Blue

The walls were the same blue as the sky.  Danielle assumed this was to give one the feeling of not being in this room.  However, it failed.  As she lay on her back, her feet in the stirrups, and a cold sensation between her legs, Danielle was absolutely certain she could not pretend she was anywhere else.

Her hands rested on her stomach, left one balled under the right.  She pulled them into the soft flab of her abdomen, willing herself to think of anything else.  She closed her eyes.  But even in the dark, there was no denying it.

It all started innocent enough.  Boy meets girl.  They fall madly in love and live happily ever after.  Only ‘ever after’ had not been so terribly long.  Three years to be exact.  Then the fairy tale crumbled around them.  Work got in the way, then friends.  Finally, it was like sleeping next to a stranger every night.  They had clung to the charade.  Forcing, willing, things to be like they were.  They had even tried counseling.  But one look at the therapist and Danielle knew they were doomed.  They decided to end it amicably.  He was carrying out the last box of their life together when she had suggested wine. Just a glass.  Then just one more.  Soon two bottles were slipping out of an overfull trashcan and she was slipping out of her panties.

The sex had always been amazing.  The many nights she sat awake dissecting their marriage, it was the one thing she kept coming back to.  The one thing they seemed to have in common.  The night he moved out put all the rest to shame.  And when she woke, he was gone.  It seemed the perfect end.

Until three weeks later and she was late. 

Danielle could hear the doctor’s tennis shoes speak on the tile outside her door.  There was a short, quick knock and he entered, followed by a nurse in bright pink scrubs.  Danielle’s legs twitched, trying to cover up her nakedness, but the stirrups held her in place, exposing her most intimate parts to the sky blue walls.