“You’re pregnant.”
The doctor’s deep voice resonated throughout exam room one in who the hell knew where we were Alabama. I barely heard his words. The acoustics were fantastic in here. I wanted to bring my band in and set up shop. Bang my drums a little. Rock out.
“Excuse me?” I pitched my body toward him in an effort to get closer, thinking surely I’d heard him wrong. A slight breeze coasted up the back of my paper gown and the blue vinyl I sat on clung to one of my ass cheeks.
He smiled and looked down at the iPad gripped in his big hands. “The test came back positive. You’re pregnant.”
What in the hell was he grinning about?
This time when my body rocked backward it wasn’t of my own doing. My head swam. My palms sweated. Oh, hell no. Surely this was a mistake. I’d only come to the doctor because I’d been throwing up for days and was hoping to get some drugs to help with the nausea.
I had a virus.
Not a baby.
The creepy smiling doctor was wrong.
I was fucking careful. I religiously took my birth control pills. I always used condoms. I drank. I rocked out. I traveled. I was a party girl, sure, but I was a responsible one. My momma made sure of that.
“I think we need another test.” My voice sounded croaky. Nothing like the sultry voice that had captivated audiences in small clubs all across the Southeast.
He was still smiling. “We can do another test, but, Ms. Potter, the results aren’t going to miraculously change. You’re having a baby.”
My body locked tight as I sucked in air through my nose. My life as I knew it was over and there he sat grinning at me like this was an episode of The Price Is Right and he’d just handed me the keys to a brand-spanking-new car.
He didn’t know that children were never in my life’s game plan. Yeah, I was a thirty-two-year-old woman, but I was a far cry from mother material. And my biological clock had never started ticking. Hell, I didn’t even own a watch. To an outsider looking in, I might be the perfect picture of a mother-in-waiting, but I was anything but. I was a girl still trying to live her dream. Still trying to make it big. I just wanted to play drums and sing my life away, and I’d been doing that for the last ten years.
The doctor’s face finally registered my panic and the smile was gone. Thank God.
He cleared his throat and diverted his eyes. “There are other options,” he said, not meeting my eyes and grabbing one of the many pamphlets that sat on the counter next to him.
He handed it to me, but I didn’t look at him. I just grabbed that folded piece of paper in my hands and slipped off the hard table beneath me. The paper felt all wrong in my hands, so I shoved it into my purse that sat on the only chair in the room.
“Thanks,” I grumbled, slipping my jeans on beneath the gown. I had to get out of here. Pronto. I was going to suffocate if I didn’t.
I tore the gown off over my head, not bothering to untie it.
“Ms. Potter. I—” The doctor’s cheeks turned an interesting shade of pink before he turned away.
“Thanks,” I gritted out. This conversation was over. I couldn’t breathe. No matter how I looked to him, I simply wasn’t ready for a child. Ever.
I’d fled that doctor’s office that day like a bat out of hell. Then, I’d been panicked, so emotionally charged. I remembered it now with quiet resolve. That was the day I thought my everything had changed.
I’d been so wrong.
I’d gone to the hotel the band was staying at for the night, thankful I could be alone and not piled into the van with three smelly rockers while I had my breakdown. Pissed off that I’d been stupid and hooked up one too many damn times with my bandmate, Cash. And break down I did. I cried. I hiccupped. I sobbed into that flat pillow in that cheap hotel in Alabama. I read that pamphlet that made me sick. It made me sick because I wanted to do it. It made me sick because I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I just had to accept it.
I’d never get my dream.
But what I didn’t expect was that I’d get a nightmare.
A mother’s worse nightmare.
Because just when I’d come to accept that I wouldn’t get to perform for millions under the colored, flashing, scorching lights of a sold-out stadium. Just when I’d come to accept that no one would call me famous or a rock star. No, I’d just be mom, and I was finally okay with that. Now. Just when I thought I’d figured it all out, I had the rug jerked out so fast and hard from under me, I had burns to show for it.
It was the twenty-week scan that really changed everything. Not that day in the doctor’s office in Alabama that seemed so damn trivial now.
The ultrasound tech had looked so happy as she squirted the goop on my round stomach and my baby girl gave a kick that even made my lips tip up in a barely there smile. She was growing in me. She was growing on me, too. I already loved her.
So imagine my shock when ten minutes into that ultrasound the tech’s face fell. She excused herself and came back with a doctor, and I knew. Something bad was wrong.
Things only got harder after that. Once again, I was handed that same pamphlet, only this time by a different doctor. It was equally awkward and still too damn wrong.
I still couldn’t do it.
Even knowing what I did.
So, I pulled up my momma britches. They were ugly and had a huge elastic band at the waist, but at least they were comfy.
And I placed my child’s heart in the hands of the lead pediatric heart surgeon at Duke University Hospital.
Dr. Anthony Jackson, heart doctor extraordinaire.
Anthony Jackson, the devil with dimples.
Anthony, the biggest asshole in the world.
Anthony fucking Jackson, my ex.
Sort of.