I strongly suggest you take a pregnancy test, Madison. The sooner, the better,” she said.

Mads rubbed her eyes and shifted her position, her left hip resting against the sink’s edge for support, mentally retracing the steps that led to this moment. The morning discussion had rattled her more than she cared to admit, and while driving home, the doubt that Patricia had sown in her mind began to take root. If someone with more degrees than the Death Valley in the summer gives you advice, you’d better take it. By the time Mads pulled up in the convenience store’s parking lot, she was hyperventilating. She stormed through the automatic doors like a lunatic, sprinting down the aisles and snatching up random products because what woman in her forties would show up at a register with just a pregnancy test? They should know better. She should know better. By the cashier’s disdainful look when she asked for the restroom’s key though, she shouldn’t have bothered. She obviously fooled no one, duh.

“What a mess,” she mumbled, shaking her head in disbelief, whether at the entire situation or merely at herself, she didn’t know. She picked up her phone to check the time, but her body betrayed her, her thumb deceitfully swiping across the screen, unlocking it. Her gaze landed not on the clock digits but on Mark and Liam’s faces underneath it and stayed there, transfixed. She was the one who had taken that photo of them, nearly two years ago. Before everything went to shit.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her thoughts not to go there, to that empty hole inside her heart. She fought the urge to curl up on the floor and focused on her sensations instead: the maddening dripping of water from the faulty faucet, the dreadful stench wafting up from the toilet seat – anything, as long as it anchored her to the present. She owed it to Liam. She had promised him that she would be strong and remember only the nice things. Mark had sworn it too, but he was weak. He had always been weak. That’s why she left him. She had to. They had tried – she had tried – to keep the marriage going, despite everything, but it was just too much. It felt like dragging a dead body around, pulling it along for no other reason than the fact that she had always done it. She knew that ending it was the right thing to do, but she regretted how it came about. It had been messy, and it was her fault.

She hadn’t meant to spend time alone with Mark after the memorial, but he invited himself home – their home, though he had moved out four months before – and she had no heart to deny him a chat. That blasted afternoon was seared in her brain like it was yesterday.

“Really, Mads, I don’t know how you can go on like this, pretending everything is okay. Because it’s not, is it?” Mark’s voice contained a strange blend of desperation and anger, as if he too didn’t know what to feel. He leaned in, his hand hovering near her shoulder, close enough to touch her, but not quite. Mads fancied she could sense his warmth radiating from it – comforting, familiar, smothering. She recoiled, and he stepped back, the gap between them a chasm.

“I miss you. I miss us.” Mark’s tone had softened to a murmur and Mads wondered if he had meant for her to catch it. She understood what he meant though. When one splits into two, and the two evolve into three, returning to a singular state is impossible. The numbers just don’t make sense, do they? How is one supposed to transition from being single to married, up to motherhood, and then back to being childless? There isn’t even a term for it. She might have been a widow, an orphan, but who was she without her son?

When Mads got pregnant with Liam, she and Mark had been married for eleven years, nine of which were spent attempting, and failing, to conceive. In the third year of their marriage, it became clear that in their case Nature needed some help, and they turned to science. In the years that followed, she went through four cycles of IVF therapy, none of which succeeded. That’s the last one, she recalled telling herself as she prepared for the fifth. Then I’m done.

She spent the nine months after her positive result as though she were in a trance. It was only when she cradled that tiny creature, all blotchy and slimy, in her arms that she realized that they had made it. They’d actually made it. She and Mark had gone through hell and back, and that was their deserved happy ending. But she was not a princess, and her life was not a fairy tale.

When they first told her the diagnosis, Mads had refused to believe it. It wasn’t possible. Liam was the healthiest kid ever, naughty in the delicious way only a six-year-old can be. The doctors were wrong. He would be okay. They would be okay.

Mark had been the first to come around to the possibility that things might not turn out well in after all. He had always been the most sensitive of the two. He’s the water to my air, she used to joke. Luckily, there’s Liam who keeps us grounded. My precious little Virgo, wise beyond his years. Mads’s lips curled into a smile, as her eyes lingered on Liam’s dimples, his entire being forever frozen in that photo on her phone screen.

When his condition worsened and hope began to dwindle, she and Mark took different paths, his ending in despair, hers in denial. For him, grief was a pit to wallow in, for her, a shadow to outrun. He cried and raged, while she filled her days with noise and movement, hoping if she moved fast enough, the pain wouldn’t find her. The deeper he sank, the farther away she drifted. From him, from herself. By the time Liam died, she was a functional corpse, powering herself through the motions, faking a resilience that she didn’t have, as her husband unraveled in front of her eyes, trusting her to pick him up. And she did, time and time again, until the day she could do so no more. Liam had been gone for seven months then. Mark surprised her by agreeing to a break. He moved out of their house and reached out only to plan Liam’s memorial. They decided to hold it in neutral territory, and they settled on a local funeral parlor. She didn’t wish to engage with him beyond what was strictly required, but when she saw Mark’s vulnerable expression, so like Liam’s, she longed for him and agreed to have him over. Yet now that they were together in their (her, Mads reminded herself) home, she couldn’t resist being a bitch. It had always been like that between them. Him pleading, her withdrawing. Him begging, her giving in. Him guilty, her resentful. Even at that moment, they kept going in circles. She had pushed him away, and now she pulled him closer. They kissed. Tentatively, at first, then roughly. They didn’t speak as they made love, but their bodies talked, and as his screamed, “Again, again,” hers murmured, “Not anymore.”

Mark had wept afterward, and Mads had stroked his hair as he cried over her bare breasts. She thought of Liam and how it had been his love that made her Real, like the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit, Liam’s favorite book. She remembered reading it to him the night before his seventh birthday, snuggled together in the hospital bed.

“‘Once you are Real,” she intoned, “you can’t become unreal again...” She paused, her eyes moving from the book to Liam’s face. His breathing was shallow, his forearm tiny beneath the tangle of tubing. Mads began to rise quietly, when Liam stirred, his small hand clutching hers. “‘It lasts forever.’” he whispered. “‘Once you are Real…’” he trailed off, his eyes gently closing. He would never open them again.

Back in the cramped space of the convenience store’s restroom, Mads felt her eyes stinging. She scrubbed them, and was taken aback when her fingertips came away wet. She hadn’t cried since Liam’s funeral, more than a year ago. Her mind suddenly filled with the images of him as a baby: the sensation of his warm, little body nestled in her arms, the pouty mouth as it closed around her nipple, and the joy in her heart when Mark kissed his tiny head. Am I a terrible person for wanting this all over again? she thought. God, how I miss you, Liam.

And suddenly, she desperately wanted for the control window to show a double line. Because she was tired of running away from her grief, of hating Mark for allowing himself to feel what she did not, could not. It was not he who was weak, but she. She turned her attention back to the phone – the clock read 1.46 – and launched the instant messenger app to hear Mark’s voice note.

“I love you, Mads, and I want you back in my life. I know I’m not perfect, but we can get through this. You and I. For Liam. For us.”

Mads’s breath caught in her throat, feeling sobs building up in her chest. Her hand shook as she picked up the test, and she braced herself before flipping the plastic case to reveal the control window. Please, please.

“Ma’am, are you alright?” the cashier’s high-pitched voice rang out from outside, as the door handle rattled against the lock.

Mads’s head whipped to the door, startled, before bursting into laughter.

“Yes,” she said softly, as she took in the test’s result. “Everything is fine.”