by Ford, Mia
I would raise this baby alone.
“I take it this was not a planned pregnancy?” The doctor said.
“No,” I replied. “It’s just a bit of a surprise, that’s all.”
“I’d say at least half of all my new expectant mothers that I see are not expecting to be pregnant. Most of them aren’t even trying. And then when they do try it seems to take forever. My theory is it is a lot like watching water boil. If you want it to happen it seemingly never does, but if you look away from it and get distracted by something else, suddenly it is boiling over the pot.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way before,” I said.
The Dr. smiled and nodded. Then he turned back to my chart. I don’t think he understood sarcasm.
I left the Doctor’s office feeling like I was still walking through some kind of a nightmare, someone else’s nightmare and I was just playing a bit part. I got in my car and started driving home. I was pulling up in front of my parents’ house before I realized that I had meant to drive to my own home and came here automatically.
I put the car in park and sat there for several minutes. I wasn’t sure how to face them. They would probably be too thrilled that I was expecting to ever even think to ask about what happened to the father and why I wasn’t trying to make it work with him, but the thought of walking in there to tell them both the truth was still almost too much to bear. I just wanted to drive home and be alone. I could stay there for nine months, no one would bother me, and then I’d have the baby and show up with my kid like nothing had happened. That was simple and totally doable.
I got out of the car and went into the house. My feet felt like they were encased in lead boots and I had the feeling that I was going to be asked to walk the plank or just dumped overboard with my hands tied behind my back.
When I entered the house it was pretty silent. In the background I heard a television humming, but I wasn’t sure that anyone was even home. It reminded me of the Saturday mornings when I was a kid and would wake up to watch cartoons and my morning shows before anyone else was awake. I missed those days sometimes. When you were a kid everything was just so easy and simple. You had very little to actually worry about, but sometimes it felt like everything was a huge deal. I wondered if these types of problems would manifest themselves as silly when I reached an elderly age.
“Hello?” I called out.
There was no answer. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a diet soda from the fridge. I saw a can of beer sitting on the top shelf and was tempted to grab it, but then I remembered that I was now expecting and that no alcohol would pass my lips for the next nine months. Oh, that was going to be fun…
It was then that I heard a cough from the living room that sounded like my mother. Walking in there I forced a fake cough myself just to announce my presence.
My mother turned her head sharply and smiled widely when she saw it was me.
“Sorry, mom,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh, no. That is fine,” she said. “I was just listening to the television and didn’t notice that you came in the door.”
“I guess I was too quiet,” I said. “Speaking of which… where is dad?”
“Oh, he went over to his friend Petey’s house for the weekly poker game.”
“Didn’t they use to play that at night?” I asked.
“Yeah, but then Petey retired and now they can all play in the daytime. It’s easier for your father and I’d imagined the others to get to bed at a reasonable hour. So, what brings you out here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
I smiled weakly as I sat down. This was going to be brutal, but I decided that the easiest way was to come out with it. Jay’s words of advice about meeting your fears head on was starting to ring true with me.
“Well, I just came from the doctor,” I said.
My mother perked up suddenly alarmed. “Are you ok, darling?”
I grabbed her hand softly and smiled, trying to put her at ease. “Nothing like that mom. I’m fine,” I said.
“Just a checkup?” She asked.
“Well, sort of,” I replied. “It turns out that I am pregnant.”
My mother didn’t say anything. She picked up the remote control off the coffee table and turned off the television. Then she looked at me calmly.
“What did you say?” She asked.
It was even harder to say the second time around. “I’m pregnant.”
“That’s what I thought I heard you say,” my mother said. “Who is the father?”
“Jay,” I said.
“That nice man? Congratulations honey,” My mother said. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me softly on the cheek. “I’m very happy for the two of you.”
I winced up slightly and my mother knew it. She pulled back softly and read it all in my face. “You haven’t told him yet, have you?”
“No,” I said. “We aren’t even dating. We broke up.”
I declined to tell my mother that Jay and I were more or less friends with benefits and had never been anything more. But I had a feeling she could tell that I had feelings for him. Somehow my mother always knew what was in my heart and what I was thinking, often better than I did.
“Well, you have to tell him,” she said. “He has a right to know.”
I groaned. “I was hoping you’d tell me that I didn’t have to mention it to him and we’d just have some pie.”
She laughed and hugged me again. “Honey, it will be fine.”
“I know he will be ecstatic, but I’m afraid he is going to get the idea that we are going to be together now. He is kind of old fashioned and I need him to understand that this doesn’t change what’s going on between us. We are still over, even if we now have a kid in common.”
“Honey, that is going to make it very hard to stay away from each other,” she said. “Having a child in common is a very strong bond and I imagine you two might even feel an unnaturally strong bond with each other. You can fight it all you want, but it’s natural. It’s instinctual. Mother Nature knows what she is doing.”
“So, you think that we will work something out?” I asked. “I hate to burst your bubble mom, but I’m not getting back together with Jay. You think he is the perfect man for me, but I’ve told you how I feel and I won’t put myself in that position. I can’t risk losing the man I love.”
“Haven’t you already risked losing him?”
Her words cut through my core and I felt nauseous for a brief moment. What had she just said?
“Mom, I do not love Jay,” I said. “I had feelings for him, but that is all over. It’s in the past.”
“I don’t think so. If it were then you wouldn’t think twice about telling him about the baby because there would be no emotion in it. All of it would feel cold and mechanical; all of it would be emotionless. But you are here asking my advice. That is why you came by, right?”
My mother always knew. Dammit, how did she always know?
“I guess…”I said.
“I think you are being foolish,” she said. “I have always tried to support you in everything you do and I’ve never tried to tell you how to run your life, but I have to say you are wrong on this. I just hope you will see in time how wrong you are.”
I left her house feeling drained and empty. I’d ended up there almost by accident and then when I sat down to talk with her I’d expected a very different kind of conversation. I really did want my mother to have my back, but she didn’t. She thought I was wrong. So did I, to be honest, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. And even if I did admit it to myself, I sure as hell didn’t want to do the right thing to change it all.
I had made up my mind and while the decision was hard and unpopular it would seem, I felt in my heart that it was the right thing to do.
I was going to tell Jay about the baby, but I had to stress to him that this was not his way back into my life. I’d respected the fact that he’d left me alone and I hoped
we could be friends (although just being around him was more difficult than I could bear) but I didn’t think it was going to happen any time soon. After he broke down and told me how he really felt I was almost paralyzed. I wasn’t sure I could handle just being around him long enough to tell him that I was now pregnant with his child.
As I drove along the quiet highway thinking about seeing Jay again and telling him this amazing news, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I’d always wanted to be a mother, but on the terms I wanted and this was not the way. I didn’t want to be a single mother and I didn’t want to have a baby with a man I was not going to spend my life with.
But life threw curveballs sometimes and I’d dodged a few of them in my time. I’d made a lapse in judgment and allowed my emotions, my lust get me into an unexpected situation. I was excited about being a mother and I couldn’t wait until I held the baby in my arms for the first time.
Chapter Thirteen
Jay
“What in the hell are you doing!”
I screamed at the top of my lungs at the private on the end of the line. With my own eyes I’d never see anything as stupid as what I’d just seen. Well, actually I’d seen it several times, but never done in such a reckless way that could have been catastrophic. I was running hot and when I saw this my boiling point had been reached. I barely remembered it later, but I was able to piece together the way it happened later by talking to those who witnessed it.
It was a hot, miserable day. The sun was high in the sky and beating down on us. My team had been especially lazy and lackadaisical today. They ran slower than they’d run since their first week, and it seemed like they’d all forgotten the basics of being a soldier. I was at the end of my rope and daydreaming about downing a bottle of Wild Turkey when it happened.
Ryerson, our class clown, decided it would be funny while marching during infantryman drills to put a marble in the end of the barrel of the rifle hanging in place on the back of a fellow private in front of him. If the gun had discharged it would have blown that marble like a shrapnel bullet into the nearest person or object in the trajectory.
I used blanks mostly for the first few weeks of infantry training. Many sergeants did not. I was not like most and the privates often thought less of me for it, as if I was teaching them to just “play soldier” instead of be a real soldier. I had a reason for everything I did and I wasn’t going to let their giggling and whining deter me from it. They would get their real bullets soon enough. And one day many of them would wish they’d paid closer attention to me. But it was that way with every single class of recruits all across the world.
“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”
I was standing in front of Ryerson now. It all felt like a blur looking back on it later, but I was so far over the edge that I honestly was not in control of myself. It was pretty frightening, for me most of all.
The past few weeks I’d been sleeping poorly. I had not been able to get Naomi off my mind and I desperately craved just a little bit of communication from her, and so far I hadn’t heard even a peep. She really meant what she said that night. A part of me wished that she had been caught up in the emotions of it all and that she would come to her senses and realize that we could have something terrific together. I knew she had feelings for me. I could see it in her eyes that she cared for me as much as I cared for her.
But she was just so scared. I wasn’t sure I believed her anymore about being afraid to move on from a previous relationship. I knew there had to be more to the story than that, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. This was all new to me. I’d never felt this way about someone. There had never been a time when I had ever even sweated a woman who suddenly stopped contacting me. I used to be a bit of a playboy and I was usually too involved with several other women to care what any one woman did to me or how she felt about me. I was young, wild, immature, and wasn’t sure I was going to see the next day most of the time.
Now things had changed. I was a different man. You can’t live that way forever and I was glad that I had gotten out of that type of life.
But now I was in pain. I was heartbroken over a woman. I had become the kind of guy that I used to laugh at, but really I wouldn’t have gone back to the old me for any amount of money. Loving a woman, even if that love was not returned, was still a thousand times better than not caring about anyone but myself.
With the lack of sleep the nightmares had come back with a vengeance. Sometimes I had the same one several times a night, as if they were on some kind of sick loop that continued to play over and over in my head. I found myself feeling more and more isolated and it felt like I was coming slowly unhinged. Every time I tried to break out of the funk I was in within my head, something pulled on my leash and yanked me right back into it.
And today was the day I snapped. It all came to a header and I had a meltdown the likes of something I never thought I would ever see, let alone go through.
Before I realized what was happening I was pointing a cocked and loaded gun at Ryerson’s head. He was on his knees.
“DO YOU DARE ME TO SHOOT THIS WEAPON? IS THIS THE KIND OF JOKE YOU WERE GOING FOR!!”
I was screaming until my throat was almost raw. Everyone in the base probably heard me. I didn’t care. I could think of nothing else at that point but making sure that this moronic excuse for a man never became a soldier and endangered the lives of our own.
Ryerson was crying, sobbing now. He was begging me for mercy as the other recruits stood around begging me to stop. I wanted to do it. I wanted to pull that trigger and stop everything that was happening to me. The dreams, the pain, the loneliness—somehow, by pulling that trigger on this incompetent soldier all of that was going to come to a stop. I couldn’t see how little sense that made. My mind was literally gone.
Sometime later I came to myself, almost as if I’d been asleep and didn’t remember what had happened. I was sitting in the office of a therapist on base. Her name was Nicole Myles. She was beautiful. That was the first thing I noticed. Her hair was long and flowing. It was jet black in color and shined under the lights. Her facial features were pretty, her lips pouty. And her chest was full and soft looking. A perfect amount of cleavage shone through the V cut of her blouse.
“Hello, Sgt. Wylett. I’m Dr. Myles. Do you know why you are here?” She asked. Her voice was strong, but smooth and sensual. I didn’t think she was trying to be sexy though, which made her even hotter.
“Um…I’m not totally sure,” I said. I knew that I was lying to her and to myself, but in a sense I was still telling the truth, at least partially. I knew what had happened and how serious the ramifications could be for me. If the Army decided I was no longer mentally fit to do my job I would be discharged from the Army and relieved of my post. I would lose everything that I had worked so hard for, everything that had been a part of who I was. I couldn’t let that happen. But at the same time, I knew that I needed some help. The underlying damage that had been done to me, which I had tried for so long to deal with on my own — it was getting worse and I no longer was able to control it. My breakdown during the drill that day solidified this.
“What do you remember?” She asked.
I wanted to lie to her. I wanted to tell her that I was just trying to express the danger and the severity that the actions of an immature private carried, and that I was actually in control of my actions at all times, but I knew better than to try to fool her. I was sure she’d seen it all and heard it all.
“It was like I stepped away from myself and was watching some horror movie unfold before me. It was terrifying to myself and everyone around me.”
She leaned forward and gazed at me with those beautiful eyes. They reminded me of Naomi’s a bit. Naomi… God, I needed her back in my life. I hadn’t realized it before, but having her with me—even just in part—had grounded me and kept me solid. I felt like she was a part of me and I needed her desperately. I hated desperation. It was an uncomfortable, unfamiliar feeling
for me, but that was the only way to explain it.
“Where do you think those feelings came from?” She asked.
It was the question I was dreading having to answer, but I knew what I had to do. There were demons in my past that had haunted me for so long and they were finally starting to get the upper hand one me. To get rid of them, or at least to find a way to manage them permanently, I was going to have to be more open and honest than I’d ever been with anybody.
That might have been the most terrified I’d ever been in my life.
I began to speak to her as openly as I had ever spoken with anybody.
And the demons were not pleased…
* * *
After my session I felt drained. I went home, relieved to be locked away in isolation from the rest of the world. My mind felt like it had a fifty pound dumbbell sitting on it. I was so spent. I could hardly remember everything that I had spoken about with the therapist. She was good. I liked talking with her. Somehow it felt comfortable.
But it had awakened some things inside of me that I had always tried so hard to keep locked away. The only time I didn’t have that control was when the nightmares came to me. I tried to explain the dream to her. It was different than most dreams because every single thing about it actually happened. It was like being locked in some crazy time loop where every time I closed my eyes at night I had a fifty/fifty chance of being magically transported back to the place of that nightmare.
