Chapter Eighteen – Mini Case 3

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” he asked, standing in the doorway. “I can stay home if you need me to…”
“I’m fine, just a little sick,” she replied, curled up in a tight ball under the covers on the bed.
“You threw up again this morning.” He couldn’t hide the concern in his voice. “You haven’t eaten anything-”
“I’m fine, I swear,” she reassured, but still wouldn’t look at him. “I have a doctor’s appointment later and I’ll get some medicine.”
He sighed. “If you’re sure…call me if you need anything, okay?” She just nodded, still facing away from him. He barely kept himself from sighing again, before he shut the door to their bedroom.
They were both smart – they constantly compared themselves to one another and were racing to see who would figure out the puzzle first. People would ask them how they could possibly work together and live together with that kind of competition over their heads all the time.
“We like it,” they would always reassure. And they did. It kept their lives interesting. They shared the same house, the same room, the same last name. They liked sharing their cases, working together, and pitting their intelligence against the criminals. They were a perfect match – one boy and one girl in a strange partnered whole that still equaled one.
But something had changed recently.
He stared at their living room, at the couch and the television where they sat together with their heads touching while studying case files or watching the latest episode of CSI (mostly to mock the mistakes), before heading out the door.
It hung on his mind all day and he couldn’t concentrate at all. She had gotten moody lately – going from one extreme of being angry at him to breaking down crying the next. They had been on the same wavelength for years, but suddenly she seemed to have switched stations.
Or maybe he had just tuned out without realizing it.
It tickled at the back of his mind all day – would he lose his partner – his best friend? What had changed?
Maybe she had caught something and it was affecting her. She had been throwing up always every day for the past week or so. They both figured it was just a flu of some kind and paid no real attention. But it had gotten worse. Then the other day he had caught sight of a strange rash across her stomach while she was stretched out on the couch, trying to sleep. She was constantly tired, too. They both thought it was the stress of the cases, but even when they took a break, she was still exhausted.
He was contemplating all the diseases he knew that presented with similar symptoms when his cell phone beeped with a text message. His eyes widened as he read it, then ran to catch the bus to the heath clinic near their home.
He scared the receptionist when he first demanded, “Where is she?”, but she had only smiled and directed him to the back. He burst into her room and saw her lying on the exam table, her face somehow pale and flushed around the cheeks at the same time. The doctor looked up from what she was doing, running some sort of scanner across her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” flew out of his mouth, running to her side and taking her hand.
“Congratulations,” the doctor said with a wide smile as she turned the monitor to them. “Twins.”