Chapter Twenty-Eight
Olivia
I left the room in a panic, heading for the stairs. The show had an on-site nurse and doctor in the resort at all times, so I knew that should be my first port of call. Apart from Dec, of course, but I couldn’t reach him right now while he was caught up with the interview filming anyway.
I rapped on the door of the doctor’s makeshift office on the first floor, and he poked his head out a moment later. “Hi, Olivia. Let me guess, you’ve got the cold as well?” he said with a sympathetic smile.
I shook my head. There was a bad cold going around the island at the moment, apparently, and two contestants and seven crew members had fallen victim to it. Unfortunately, my symptoms definitely weren’t those of a simple cold.
“No cold. Could I come in?” I asked, anxiously twisting my hands.
“Of course. That’s what I’m here for,” the doctor said, stepping aside. “Take a seat and tell me what’s going on.”
I sat down in the small office, my hands still trembling nervously as I rested them on my lap. “I’ve been feeling really tired for the last few days. Really nauseated, too. I literally just threw up ten minutes ago. And I also missed my period. It was due a week ago, I think. Maybe a bit longer. I didn’t even realize I missed it because I’ve been so caught up with all the filming stuff. My boobs are a tad sore, too, now that I think about it.”
He nodded. “Are you on birth control?” he asked.
“No.”
“Are you sexually active?”
I blushed. “Yes. I mean, we use condoms, but still…”
I didn’t elaborate as to who exactly my sexual partner was. The doctor nodded again, and I was glad that there wasn’t even a hint of judgment in his eyes. I already felt stupid enough right now for not being as careful as I should have been to avoid a situation like this, so it was nice that his attitude was so calm and non-judgmental. It made me feel calm. Well, calmer, anyway.
“You’re not necessarily pregnant,” he said. “I know that’s what most people will jump to, but it could be any number of things. For example, stress. That’s a major one. It can wreak havoc on your body, and competing on a show like this, where the cameras are almost always on you…that can hurt. Last season, I had two contestants come to me with the same symptoms as you. They were also concerned about unplanned pregnancy, but they weren’t. It was just stress.”
“Oh.” That made me feel a little better. I was stressed, after all. Stressed about everything Shayla put me through all those weeks ago (I still had nightmares about it), stressed about winning the show…even stressed about my fledgling jewelry business back home.
“I’ll get our nurse to take some blood from you, and I’ll send it off with a request for testing. Because we’re so isolated here on the islands, I won’t be able to get an answer for you right away, but we should have the results in about two or three days.”
I nodded. “What about those tests that you can just pee on?”
“We do have them, but they aren’t as good as blood tests for detecting pregnancy this early. I also want to see the results of the blood tests to rule out anything else. Could always be some sort of bug you’ve caught, or any number of other things.”
“Oh, right. That makes sense.”
“Try not to stress until we get the results back, okay?” he said. “I realize it’s easier said than done when you’re competing on a reality show which gets watched by millions of people every week, but just try for me.”
I gave the doctor a weak smile. “I will. Thanks, Dr. Donnelly.”
The nurse took some blood from me, and fifteen minutes later I was on my way out, feeling a little better already. My stomach was still a bit queasy, but the doctor had really calmed me down. It hadn’t even occurred to me that stress or a simple bug could cause my symptoms. I’d leapt straight to pregnancy like a paranoid basket case.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want kids. I did. Just not at the age of nineteen. I wanted to have my life a bit more settled first. Maybe have Dec as my real husband, not just a fake one.
I smiled at the thought and decided to take a short walk outside. Perhaps the fresh sea breeze would help with the nausea.
“Hey, Liv.”
A familiar voice chimed in my ear as I stepped down to the hedge-lined path just outside the front doors of the resort, and I turned to see Isobel sitting on a garden bench. I smiled and waved. I didn’t like her when I first arrived on the show (and for several weeks of filming, actually) but after the way she helped Dec and me get out of our sticky situation with Shayla a few weeks ago, I’d gotten over any dislike I had for her. Sure, she’d been abrupt and rude at first, but there was obviously a nice person lurking somewhere beneath her tough exterior.
“Hey, Isobel,” I said, stepping over to her.
“You okay?” she asked, eyebrows furrowed in a quizzical expression. “You look a little pale.”
I nodded and took a seat next to her on the bench. “I’m okay. Just a bit sleepy,” I lied. “Hey, look…I never really got a chance to thank you properly for what you did the other week. I really should’ve by now.”
She waved her hand and smiled. “It’s fine. You know what I’m like. I keep to myself when we aren’t filming. Would’ve been difficult for you to get me alone.”
“Well, thank you anyway,” I said. I paused for a few seconds. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you help us? I mean, you could’ve let Shayla screw us over and get us removed from the show. But you didn’t. It just seems so odd to me because when we first met, you were such a…”
I didn’t finish the sentence. Isobel laughed. “Such a bitch to you?” she said, eyebrows raised in a teasing expression.
“I wasn’t going to say bi—”
“Don’t worry. I was a bitch,” she replied, still grinning. “I was a real cow to everyone.”
“But then you helped us.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I did. Look, Liv, I’m sorry for how I treated you in the first few weeks of the show. I was like that to everyone. I guess I thought I needed to be like that. I came here to win, like a lot of other people. I needed to win. And I figured if I made friends, I might feel bad about doing whatever it took to win. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“So I acted like an ice queen. Treated everyone like crap. I know it sucks. I sucked. So yeah…sorry for that. You’re a nice girl, Liv. You didn’t deserve my shitty attitude.”
“Well, you made up for it by helping me and Dec get Shayla off our back.”
She shuddered. “Yeah. I could tell what she was like from the very start. I tried to warn you that day down at the marina.”
“I know. Dec told me about that. But I thought you were telling her to stay away from me,” I replied.
She shook her head. “No. Definitely not. What exactly was it that she had on you guys, anyway? Dec never told me. All he said was that she was using nasty tricks to try to get you both thrown off the show, and that she seemed to somehow have access to certain footage and information.”
I hesitated. Isobel was obviously on our side enough to help us with nasty people like Shayla, but she was still our rival on the show in terms of the prize money. She had a lot of information on the other contestants—that was why Dec went to her for help in the first place—but she clearly didn’t know the truth about how Dec and I first arrived on the show. She had no idea who we truly were, in terms of our relationship with the exec producer (aka Mom), and I didn’t want to risk telling her, because it could destroy all the goodwill she seemed to feel toward us now. I had to make up something else.
“I thought she was my friend, so I confided in her. A lot. Even some stuff about my past that I didn’t want to be aired all over TV,” I ended up saying. “She was going to try and use that against us. And…uh…she also managed to get a sex tape of us from Ben. Remember how he gave her access to all the cameras and stuff?”
The last part was technically true. Isobel didn’t need to know exactly why a sex tape of me and Dec couldn’t get out, though.
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. God, she was a bitch,” she said. She let out a deep breath. “Well, at any rate, I’m glad she’s gone. If she succeeded in getting rid of you two, she would’ve come after me and Mark next. So I guess in helping you, I helped myself a bit as well.” She stuck her tongue out at me, and I smiled.
“So what changed?” I asked, wrinkling my forehead. “What made you decide to be nice and help us, even though we’re technically all rivals on this show?”
She gave me a shy smile; something that was probably very rare for her. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look shy, and I probably never would again. “You’ll think this is lame,” she finally said.
“Try me.”
“Mark,” she said simply. “When I walked down the aisle all those weeks ago and saw this skinny nerd with glasses standing there, my first thought was ‘hell no’. But then I actually got to know him, and…well, we’re perfect for each other. I know it sounds silly, but being with him these last couple of months has really changed me. I still want to win the prize money, of course, but I’m so happy with everything now. Happy with him. I just don’t have it in me to scheme or be mean to anyone anymore. If we win, I want it to be for real, not because I screwed other people over like Shayla tried to.”
“That’s great,” I said with a genuine smile. I was happy for her. “It’s not silly at all.”
She nodded slowly. “Thanks. So yeah, I decided to drop the bitch act and start being nicer to everyone. Everyone who deserved it, anyway.”
“I’m glad you deemed me worthy of that.”
She gave me a playful elbow. “Of course you are. You’re too young and sweet to not be one of the deserving ones. I can see why Dec is so obsessed with you.”
I smiled and looked out over the ocean view visible just beyond the garden, and then I turned to look at her again. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“Earlier you said you didn’t just want to win the prize money. You said you needed to win. Why is that?”
She sighed and looked at her lap. “Only Mark knows about this,” she began. “I could’ve brought it up in all the interviews we’ve done on the show so far, but I hate the idea of playing on people’s guilt. If I win, I want it to be because people love us as a couple and choose us. Not because they felt pressured to.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said hurriedly, sensing that I was close to striking a nerve. “I was just curious, that’s all.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s nice having someone else to talk about it with, to be honest,” she admitted. “It’s my mom. She’s the reason I need the prize money.”
“Is she sick?” I asked, my eyes widening.
“Sort of. She has early-onset dementia. So she’s okay physically, but mentally…not so much. There’s this really great facility in upstate New York, not far from my home. I want to take her there to be properly taken care of, but it’s super expensive. So I was going to use the prize money for that.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I said softly. “That’s awful. I know what it’s like to lose a parent. I mean, you haven’t physically lost your mom, but—”
“But I’ve still lost her.” Isobel finished my sentence before letting out a heavy sigh. “That’s exactly it. She barely even remembers me. It’s awful. But there are some days where she is lucid. Those are the days I live for. I’m hoping this place can help her have more of those days.”
A tear dripped onto her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away, obviously not wanting me to see it. My heart went out to her. No wonder she put up such a tough front. It was a hard shell to hide the soft vulnerability inside. I should’ve noticed sooner, but I’d been too selfish and focused on the fact that she used to come across as so abrupt and rude, and so I’d never even considered how hard her life might be and how much she might be struggling. I should’ve taken more time to realize how everyone I met was fighting some sort of battle in their own life, and that I wasn’t always a perfectly polite angel myself.
“I’m glad you felt like you could tell me,” I said, making a silent vow to myself.
Dec’s sister needed about six hundred thousand for her treatment, if I remembered correctly, but the Wed At First Sight prize was a million dollars. That meant if we won, we would have four hundred thousand left over when all was said and done. I still desperately wanted to win for Dec’s (and Amelia’s) sake, but I wanted to help Isobel too. So if and when we won, I was going to give her some of the prize money. I knew Dec would agree with me when I told him why. He was a wonderful man, and he would want to help out Isobel’s family the same way we were helping his own family.
The thought made me realize how much I missed having a real family to call my own. Dad and Callum were gone, along with all my grandparents. I didn’t have any other close relatives aside from Mom, and well…we all knew what she was like. She had her good moments occasionally, but in the end, she was the sort of woman who would use a sickly young girl to net herself a hot young trophy husband. It didn’t matter how you tried to spin it—it really didn’t look good for her. She was practically holding Dec hostage in a fake marriage so that he could get enough money to treat his sister; money that would’ve belonged to his family in the first place if my father hadn’t screwed them out of their businesses years ago.
Yeah, Mom was not the greatest person in the world, that was for sure.
I wanted a proper family again. A real family, where everyone was healthy and supportive. Kind. Loving. Happy. My hand fluttered down to rest on my stomach, and I couldn’t help but smile. If those blood tests from earlier came back positive for pregnancy…maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Sure, I was young, but that just meant I’d bounce back quicker. And Dec would be there to help me through it, I was sure of that.
So no, it really wouldn’t be so bad if I was pregnant at all…