by Angela Foxxe
She was a beautiful looking woman who had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and bright eyes that drew all the attention to them. Her face was soft and sweet, but it was a serious face that had a polite mask. She wasn’t the kind of person who looked like she was going to hug you if there was bad news, but she wouldn’t deliver it like a robot. That made Tasha more nervous as she stepped aside and let the woman enter the room.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked her, the white lab coat clinging to her in an unnatural way. There was no ruffle, no blowing of fabric. It wasn’t what Tasha had come to expect from the flurry of lab coats she’d seen on television.
“I’m doing well,” Tasha said, shrugging nervously. “I’m starting to feel a little trapped in here.”
“I’m sure that it’ll go away in time,” the woman said with a brimming smile on her face. Tasha felt like there was something inside of her snapping and breaking. Maybe it was the doubt and the fear that she wouldn’t actually be the mother of Dane’s child, but when the woman spoke, Tasha felt something very close to euphoria spreading out through her like ice cracking on the surface of a forgotten lake.
“I’m pregnant?” Tasha asked her, her voice quivering and weak.
“It seems so,” the woman said with a pleasing smile on her lips that wasn’t too ambitious or too genuine. She was a professional and this was her job. Clearly she had told a lot of people in her line of work that they were pregnant. This was just every day work for her. There was nothing special about it at all to her.
“This is where the hard part comes in. You’re going to be here on this floor for the next nine months. There are many reactions people have to pregnancy, but we’re going to keep you on a fairly strict routine. We are going to encourage you to exercise and to maintain a healthy lifestyle while pregnant. Is that a problem?”
“No,” Tasha shook her head. “I’d like to maintain my body to the best of my ability.”
“I understand completely,” the doctor said nodding comprehensively. “We’ll monitor you so you don’t stress your body out too much and cause any kind of trouble for yourself. I’m excited for you. Welcome to the ranks of the pregnant, Ms. Roland.”
*
Nine months passed faster than Tasha would have thought. From the perch of her balcony, she could watch as spring ended and summer pelted the city like a fiery anvil. There were power outages and there were rumors of record heat, but from her room, Tasha didn’t experience any of it. Matterhorn Tower was run on its own power grid and it didn’t rely on the city.
She watched as everything changed around her and when autumn approached, her stomach grew and she found herself rubbing her tummy, feeling every little movement that came with the process. She found it odd that there was no point through all of this that Dane didn’t stop coming to visit her. She loved every second that she had with him and she found it hard to give him up for when he had to go work or had something he had to do.
After the first month of her being in this loft, she started going crazy and was pacing back and forth, throwing up in the evenings and noticing that her body was definitely going through some drastic changes.
There were doctor appointments weekly and they constantly monitored her. She came to know Dr. Catherine very well and she was almost as familiar to her as any other friend or acquaintance that she might have in this building. She was gentle and spoke with a sort of educated understanding that put Tasha at ease whenever she was worried about anything that might be happening with her body. It was scary for her to think about all the drastic changes that were happening and that she was so alone. She didn’t have her mother to talk to and there was no way that she could reach her.
Mr. Grayson’s primary contract made it very clear that there was no talking about what was happening to her or what was involved in the process of the application with the outside world. What he had failed to mention, along with several other major facts, was the simple demand that she not be able to contact anyone from her previous life until the completion of the surrogacy, as he liked to keep calling it over and over in the contract. It was a lie and it burned inside her mind, but there was nothing she could do.
A letter had been sent to her family telling them that she was safe and that she had succeeded in the application process, as well as the fact that she was now the owner of five million dollars do to her sacrifice on behalf of the Matterhorn Company.
She was given a copy of the letter so she knew just how much information her family would know and what it was that she would be able to tell them when she finally got out of this loft. It was strange to think that she would be leaving soon. She wanted to hold her child in her hands and she was so excited to know what it would be like to actually have a little human come out of her and hold that little precious baby in her arms. God, she wanted that more than anything now.
Dane and Tasha had agreed that they didn’t want to know the gender of the child until the birth. She was nervous about that, but she didn’t want to ruin the fun of the whole process. She wanted to be surprised, just like Dane would be. There was something deep down inside of her that told her she was going to be having a son, but she also wondered if it would be a little girl that she would be holding soon.
Whenever Dane was around, they would talk about the child they were going to have, but she knew that in the end, it was going to be Dane’s call on what they would give their child as far as names went. Tasha was curious about Dane and the more she looked over the tome of a contract that Mr. Grayson had given her on the first day of her imprisonment in the Matterhorn Tower, the more she doubted things around her.
The first thing that she doubted was that she was the only winner in this competition. She understood that there needed to be a weeding process, but it also seemed like there was a lot riding on this one pregnancy. She didn’t like to think that Dane would be sleeping with the other final three members of the application process, but it seemed apparent to her.
After all, what had been the point of the final test? She had picked up a gun and she won the application test? That didn’t make any sense to her. If anything, there were other objects on that wall that would make more sense to her than a gun. In fact, the gun would set off a serious red light now that she was thinking about it. Often, she would look up at the ceiling and wonder if there was another woman above her, pacing and miserably suffering through her pregnancy, with yet another woman above her suffering through the same thing.
As for Dane, he assured her that there was nothing farther from the truth and that he was in love with her, something that made her heart burst with excitement when she’d heard it for the first time. She was excited to hear him say it and there was nothing she wanted more than to reward his love with her own.
After all, the first two weeks and then the months after that, they had been at each other insatiably. Even now, whenever she was uncomfortable, he would cuddle with her and spend time with her. They would have sex, but it was less often and it was harder to get comfortable enough to ravage each other. But that didn’t stop them from growing closer and closer together.
Within two days, Tasha had had more sex with Dane than she had had in total up until this moment in her life. He was the only person that she really got to spend any time with that wasn’t in a professional capacity or that was there on a timetable. She was more in love with him than she had been with anyone else, even when she had been in love with Tyson Hunter in middle school or Greg Macy in high school, the two boys that had rivaled for a place in her heart as for her true, first love.
They had burned up and vanished from her memory and now all she could think about was Dane. She would only think about Dane through the days. He was the handsome Prince Charming that she had been waiting for, but there was something dark about him that she feared.
Mr. Grayson was simply a lawyer, but he was also a mouthpiece for the family that Dane was a part of. Whatever it was that Mr. Grayson said, it was best to be taken with a g
rain of truth and to be held closely, even when Dane was dismissive of it. There were others out there who were more influential than Dane and who were really in charge of everything that was happening here. Dane was one of the low men on the totem pole and Tasha was beginning to really comprehend that with each passing day.
That meant that when Mr. Grayson had assured her that there would be no contact with her after this moment, she was probably going to find that to be the case. Dane was extremely optimistic about the possibility of the two of them being together, finding each other in the crowded streets of New York and having the kind of fairytale life that people only dreamed about.
It was the kind of life that she wanted nothing more than to believe in with all of her heart, but there was a truth on the horizon that scared her. There was no way that she was going to be able to have the life that she desired or dreamed of with Dane.
As far as she could figure out, there was going to be a point where this baby finally decided that it was tired of being inside of her and that she was going to start going into labor and deliver this baby with the help of Doctor Catherine. When she was done with the birthing process, they were probably going to keep her around for a few days to make sure that she was okay and that the baby was happy and healthy.
Once that was done, they were going to escort her to the doors of the Matterhorn Tower, take her to her driver and his car, and then she was going to be sent to the airport where she would be sent back to Idaho, back to the life that she had put behind her and that she had run away from to find her fortune and freedom. It was a depressing thought, but as she signed the last part of the contract, she knew that this was going to be how it would play out.
Dane and her child would be here in New York City, living a life without her and she was going to be on the far side of the country, alone and broken by this entire process. It probably would have been smarter not to get so attached to everything, to take the medical process of inducing pregnancy, and not seeing Dane again. But it wasn’t how Tasha believed in things. She was going to have an emotional connection with her child and the man that she was going to have this child for. She wouldn’t regret her actions here, but they would undoubtedly destroy her.
She took a sip of her tea and looked out over New York City. In the distance, she could see the leaves of Central Park starting to turn as autumn was in full swing. She was going to miss this view and she was going to miss the world around her that she had started to know and understand very well. She would miss the chef on beck and call and the personal gym that had helped her maintain her body and conquer her cravings. She was going to miss all of it.
But she was going to be more than well compensated for her time here. The financial investor that she worked with had made arrangements for an investor in Idaho to take over where he had started his good work. She had already tripled the starting cash that she had been given and now that there were eight digits in her bank account, she felt like she was going to faint.
Perhaps that was enough money for her to find a way to move on from all of this. She would travel, most likely. But truthfully, she probably would try and find Dane and her child again. The instincts of a mother were powerful.
When the first pain of a contraction hit her, she dropped her teacup and watched it tumble over the balcony, flying down to the slanted side of the building below where it undoubtedly shattered. Clutching her stomach, she winced at the pain and knew that it was coming. It was going to be the moment that she had been afraid of for so long. It wouldn’t be long until the doors to her suite were thrown open and the nurses came for her.
This was it.
This was the end.
Chapter Five
She opened her eyes, trying her hardest to remember what had happened to her. She blinked a few times and heard something that she hadn’t heard in a very long time. There were voices nearby. They weren’t just the voices of the nurses or Doctor Catherine or even Dane, but they were true, strange voices. They were real, the way you can tell voices from people around you from voices on the television. She blinked again, looking at the blurry world around her, trying to figure out where she was and who was talking.
Her vision was a wash of blurry blues, grays, and creams, all mixing and blending with pools of light and depths of shadows that were playing tricks on her. There was a heavy sound of machinery above everything, humming, pulsing, and beeping as she glanced around, constricted by something that was holding her wrists, binding her to wherever she was laying.
She started to panic, not understanding what had happened to her or what was going on. There was a myriad of questions that she was trying to have answered, but she didn’t have the answers for them. She didn’t have the answers for any of them. She blinked again and her vision started to clear.
There was strange wallpaper on the wall and the room was much smaller than anything that she had been in during her time at the Matterhorn Tower. She looked around and realized that there was a very simple and obvious explanation for that. She wasn’t at the Matterhorn Tower. She stared out her window and in the distance, she could see that she was half a mile away from the glittering, polished obelisk that she had been living in for almost a year. Deep inside of her, she felt something akin to rage as she stared at it, horrified that this was what had happened.
“Oh good,” the voice of a woman in the doorway made her almost jump in terror. It was only then that she felt the pain in her abdomen and her whole body felt like it was made out of sand, wrapped up and stitched into this body like she was some kind of heavy scarecrow.
“Careful,” the nurse said with a gentle voice as she walked in and checked the machines and the drip that ran down and into her arm. “You don’t want to tear anything loose, do you?” The woman was kindly and her dark skin shone in the gloom of the room. Tasha was grateful to have another person there with her. It helped her focus and find a peace in the room that was seriously missing from her mind right at that moment.
“Tear anything loose?” Tasha looked at her, confused by that. What did she mean by that?
“Caesarians are rough business,” the nurse informed her. Tasha couldn’t hear a word that she was saying. It was like someone had taken a hammer and slammed it into the side of her head so that there was only muffled, ambient noise in the distance and the pounding of her own slow, fuming pulse.
What had they done to her? They didn’t let her give birth to her child? They had drugged her and cut her child from her womb like some kind of savage ritual? She had looked forward to giving birth, regardless of the pain and the results of it.
A C-Section was for emergencies and there was nothing wrong with Tasha. If there had been an emergency, she would have gladly had a C-Section, but their intentions were way different than worrying about her health. No, they had drugged her and taken her child so that they could leave her on the hospital’s doorstep like some kind of crack-whore that had overdosed at the company party. Her blood boiled through the fog of the drugs that was swirling around in her mind. She could feel the pain in her abdomen where her child had been cut from her by the bandits that had taken her beloved baby from her.
There was fury inside of her for everyone inside of that tower and there was fury enough for Dane who had let them cast her aside like some kind of used shoe. She looked at the nurse who was writing on her chart and she felt the dryness in her throat. She cleared it and let her head sink down into her pillow. “Are my things here?” “Absolutely,” the nurse said with a pleasant grin.
“Can I have my phone?” Tasha asked.
“Sure,” the nurse said politely, going to the wardrobe and opening it. “The Matterhorn Company has some of the finest medical professionals on staff. They are huge patrons and investors here. We’re lucky to have them. I heard the doctors saying that you had one of the cleanest procedures that they’d ever seen.”
“Really,” Tasha tried her hardest not to sound venomous and spiteful.
The nurse handed Ta
sha her phone for her. “Absolutely,” she said with a grin. “Their surrogacy program is a bit of a mystery, but I hear that they take some of the best care of their clients. It’s a brave thing you did and I respect you greatly for it.”
“Thanks,” Tasha said with a distant, lost voice.
Everything felt like it was seeped in a dark tea and that she was watching the performance of some sick and twisted fairytale happening around her. It was hard for her to make sense of any of it, but she knew that there was something seriously wrong with what had been done to her and she wasn’t going to sit by and let it just happen again to someone.
Or maybe she would. After all, she had read the contracts and she had asked the right questions and she had even found the damning and ironclad answers that she sought. There was no escape what she had done to herself. There was no finding redemption from this. Her path was clear and there was only one choice for her at this point. She was going to have to move on. She was going to have to pick herself up and find a way to push forward from this point. It was hard to accept, but she was going to have to do it.
She could hear the wicked, laughing response that this would register from her father. It was something that she wasn’t relishing the thought of hearing ever, and that meant that she was going to be taking this little truth to her grave with her. She wasn’t going to tell him or anyone what had transpired here. Turning on her phone, she found that her father and everyone else in her family had called her hundreds of times and sent just as many texts to her phone until it could hold no more. She wondered what her Facebook and email were going to look like.
She didn’t like any of this, but she wasn’t interested in seeing the results of her absence. She had more important things on her mind and she wasn’t going to let it go until she had the answers that she was looking for.
Pulling up her bank account, she saw that the money in her account was much larger than five million dollars, but she had her investments elsewhere, which meant that it would take longer for her to get a hold of more than the five million. It didn’t matter, however. It wasn’t like she was going to burn through five million right away. At least she had something to show for all of this, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough by a mile.
