Hal helped Grace stash the groceries she’d bought in town. Lucas sat at the kitchen table. The red-haired boy was totally enthralled by the weird toy that Hal had bought him. It was a series of brightly-colored clear plastic tubes twisted into different shapes, with little gears and levers and stuff — you could put it together in different ways and run marbles through it. Of course, Lucas thought that Hal was the coolest thing ever now; toys were high on both of their lists of priorities. She was more interested in making sure her son got a new pair of sturdy shoes, but she was the mom, after all.
Then the expensive little kit came out of the pharmacy bag. The cellophane was a pain to unwrap, and she growled at it. Hal just laughed, whipped out a penknife, and slit it open for her. She dumped the contents on the counter, two lancets, two long test strips, a prepaid envelope, and a thick booklet of instructions.
Hal just grabbed a lancet and ripped it open, and she growled at him. This thing had cost an arm and a leg, so reading the directions would be prudent. Yeah. He just rolled his eyes and propped a hip against the edge of the counter.
Ten pages later, Hal grew bored, and went over to help Lucas play with his toy. The two guys huddled together over the thing, exclaiming over the wheels and levers and paddles and whatnot. In two minutes flat it started to look like a demented hamster house, and the whole thing made a cool noise as the first marble rolled from top to bottom. Gotta admit it, it was an awesome toy.
Twenty pages of instructions, and all they basically said was clean your finger, stick it, drip some blood on the strip, send it in, and wait fourteen business days for the test results. Fair enough. At least she knew she would be doing it right.
When she threw the booklet down on the kitchen counter, Hal left Lucas with the whirring toy and came over to her. He ripped open an alcohol swab, handed to her, and presented his index finger. She thought he’d be laughing at her — he so often was — but his face was completely serious. She swabbed his finger, poked it with the lancet, and squeezed some blood out. The first drip went on the used swab, the second through the sixth drops on the test strip. Carefully, she slid the strip onto the counter to dry.
Hal’s eyes were dark and grave as he repeated the procedure on her finger, precisely as she had done with his. Somehow it seemed more important than the casual surroundings indicated, this little ritual that they were enacting on each other. It meant that they wanted to protect each other from illness, that they intended to be monogamous. It felt… momentous.
He stared intently for a moment, then smiled and kissed her forehead. “So, how long we wait?”
“Two weeks or so,” she sighed.
“We have the time, baby. I’m not going anywhere,” he teased.
Momentous.