Chapter 4

Mike

She looked sweet and utterly adorable sleeping so soundly next to me. I climbed out of bed and was about to grab my clothes and head out but stopped. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.

After getting dressed I went to the kitchen and fumbled around a little to make a couple cups of coffee for us. Even though I’d already given her a fair warning that I had to leave early for work, I wanted to talk to her one last time before I left.

“Good morning Julia,” I whispered when I sat down on her side of the bed.

She moved a little but barely opened her eyes. It was only six am and we certainly hadn’t had a full night of sleep. I was use to getting only a few hours though and was ready to head into the office. Sunday was my paperwork day. I didn’t work every Sunday, but this week I’d gotten way behind because my partner Bruce had been missing in action which meant I was taking on his patients.

We named our practice RMA, or reproductive medicine associates. Bruce and I had been in business for the last five years together and up until recently things had been rather uneventful. Never in all my life had I thought I’d end up being the responsible one in a business partnership. But here I was always hounding Bruce and trying to get him to show up for work more. He spent more time philandering with the ladies than he did in the office, that was for sure.

We had arranged to meet up on Sunday to touch base on all his patients I’d seen, and I also needed to talk to him about why he had been gone so much. With just the two of us running our practice, it was pretty damn difficult when he disappeared for whole days at a time.

“Julia, here’s some coffee. I’m going to get going,” I said again as I let my hand rest on her cheek. “I’ve got a work thing today.”

“You made coffee?” she said softly.

“I can’t guarantee it’s very good.”

“That was sweet of you.”

She pulled herself up and sat against the large white headboard. Her dark brown hair cascaded around her bare breasts and I did my best not to stare at her form. My cock, on the other hand, was paying very close attention.

“I’ll call you, okay?”

“You know Mike, it’s totally alright if this was just a one-night thing. You don’t have to call. I get it. We had fun and I’m perfectly fine with that.”

“I’ll call you,” I replied to her skepticism.

“Okay,” she leaned in and pressed her lips softly against mine. “But if you don’t…”

“Wow, I’ve never had a girl so sure I wasn’t going to call,” I laughed. “I’m not sure if I should be offended or not.”

“Oh, you should definitely be offended,” Julia laughed.

“Listen here young lady. I had a great time getting to know you and I’d like to take you on a real date. I’m going to call you up and we are going to schedule it. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said with a little smirk on her face. “Now get going so I can go back to sleep.”

I kissed her one last time and downed my coffee before heading out. Julia ended up following me to the front door and locked it behind me as soon as I left. The skepticism of this girl made me laugh out loud as I walked into the elevator to head downstairs. Maybe she didn’t want me to call. I’d never had a woman try so damn hard to make sure what we had stayed a one night stand.

Our Sunday morning meet up didn’t go as planned. Bruce wasn’t there so I spent most of the morning finishing my notes on patients and clearing out some old files. It wasn’t until noon that Bruce decided to show up, strolling in with a huge smile on his face and not a care in the world.

“Nice of you to show up.”

“We said noon. It’s noon. I don’t know why you’re so agitated,” Bruce fell into the big leather couch in my office and put his feet up on the coffee table.

“Dude, I said eight o’clock and you said noon. Then we decided on nine.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Okay, well you’re here now. So let’s go through a few of the cases I saw for you. I have a couple questions,” I said and pulled out the charts that needed updates.

“These three women don’t have numbers listed by their sperm donors. You know that’s a huge error. How are we supposed to know if we have the right numbers now? Did you keep notes somewhere? We need to update these.”

“There are no numbers for these three,” Bruce said and smiled down at the charts. “I am the donor.”

Bruce Simon was a perpetual playboy bachelor. Up until that moment I’d always assumed that he was just a sloppy bookkeeper. I’d seen other files of his that needed notes and numbers added, but never went back to check if it was done. We were partners, after all, I wasn’t his keeper. It wasn’t my job to babysit him. But this was huge. This was not at all what I’d expected to hear and I was pretty damned shocked to say the least.

“Bruce, please tell me you aren’t saying what I think you are saying.”

“I’m saying that I’m the sperm donor for these three women. I thought I was pretty clear about that,” he laughed.

“This is serious. You can’t be doing that. There has to be some sort of legal thing saying this is not allowed. What the heck?”

“I have a lawyer. He drew up some papers. It’s iron clad.”

“But you’re their doctor. Come on, man!”

“Mike, I was going to be their doctor no matter what sperm swam up and grabbed a hold of their egg. I don’t think that should matter. Plus, it’s not like I’m tricking these women. They come in here begging for me to do this. I’m just being of service to them.”

“Bruce!”

“Mike!” he yelled back at me.

“No, you can’t do this. The medical licensing board would be all over this. Stop doing it! If you want to father people’s babies at least send those women to me to be their doctor. Or just stop doing it all together. God, we are going to be sued,” I put my head into my hands in utter disbelieve.

“It’s fine. I will start telling them no. To be honest, I can’t believe no one has asked you.”

“Perhaps I’m just better at setting boundaries with my clients?”

“Or maybe I’m just the better looking one of the two of us,” he started to look at himself in the mirror off to the side of the couch.

Bruce was blonde with blue eyes and an olive complexion, I knew from working in this industry that those assets were very popular among women looking to have a baby. Not to mention his willingness to participate had made him an easy option for women. I had never even considered participating something like that and I’d never been asked either.

“I don’t care what the reasons are, Bruce. It’s not ethical if you’re going to be their doctor. Can we at least agree on that? And I would like to talk to our attorney to mitigate any other potential issues that could arise from this.”

“I already talked to Bob, he helped me with the contract that the women sign.”

“I’m still going to talk to him and you still need to stop being the doctor for these women. Understood?”

“Yep.”

“Now, let’s talk about these other files and I’ll get you up to speed on what was accomplished.”

“Sure thing,” Bruce said and continued to look just as relaxed as the moment he came into my office.

Nothing seemed to bother him at all. I used to be like him. I used to be carefree and unconcerned about boring business stuff. Somewhere in the process of building up our successful practice I became worried about the longevity of things. I became semi-responsible.

We spent nearly two hours getting everything back on track and rearranging some patients, so I could see the people he had this intimate relationship with. I gave him some of my patients and he gave me some of his so everything ended up working out.

“By the way, I’m going to need you to cover a couple patients tomorrow morning too. I’ve got a thing tonight,” Bruce added as we wrapped things up and were heading out of the office to the parking lot.

“Dude, I’m getting burnt out here. Why can’t you come in on time or just reschedule your patients?”

My blood pressure was boiling at this point. We had already hired an office manager and had several other support staff in our office, all these people were there to help reduce the strain on the two of us. But the way Bruce was operating lately, I was going to have to start looking for a new partner soon.

“I’ve got a hot date tonight and I hate leaving early in the morning. It’s a little rude, don’t you think?”

“Wow.”

“What?” he asked as if he was totally oblivious to the real world that one of us had to live in. “How’s your dating life going?”

“My dating life is going well. I actually left a hot new girl this morning so I could be here. It wasn’t rude at all. It was me being responsible.”

“Impressive.”

“It’s your job, Bruce. Get in here by eight and see your patients or reschedule them. I can’t keep picking up your slack.” I didn’t wait for him to respond and climbed into my vehicle and slammed the door.

Done, I was done with this crap. Not only was Bruce putting our whole practice at risk with his shady side deals, he wasn’t even covering his end of the work that needed done. Charging clinic rates for women that he fathered children with couldn’t be within the ethical boundaries of the practice. But I called our attorney Bob to see what he had to say.

“Bob, it’s Mike Cooper. Did you tell Bruce he was cleared to father children with his patients?”

“Good morning to you, too,” he scoffed.

“Come on, I trust your legal counsel and Bruce is saying he got your okay. Why wasn’t I told about any of this?”

“Here’s the deal. If a friend of yours asked you to take care of her during her pregnancy you would do it, right?”

“Yes, I’d probably do it. But that’s not crossing an ethical boundary.”

“What if a friend of yours asked you to father a child?”

“I don’t know if I would do that. I really want to be a father, but it would be hard to know there were children out there that I wasn’t involved with raising.”

“Okay, so your issue with that is that you wouldn’t get to raise the child, not any sort of ethic issue with the woman asking you or with the sperm being provided?” Bob asked as if this was all leading to some final answer that I just wasn’t seeing.

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Read the contract. It’s clear that I’m simply stating Bruce, as a friend of these women, is providing them his sperm. There is an agreed upon fee and the contract is over once he’s delivered the specimen. It has nothing to do with who they choose as a doctor. Although, I did suggest to Bruce that he not be their doctor and refer them to someone else. I actually suggested someone outside of your practice.”

“Thank you. That’s what I was saying.”

The rest of my Sunday was rather uneventful and I had to try my best not to pick up the phone and call Julia. Her trepidation over me really asking her out was bugging me the more I thought about it. Perhaps she really didn’t want me to ask her out and this was her way of pushing her agenda?

Was that possible?

Sure, up until that morning I wouldn’t have thought my own partner was lying to me and going behind my back and it turns out he was. So it was possible I’d misread the signs between Julia and I. I’d just sit on her number for a day or so before calling her and see if I felt the same about her after a little time.

Weekends in general weren’t for relaxing. Most of my errands had to be done on the weekends and by Sunday night I was usually totally exhausted. This particular Sunday was no different and when I finally crawled into bed around ten o’clock, I couldn’t wait to get some sleep.