Chapter Twenty

Richard

“Is Dr. Finnegan in?”

Sarah, a particularly bubbly receptionist who I sometimes worried had lied about her age just so she could work with the doctor I saw her ogling every opportunity she had, glanced at her computer screen and then back at me. She nodded enthusiastically.

“She is.”

“Would I be able to go in and talk to her for a few minutes?” I asked.

I felt like I was talking to a small child, but I figured that was a good thing. I might as well get accustomed to it.

“Sure,” she said. “The other doctors are out to lunch, but she should be in her office.”

“Thank you.”

I walked through the doors to the honeycomb of offices doing my best not to shake my head.

Why didn’t she lead in with that?

Dr. Finnegan’s office door was partially open when I approached, and I rapped on it before pressing it open. Flora’s doctor sat behind a massive scrolled wood desk that swallowed her small frame, her hand holding her phone close to her mouth as she made notes into it. She glanced up and waved me in. I stepped in gently as she finished her recording, not wanting to blot out any of her words with my footsteps. She set her phone to her desk and gestured at me to sit.

“Hi, Richard,” she said pleasantly. “What brings you here?”

“Well, Happy Valentine’s Day, to start,” I said.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she replied, somewhat cautiously as if unsure of my motivations.

“Flora and I have a little bit of a celebration that we wanted to share with you.”

She looked around me.

“Where is Flora?” she asked.

“Oh, she couldn’t be here. But she sends her best.”

It was a total lie. She had specifically said that she didn’t want to go with me as I delivered the news to our friends and family that we were expecting a baby. She said it was distasteful commandeering a holiday that was supposed to be about lovers and making it about the contract baby, but I refused to listen to her. This was something that I had been bursting to tell people for weeks and I had gotten it into my mind that this was when I was going to do it. It wasn’t as though Flora and I had ever shared a special Valentine’s Day. She refused to eat chocolate, she said that roses were woefully cliched, and after three years in a row of me trying to plan special experiences for us and her rejecting them, I had given up.

“Alright,” the doctor said, the word drawn out with expectation.

I drew in a breath, preparing myself for the first reveal after my parents. That had gone spectacularly horribly. I was still trying to get the image of my mother clutching her heart and apparently getting the vapors out of my mind. I was dearly hoping that this reveal would go better.

I took the red paper heart from behind my back and handed it to her. She looked at it for a moment before it seemed to occur to her that she was looking at a sonogram image, the one taken just the day before.

“You’re having a baby!” Dr. Finnigan said.

“We are!” I replied.

She came around the side of the desk and gathered me into a hug.

“That’s wonderful! How is Flora feeling?”

I took a step back, looking at her quizzically.

“Flora?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Has she gotten over her morning sickness?”

Shit.

A sick feeling was forming in my stomach, but I knew that it wasn’t morning sickness.

“Flora isn’t pregnant,” I said. “We have a surrogate.”

“Oh,” the doctor said, looking confused. “But why? Flora is so young and healthy. Why would you need a surrogate?”

****

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Flora looked at me from her stair stepper, seemingly unfazed by my storming into the home gym. She continued her workout and I stalked toward her, reaching around to slam my fist onto the controls of the machine and turn it off.

“Get those fucking things out of your ears and listen to me.”

She glared at me as she pulled her earbuds out and got down from the machine, picking up a towel to dab at the slight sheen of sweat on her chest. This was the most intensely that she ever exercised, and I realized in that moment just how much it sickened me.

“What’s wrong with you today?” she asked as she swept past me.

I reached out and grabbed her arm, whirling her around to face me. She gave a disgusted gasp and yanked her arm away from me.

“I just went to see Dr. Finnigan,” I said through gritted teeth.

“I wasn’t aware that you were in the market for a gynecologist.”

“Apparently you aren’t, either.”

“What are you going on about?”

“I went to see her to give her the news of our baby. I thought that she would be thrilled that our surrogate choice conceived on the first try. It turns out that she was shocked that we have a surrogate at all. How could you lie to me like that? How could you tell me that you couldn’t get pregnant?”

Flora stared at me, a look in her eyes that said that she knew she had been caught and that this was the one time in her life when she couldn’t talk her way out of it.

“I thought that it would make you shut up about wanting a baby.”

The answer hit me even harder than I anticipated it would.

“What?”

“You wouldn’t stop talking about having a baby. It’s all you cared about. You never even proposed to me. We’re supposed to be getting married, but we aren’t even engaged, and all you would ever talk about is how much you want a child.”

“You talked about it, too.”

“Because I felt like I had to. It was the only way that you would interact with me. I hoped that if I told you that I couldn’t get pregnant that you would stop. I hoped that you would think about me and what I might be going through, and that you would get over the baby thing. That way we could actually move on with our lives. Do you know how humiliating it is for me that we’re not married?”

“Don’t try to turn this around on me,” I said, a warning note in my voice. “Don’t you dare. You lied to me. You should have just been honest with me. How could you let me go through all of this? Why did you even agree to go along with the contract? Just to save face?”

“I can’t do this, Richard.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t do this. I can’t stay here. I can’t be a mother.”

“You’re telling me this now? Rue is pregnant! She’s in her second trimester. We’ve signed contracts, written checks. This isn’t just an idea. There’s a real baby now.”

“I know that. That’s why I can’t do it. I thought that I might be able to change my mind. I thought that maybe as we went along I’d see what you saw and start feeling what you feel. I thought for sure that when I saw the ultrasound I would connect with the baby and be excited, but that’s not what happened. When we were at the doctors’ yesterday and I saw the ultrasound---” she shook her head as if just the thought of it was horrifying. “It terrified me. I wanted to just get the hell out of there and never look back.”

“What are you saying?”

I knew exactly what she was saying, but she needed to say it. For once, she needed to be accountable.

“I want out. I don’t want this.”

Without saying another word, I turned and walked away.