Black Contract
Page 15
Eventually, Dr. Bodon comes in. She’s a small, happy-go-lucky woman in her mid-forties. She asks me how I’m feeling and we talk a little about my vomiting. Now, there’s a topic of conversation! She doesn’t ask me about the father of the baby and I don’t volunteer any information. She wasn’t the one who prescribed me the Diclegis; that was a doctor from a different office.
“So, why did you decide to change doctors?” she asks. “Just out of curiosity.”
I shrug. I guess I could lie and tell her it was because of all those wonderful reviews I read. That’s one of the reasons I had switched, but not the main one. Her office is further away from my house and sort of inconvenient. Plus, the wait here is much longer than it was at the other place.
“Well, I was going to the Advanced Women’s Healthcare place before and they have a number of OBGYNs on rotation there. I didn’t really like the idea of not knowing who was going to deliver my baby. Plus, they have this policy there of charging you upfront when in reality my insurance is supposed to cover all pre-natal care without any copays.”
“And they were trying to charge you for that?” she asks.
I nod. “They were trying to get me to pay for everything upfront and then ask my insurance for a reimbursement. When I called the billing department at my insurance company, they said that they would cover everything and that I couldn’t prepay. So, it was getting quite complicated.”
She nods.
“So, I knew I needed a new doctor. And you had all these great reviews online,” I add. This part is true. I did like all the raving reviews, but this was not the main reason I switched. How perfect is that? Expecting mothers should always select their physicians based on their office’s insurance billing practices, right? I mean, it’s bad enough that there are some doctors that women just can’t go to because they don’t accept their insurance, but this? Man, fuck this system.
“Well, I’m glad,” Dr. Bodon says. “It took my mom a long time to write them all.”
It takes me a moment to realize that she’s joking, but when I do, I laugh. A deep loud laugh that comes from somewhere in the pit of my stomach and feels so good that, for a second, I forget about everything else in the world.
“Okay, so do you want to see your baby?” she asks. I nod yes. She turns down the lights and asks me to lie down. I pull up my shirt and she squirts something sticky onto my stomach. She presses the ultrasound wand onto my stomach and looks at the screen. Suddenly, I hear it. The heartbeat.
“Oh, wow. That sounds so fast,” I say.
“Yep, babies have a very fast heartbeat,” she says and looks back at the screen.
I glance over and see the baby’s little head and even smaller body.
“It sounds like it’s under water or something,” I say.
“Well, it pretty much is,” she says.
After moving the wand around my stomach a bit, she looks over at me. “Everything looks good. Judging from the date of your last period, you are seven weeks along.”
I nod. Wow. My baby is almost two months in utero. That’s hard to believe.
“When will I be able to know the gender?”
“If you want to find out the sex, we can probably tell you around fifteen weeks, but it’s not super accurate. Closer to twenty weeks.”
“Okay, well, that will give me some time to decide if we even want to know.”
Dr. Bodon gives me a smile and then prints out a couple of pictures from the ultrasound. These are mine to keep. I stare at them as I wait to checkout. This is my baby. My baby. Our baby. Mine and Aiden’s. That’s still so hard to believe. My heart skips a beat. You have to get better, Aiden. You just have to. You have to see your baby.
Chapter 36 - Ellie
When I stop by my apartment…
Instead of going straight back to the hospital, I decide to stop by my apartment and get a few things. A notebook to write in, a copy of The Outlander, a book I’ve been reading on and off for some time now and my iPad. I need the iPad in case I want to watch some Netflix on something other than my phone or my laptop - the phone is too small and the laptop is too unwieldy.
When I get into the lobby, I get an uneasy feeling down in the pit of my stomach. Agh, I have to take another Diclegis pill. It’s wearing off. I fish around for my keys and walk inside. I head straight to the kitchen to wash down the pill with a glass of water.
“Hello, Ellie.” A cold, familiar voice sends shivers down my spine. I know who it is without even turning around.
“Are you surprised to see me?” he asks. My shoulders scrunch up all on their own and a thick mass of tension settles just below my neck.
“What are you doing here, Blake?”
Thank you for reading BLACK CONTRACT!
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Is this the end of us?
I found a woman I can’t live without.
We’ve been through so much. We’ve had our set backs. But our love is stronger than ever.
We are survivors.
But when they take her from me at the altar, right before she is to become my wife, everything breaks.
I will do anything to free her. I will do anything to make her mine for good.
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Other Books by Charlotte Byrd
Debt series (can be read in any order)
DEBT
OFFER
UNKNOWN
WEALTH
About Charlotte Byrd
Charlotte Byrd is the bestselling author of many contemporary romance novels. She lives in Southern California with her husband, son, and a crazy toy Australian Shepherd. She loves books, hot weather and crystal blue waters.
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