The Surprise

by Alice Ward

  She snorted. “A billion and four, but that isn’t the problem.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Giselle quit,” she wailed. Literally wailed. If she wasn’t hurting so much, she probably would have thrashed her arms and legs.

  It took me more than a few seconds to remember who Giselle was. The stylist. And I really couldn’t blame her. I would have bailed too.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. HW5 sniffed. “She called me terrible names.” She shot me a sidelong look and lowered her voice. “A pretentious, diva bitch.”

  I feigned shock. “That is terrible. Sounds like you’re better off without her.”

  But Mrs. HW5 was shaking her head. “You don’t understand. I need her. I can’t…” She began to cry again, and I went into the bathroom for a fresh washcloth.

  “You can’t what?” I asked when I got back, wiping her face again.

  “My husband can’t see me like this,” she whispered.

  I frowned and smoothed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. “Crying? Surely, he’ll understand that you’ve been through a great deal. An emergency C-section is scary. Naomi told me you didn’t sleep well last night because of the pain. Your sweet baby is sick. That’s a lot to cry about. Plus, you aren’t eating which doesn’t help.”

  She shook her head. “Not that. It’s just that… well, he’s never seen me without makeup before.”

  I blinked. She was still worried about that? After all that she had been through?

  She swiped at her eyes. “I know that sounds terrible. Maybe Giselle is right and I am a pretentious bitch.”

  Pretentious diva bitch, I silently added.

  “Maybe you should let him see you more natural today,” I offered. “You really are beautiful just the way you are. And you just gave him a child and—”

  “You don’t understand. He left his other wives because he said they let themselves go downhill after they had kids.”

  My teeth squeaked, I gritted them together so hard. “Oh, honey.” I squeezed her hand, and she began to cry again. “Do you love him?”

  She nodded, sniffing back the tears. “I really do. There’s a side to him that can be very kind and playful. And he’s so very generous. There are times when he treats me like a precious queen.”

  “What about the other side?”

  She looked up at me, but her gaze fell just as quickly. “The other side is very controlling and… harsh.”

  I licked my lips. “Do you feel safe with him?”

  Her head jerked up. “Yes. Yes, of course. He’s not harsh like that. He’s intense, you know? A bit set in his ways. He likes things the way he likes them, and because of who he is, he always gets what he wants.”

  I squeezed her hand again. “I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t want you just like this.”

  Her face crumpled. “I don’t know. You should have seen the prenup I signed. There were conditions about my weight and staying within five pounds of what I was when we got married.”

  My hand flew to my mouth. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. Like I said, he likes what he likes. There was a clause that gave me three months to get back to pre-pregnancy weight if I had a baby. If I don’t, our contract is null and void.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She sighed. “I tried to fix my own face but everything hurts so bad, even my shoulders.” She winced. “Especially my shoulders.”

  “That’s the gas from the surgery.”

  She groaned but a smile played on her mouth. “Just what I need, to pass gas in front of Henry. He’ll divorce me for sure.”

  I couldn’t help but ask, “Is there a clause in the prenup against that too? Thou shall not fart?”

  She laughed, then grabbed her belly, gasping in pain.

  “Sorry about that. Breathe,” I encouraged her and took a noisy inhale through my nose, waiting for her to follow. After a bit, she relaxed.

  “This is worse than the contractions.”

  “You had a major surgery last night, Mrs. Harlington-Worthington, the Fifth,” I reminded her. “I’ll have a rocking chair brought in. Moms often say that helps. I’ll get a heating pad for your shoulders and check your med schedule to see when you can next have something for pain. We’ll get you walking more too. And I insist that you have to eat something. Will you?”

  She sighed, poked her finger at her stomach, then nodded. “Maybe some sugar-free Jell-O.”

  “And maybe some broth too?”

  She grumbled out a, “Yes.”

  I looked at the makeup case on her rolling tray. “I need to check on a laboring patient, but when I get back, I’ll help you put on some makeup.”

  She blinked rapidly at me. “You will?” Doubt spread over her features. “You can?”

  I decided not to be insulted. I didn’t have a speck of makeup covering my deformities. She actually had pretty good reason to have serious reservations about my ability to wield anything other than a tube of Chap Stick.

  “Sure. I doubt I’ll be very good, but I have a steady hand and if you tell me what to do, I can follow directions.”

  She continued to blink as the tip of her nose turned pink. “Thank you.”

  I patted her hand a last time. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  As I opened the door, she called out, “Scarlett.”

  I was shocked that she remembered my name. “Yes?”

  “Call me Celine.”

  I smiled and nodded. “I’ll be back soon, Celine. Rest for a bit. Everything will be all right.”

  ***

  As I expected, dinner with Amy was like facing a firing squad, except that the bullets came in the form of questions being shot in my direction at what felt like eighty miles per second.

  When she had eeked out every detail of my night with the mystery man, she sat back in her chair and lifted her tea to her lips. “I still can’t believe you don’t know his name,” she said and I plopped my face into my hands.

  “I know. It was so stupid to insist on that whole fantasy thing, but maybe it’s better this way.”

  She pulled one of my hands down. “How so?”

  I guzzled a long drink of my tea and began stirring my ketchup with a fry. “He made it clear up-front it was a one-time thing. If I knew his name, I’d probably be tempted to do something stupid like Google him or stalk his social media pages. It would just prolong the agony, seeing his picture with some blonde bombshell.” I picked up my butter knife and stabbed it into my remaining burger. “It’s a clean cut this way.”

  Amy sighed. “I suppose you’re right. It just sounds like he was really into you.”

  I laughed, hating that it sounded a little bit bitter. “Yeah, he was. Deep into me.”

  And I could still almost feel it.

  She pointed her fork at me. “Your face.” I brought my hand up to my mouth, wondering if I had ketchup all over it. Amy rolled her eyes. “Not that. It’s just your expression. You seem so, I don’t know. Lost.”

  Lonely.

  The memory of me telling him that swept over me, the look in his eyes as he pushed me back down on the bed immediately afterwards and kissed me for what seemed like an hour.

  “I’ve never seen you like this, Scar.”

  I made a heart in my ketchup, realized what I’d done, and erased it away, dropping the fry and sitting back in my seat. “That’s because you haven’t seen me post one-night stand in… um, let’s see… never.”

  She snorted. “It’s not just that.” She shook her head, eyeing me closely. “Do you regret going with him?”

  My answer was immediate. “No. But I do wonder if I’ll ever find anyone who can make me feel the way I felt with him.” I dropped my chin onto my fist, needing it to prop my tired head up. “He was perfect. Good-looking. Built. Brooding but also open. Serious but also funny. Rough but also gentle.”

  “Whew.” Amy used a napkin to fan her face, making me smile.

  �
�Hot, yes. He was sooo hot. And you should have seen his tattoo. He had a tree of life in it. It was surrounded by all these jagged lines and things, but I could make it out easily.”

  “Like yours,” Amy murmured, her face filled with sympathy.

  “Yes. And he seemed really into my tattoo as well. The scar didn’t even seem to faze him.”

  “Well, it’s not like it makes you hideous, Scarlett.” Amy’s teacher voice was back. “Even before the tattoo, it wasn’t that noticeable.”

  It was my junior year in college when I’d gotten the tree inked onto my body. I’d always loved trees. Not the big, perfectly formed ones, but the broken ones that grew out of the ground in an unexpected way. For some reason, they touched me with their strength and resilience.

  And now I was crying. Not sobbing, but a few hot drops escaped my eyes.

  Amy moved from her side of the booth to mine, wrapping an arm around me. “Scar, I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to bring the bad memories back.”

  My man. His angry face. The knife. My brother making me hide.

  “Scar…”

  I mentally shook the memories away. “It’s okay. I think I’m just really tired. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Amy looked at her watch. It was after nine. “Dinner’s my treat. You go on and get to bed. You’re off tomorrow, right?”

  I nodded. “I’m off for the next two days.”

  “Doing anything fun?”

  I laughed. “Classes and studying, of course.”

  When I wasn’t working, my nose was in a book as I worked toward my master’s degree in nursing. My goal was to become a certified midwife, but that was still a few years away.

  I had a lot on my plate. I just needed to put mystery man out of my mind and get on with the rest of my life.

  ***

  That was what I tried to do for the next couple weeks. Forget him while working long shifts at the hospital or spent equally long days in the classroom or at my computer, trying to keep my grades up so that all my student loans wouldn’t be for nothing.

  I was so tired as the leaves began to change on the trees and the nights grew a little bit cooler. I started taking extra vitamins and drinking additional protein smoothies to boost my immune system and give me some additional energy.

  When my mind went to him, as it often did, I gently pushed the memory away and got busy with whatever it was I’d been doing. It was hard not thinking of him, not wishing I’d bump into him on the street. It was hard to not touch myself, closing my eyes and pretending it was his fingers making me come.

  I found myself wondering what he was doing. Where he was. If he ever thought about me too. The last part was the hardest. Had he just walked out of that room without a qualm? Was I forgotten before he stepped out of the hotel?

  I hated the self-doubt that accompanied those questions, and I vowed to never, ever, have a one-night stand again if this was the mental crap that came after it.

  When I missed my period, I just stared at the calendar, convincing myself that it was just stress, too many long hours and too little sleep. That had to be the problem. When I was a week late, I still couldn’t face the probability of what was happening.

  “Let me in!”

  It was Amy, of course, knocking like a crazy person on my apartment door and barging into the tiny space. Without another word, she thrust a bag out at me, then pointed her finger at the bathroom.

  The pregnancy test felt like a live bomb ticking in my hand, and my fingers shook as I held it under the stream of urine. As it lay on my bathroom counter, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it came alive and sank massive teeth into me.

  “It’ll be okay,” Amy said beside me as we both stared at the test, watching the little window turn from a bright white to a dull-looking gray as the urine saturated it. “No matter what, it will be okay.”

  “We used condoms,” I said in a tiny voice as the first pink line appeared. Amy already knew that, but I felt the need to repeat it. I hadn’t been stupid. I hadn’t been naive or lazy. We had used condoms. We had been adults. Took precautions.

  In my mind, I could see Ross on Friends screaming, “They should put it in huge black letters!” after Rachel told him that condoms were only ninety-seven percent effective.

  In fact, the success rate was ninety-eight percent if used correctly, so that still left two out of one hundred women who stood looking at a pregnancy test as anxiously as me.

  “Maybe my vagina really does have fangs,” I said, my voice on the edge of hysterical as a cackle immediately followed.

  Amy’s head whipped around. “What?”

  But I was laughing too hard to respond. Well, sort of, because there were also tears streaming down my face. Then the laughter stopped completely because, beside the first pink line, a second line began to appear. It was faint, but it was there.

  “Oh, Scarlett.”

  They said that your life flashed in front of your eyes just before your life ended. That was also true when your life ended in a different way. I’d been on a course, a journey. I’d had plans. I’d been implementing those plans.

  One night changed everything.

  I had choices, of course. I could make this all disappear if I wanted to. I tucked that thought into my pocket as Amy led me back into the little living room and made me some tea.

  I took another test the next morning — positive.

  I went to work and took another test there — positive.

  I had Olivia draw my blood and we sent it to the lab in a covert maneuver that would have probably gotten my ass fired if, surprisingly enough, Melinda hadn’t insisted I do it.

  I hadn’t said a word to either of them. It was like they knew.

  And that result was positive as well. I was…

  Knocked up by a stranger.

  A tall, dark-haired, amber-eyed stranger who I couldn’t stop thinking about. And when I decided to keep the baby, I cried, hoping he or she would have those amber eyes too.

  It looked like my mystery man left me something besides his shirt to remember him by after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Langston

  Thirty weeks later…

  “Do you plan to stay another month?”

  I finished chewing a huge bite of Obe Ata Dindin stew I was eating before answering Michael’s question. “I think so. We’re starting to make a real difference here.”

  I’d already worked through my six-month commitment and was staying on, renewing a month at a time. Surgeons didn’t have to sign longer contracts like other varieties of physicians, so it gave me a little more freedom of choice, which I liked. I didn’t feel bound to the place with this arrangement. Plus, what was there to go home to?

  She wouldn’t be there. My jaw clenched. Damn, I was still angry that I never heard from her. Why hadn’t I heard from her?

  “You’re doing good work,” the medical staff leader said. “I’m happy to hear that you’re satisfied with our results.”

  “I am. We need to get a handle on the cholera outbreak in the refugee camps, but that type of work is outside my wheelhouse. We’ll—”

  Boom!

  The entire table shook with the force of the blow, and the restaurant glass imploded, showering the customers sitting near it with an avalanche of glass.

  It was my day off, and I’d gone into the city for an early dinner with a few of the other medical staff members. In Maiduguri, we didn’t travel at night. Today, we shouldn’t have traveled at all. We should have stayed in our camp.

  But as the screaming started, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

  Grabbing my rucksack, I stayed low as I headed to those cut and bleeding on the restaurant floor. I heard the words, “Car bomb,” and knew I needed to get outside.

  After making sure there were no serious injuries inside the restaurant, I headed toward the door. Sirens and screaming made everything more confusing as I assessed the burning vehicle down the street.


  Boom!

  A second explosion came about a hundred yards past the first one. The screaming intensified as pedestrians ran in all directions, some streaming past me and into the restaurant, hoping for a safe place to hide.

  Adrenaline surged through my veins as I ran out onto the street, keeping low, the rucksack in front of me, the Kevlar lining acting as a minimally protective shield. There were no more explosions, so I edged closer and approached the first victim, then ran past him. He was clearly dead. I didn’t even stop to confirm the diagnosis. The wounds the man received were not compatible with life, and I needed to focus on those I could save.

  Bodies littered the street, at least six dead that I could count. On the other side of the burning vehicle, I found a small child screaming underneath her mother. After a quick assessment, I knew the mother hadn’t made it, but I hoped she died knowing that she’d shielded and saved her child. The little one only suffered scrapes and bruises, and I hoped she was too young to ever remember this terrible day.

  A woman in surgical scrubs grabbed the screaming toddler from my arms, and I went on to the next victim, then the next, then the next, stabilizing those I could, providing triage and sending those at most risk to the hospital first.

  I cursed the limitations of what I could do with the limited supplies in my bag. I cursed the maniacs who had set off the bombs. Cursed whatever limited powers that be for allowing shit like this to happen to these innocent people. These weren’t soldiers who had signed up for a bloody war. These were human beings just trying to make a life out of their limited means.

  It was hours later before I was transported back to camp, blood stiffening my clothes. I stripped and went straight to the shower, letting the cool water cascade over my head as bone-deep weariness stamped its booted foot on me.

  The last time I remembered feeling this exhausted, I met her. Kissed her. Fucked her into a near coma. Left her lying in that bed, hope filling my chest that I would see her again.

  Even as my cock stiffened at the memory of her, the taste of her, the sound of her laughter filling my head, the rage stiffened my shoulders that I’d never heard from her after that night. I had no right to be angry. We had made no promises to each other. She hadn’t even gifted me with her name.