After I laid the egg, I spent the next day at work furtively googling how to take care of it.

I had been watching TV the night before when I felt it coming—an object beginning to protrude from my vagina. I squatted in the empty bathtub with a hand mirror and pushed. It didn't hurt as much as you would think, just some stretching and a moment of pressure. It was an egg: larger than a chicken egg but smaller than a baseball, white and sticky with mucus. When we'd hatched ducklings in fourth grade science class, we'd had a large incubator. I found a shoebox in my closet, wrapped the egg in a nest of pale yellow dish towels, and set my desk lamp over it, hoping it would be warm enough but not too hot.

I couldn't find much information on the internet about the egg. I didn't know how to tell if it was fertilized—I hadn't had sex in maybe three weeks, not since Chris ghosted me—but I had to operate on the assumption that it was, just in case. According to nationalgeographic.com, platypuses and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs. A mother platypus "typically produces one or two eggs and keeps them warm by holding them between her body and her tail. The eggs hatch in about ten days, but platypus infants are the size of lima beans and totally helpless." Ten days. I didn't have much time.

During lunch I stepped outside to call my gynecologist. I was overdue for a pap smear, anyway, and it was probably a good idea to get a full pelvic exam, just to check things out. They didn't have any availability until the following month.

I thought about texting Chris: "Hey" or "Thinking of you" or "What's up" or "I might be having a baby" or "I guess you stopped texting me back right after my birthday because 34 became too old for you."

The size of lima beans and totally helpless.

When I got home I rotated the egg slowly, careful not to shake it. Only then did my heart start to grasshopper. What would I do if it hatched? My company didn't offer paid parental leave. Was I supposed to raise it on my own? What would my mother say? "We'll cross that bar when we come to it," Chris had once said—about what, I don't remember—and I hadn't corrected him.

I checked my health insurance benefits summary. There was a $500 copay for childbirth/delivery services in-network, and no coverage out of network. I sucked my teeth. Were there doulas or something for egg hatchings? Would a hatching doula be in-network or out of network? An unexpected expense of $500 would already be tight. I put the lid back on the shoebox and stuffed the whole thing back in my closet.

The next morning I got my usual egg&cheese sandwich from Dunkin Donuts on my way to work. I took the warm, greasy sandwich in its paper wrapper and threw it away in a trash barrel on the street without even taking a bite. I vomited in the single stall restroom at the office. I'd only have three sick days left for the fiscal year and flu season was only just beginning, but I told my supervisor I was sick. I went home.

With the egg in its shoebox back under the lamp, I cried and apologized to it. I set my bluetooth speaker against the cardboard and played classical music. I don't know what it was, I just searched for "classical music" and put on the first result that popped up.

I drew myself a bath with lavender bath salt and tried to quiet my mind as I soaked. When that didn't work, I picked up my phone off the stool by the tub and scrolled until the water cooled. After I dried off, I lay on the bed in my towel. The classical music was still playing, some sort of piano thing.

Out of habit, I opened up the dating app on my phone. I had two new messages. The first—"U do anal"—I deleted. The second was from a guy, Gus, who seemed like he might be promising. In his profile picture he wore scrubs. His eyes were warm and his smile was toothy. He said he was 38, which probably meant he was in his early 40s, which probably meant he was mostly interested in women in their 20s. But he had messaged me, so it was worth a shot. I messaged him back.

It really was an accident when I dropped the egg that weekend, I swear. I was getting dressed for a date with Gus and had picked it up to hold in my hands, just to hold it, and it slipped, falling to the hardwood floor. It seemed like I heard it crack before I saw it, like thunder before lightning.

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