***
“Get her out of here,” Jennifer hissed.
I wanted to laugh.
“No,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not complaining that you’re keeping my kid. I’m not complaining that I’ll be leaving the only home I know. What I am asking you is that you give me this, and the first hour, and I’ll be gone.”
I wanted to argue.
But I also felt that maybe she did deserve it, not because she was a good person, but because she was having her child taken away from her, and she’d be spending at least the next ten years in prison.
“I’ll wait outside,” Annie whispered.
I watched her leave, wondering if I should follow her.
“Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s have a baby,” the doctor called.
I nodded.
I was surprisingly nervous.
I didn’t wish any ill will upon Jennifer.
It made my stomach hurt that she had to go through a surgery to have my child because she could die if she didn’t.
And I’d lied earlier.
I was sympathetic to her situation.
I don’t know what I would’ve done to kick the habit of drugs. I know she went through the whole rehab thing when she first got pregnant, paying for it with the money she got from drugging and raping me.
I’ve never been in that type of situation.
But I do know that I wouldn’t have gone about it the same way she did.
I wouldn’t have put my body on the line for drugs. I wouldn’t trade my life for another’s.
And I wouldn’t have brought an innocent child into this world all because of a lie.
So I would give her the surgery by herself.
But that would be it, and then she’d be gone.
And it would be Annie, me and the baby.
Annie would be the one that my child thought of as his or her mother.
Annie would be the one the baby went to when it needed something.
I’d be there, too, of course, but the point I was trying to make was that Annie would be everything that Jennifer should have been.
Things moved quickly after that.
I’d arrived at the room in time to overhear the nurse and the doctor speaking with Jennifer about the baby’s heartbeat and how it would drop with every contraction.
I’d been the one to tell Jennifer that she needed to go ahead with the surgery seeing as she was extremely adamant about not having a caesarean section.
Once she’d agreed, the nurse and the doctor left the room to get ready for the emergency surgery, leaving me alone with Jennifer for the first time without anyone else in the room to overhear what I was about to tell her.
“You fucked up today,” I told her. “I had a way out for you. You had your entire life before you, a fresh start, and now you have nothing.”
Jennifer hung her head.
“I know. I didn’t have a choice, though. He’d have killed the baby,” Jennifer said.
“And how do you know that? Maybe if you’d given me the chance to fix this, you wouldn’t be spending the next ten years in an eight by eight cell,” I said, crossing my arms stiffly over my chest.
Everything hurt, and I quickly realized that there would be no crossing my arms in the future, possibly for the next couple of weeks.
I had a fractured wrist that was in a bright green cast.
A sore shoulder from my dislocation.
Multiple lacerations on my face from the brass knuckles and Liam’s fists.
But at least I was alive.
And I would recover.
Jennifer hadn’t known I would get out of it alive, though.
She’d been looking out for herself, even if she had said it was all for the baby.
Another contraction hit Jennifer, and I watched in terror as the baby’s heart rate went from 143 to 89.
The nurses rushed into the room then.
One handed me a pair of scrubs, foot booties, and a mask.
“Get dressed. I’ll wait here until you’re done, then I’ll take you back to the OR,” the nurse instructed.
I nodded, going into the bathroom and taking off the pair of jeans Annie had brought me, and slipping my legs into the scrubs that were on the verge of being too short.
The scrub top didn’t fit very well, but I didn’t really care seeing as my shoulder felt like it was on the verge of falling off.
I grunted, maneuvering my arm into the scrub top, but I had to hand the mask to the nurse once I got back outside.
“I can’t get this on. It hurts to lift my arm above my bottom rib,” I told her.
She slipped the mask on, tying the two ends so the mask lay against my face just so.
Then she gestured for me to follow.
I did and was bombarded by Annie taking pictures of me the entire time I walked down the hall.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, liking the way she was smiling so big.
“I’m documenting this day,” she said happily. “The next time I see you, you’ll be a daddy.”
I grinned at her, even though she couldn’t see it.
“Thanks,” I said. “Wait here for me, okay?”
I gestured to the corner of the wall right outside of the operating room, and followed the nurse in.
It was freezing.
And Jennifer was already strapped down to a table with both of her arms held out wide beside her.
She had on a blue cap similar to mine, and her eyes were closed.
“She’s been knocked out,” the nurse said when she caught my wariness. “We don’t have time to put in a spinal block or epidural. Just sit down right there, and we’ll get the baby to you as soon as we can.”
They’d all been prepared, and knew the situation.
Plus, it wasn’t their first rodeo.
There was a prison located about fifteen miles from the hospital, and from what I’d learned after I’d told them what was going on, they had women from the prison coming in all the time to have their babies.
They knew protocols and would hand the baby over to me as soon as he or she was checked over.
I was nervous.
Would I be a good father?
Would all of this work out with Annie?
Would she marry me?
Would she be any better at taking care of a child than I would?
All of these thoughts swirled through my brain as the minutes passed by.
Then suddenly, my world stopped.
The sounds of my child’s cries filled the room, loud and pissed way the fuck off.
“Oh, he’s upset,” the doctor drawled.
He.
I had a boy.
I had a boy!
I looked up in time to see the doctor pass my son off to a waiting nurse who had her hands outstretched with a blanket covering them.
She curled her arms around him expertly, and brought my son over.
Then she handed him to me.
“What do you think?” She asked.
I looked at my son.
At the child that was conceived not in love, but during a desperate circumstance, and I couldn’t love him any more.
I’d been indifferent about the entire situation since I’d found out about it.
Thought about giving him up for adoption.
Thought about having Jennifer abort the baby.
But now that he was in my arms, I couldn’t imagine ever not having him.
He was mine.
And he was perfect.
He had a red splotchy face; a set of lungs that I could just tell would be fun in the future, and a head full of hair that looked exactly like mine.
He had my nose. My hairline.
My everything.
He looked nothing like Jennifer, and for that, I was thankful.
Because I didn’t want to look at my son and be reminded of the fact that he was conceived in such an awful way.
I wanted to look at him and be proud, just as I was now, with what I had.
And Vitaly did make me proud.
Vitaly Andrew Konn.