by J. L. Berg
“It’s a death sentence!” I shouted, my hands raking wildly through my hair.
“You don’t know that!” she countered, her eyes filling with moisture.
“And you do? What happens when your body starts rejecting the transplant, Lailah? Then, not only do we lose that precious gift of ours, but I lose you,” I choked out, my voice hoarse from yelling. “I can’t—no, I will not allow it.”
The finality of my words cut through the air.
“I think we should talk about this later,” she said, taking the sleeve from her hoodie to wipe her swollen eyes.
I could tell by her demeanor that she was done for now, and frankly, so was I. Nothing would be accomplished like this—screaming at the top of our lungs to see which one of us could last the longest.
It was childish and petty.
“I’ll head to the office and give you some time alone. I’ll be back early this afternoon. Maybe we can talk then?” When we’ve had time to cool off. I didn’t say it, but the thought was implied.
“Okay.” She nodded.
Reaching down, I kissed her temple, my eyes squeezing shut, as my fingers brushed through her hair. A month ago, we had been nearly drunk on our happiness as our entire lives were spread out before us like the first day of spring. Now? Now, I felt nothing—nothing and everything all at the same time—and I had no idea where any of it would take us.
WE’D NEVER FOUGHT like that before.
In all the days and hours we’d been together, I’d never felt such anger and frustration toward him. Even after he’d left, leaving me nothing more than a cowardly note and leading me to falsely believe he couldn’t handle my ill-fated future, I hadn’t felt a tenth of what I did now—hurt, betrayal, disappointment.
So many emotions were so close to the surface, and I couldn’t begin to sort them all out.
Without him here, I thought that maybe I could clear my head, take a walk, or spend some time alone just sorting through everything that was swarming around in my thoughts.
But now, I just felt lost.
During our week in the warm paradise of the Seychelles Islands, we had fallen in love with sunset walks on the beach. It sounded cliché, but when you were in a place like that, you couldn’t help but indulge in the dreamy, exotic side of life. As we’d walked, Jude would always point out shells along the water’s edge, picking up any he might find interesting. On our last day, as the sun had set behind us, he’d spotted a perfect conch shell among the surf.
“How do you think it made it all the way here, completely untouched?” I asked.
He bent down to pick it up. His hands were now covered in sand as they ran over every edge and groove. “I guess it just drifted, all by itself, until it found its way here,” he suggested, a smile radiating through his features as he looked up at me.
“Well, maybe its journey isn’t done yet.”
We’d left the beautiful conch exactly where we’d found it, hoping it would continue its journey without interruption from us.
I didn’t know why, but I found myself thinking about it now. Where might it be? Was it all alone in that big, vast ocean, floating endlessly, until it just happened to hit land again someday? Or did someone else find it, perhaps smuggling it back home as a souvenir, finally ending the traveling days of the conch?
I guessed I felt a strange kinship to the dusty old shell. In many ways, as I continued to wear a path back and forth between our kitchen and living room, I felt like I was adrift, floating between two different decisions that could change my life forever.
The easiest decision was abortion. I knew it was what Jude wanted and what he would fight for. He would always fight to keep me alive even if it meant—
Well, I couldn’t even finish that thought.
My heart burned in my chest.
I wandered back toward the kitchen, my feet sweeping the floor, as my thoughts rang loudly in my head. I wondered just how easy either decision would be. No matter what was decided, would our lives ever return to what they had been weeks ago on the sunset shore of that island?
Like a projection screen in my head, my mind moved ahead—one year, two, five—trying to see past the moment of this monumental decision.
Would I get over the grief, the loss? Would I ever forgive him? Would I be around to decide?
Unfortunately, my new heart didn’t come with the ability to see the future, and my efforts proved fruitless. I groaned in frustration and decided a light snack might do me some good. Opening the fridge, I looked at the contents, staring at each and every item that sat there, and I felt my stomach lurch.
“Oh God,” I managed to get out seconds before turning toward the kitchen sink.
My breakfast—along with every meal I’d eaten for years, it seemed—emptied out of me as I gasped for air, tears streaming down my cheeks. I quickly cleaned up, taking a towel to my face, as my hands shook. The acidic taste lingering in my mouth needed to go before it induced another round of heaving, so I quickly moved through the apartment toward the master bath to brush my teeth.
After brushing and haggling with mouth rinse, twice, I finally felt slightly better.
As my eyes met the mirror, I saw my reflection staring back at me.
A trickle of sweat beaded down my temple, and my eyes were red and swollen from throwing up. I also looked a little green from the nausea.
I’d seen this look many times over the years, but today, it had nothing to do with my heart and everything to do with that new life just beginning inside me.
An unsteady hand moved down to lift my hoodie. I touched my flat belly, and the warmth of my palm cradled the spot where our child grew. I didn’t know anything about children. I’d never given much thought to becoming a parent—until this very moment.
How could I choose to put this life before mine? How would I become a mother?
I realized there was only one place to start.
Moving into our bedroom, I collapsed on the bed and pulled out my phone.
My mother answered on the first ring, “Hello?” Her greeting was quickly followed by, “No, sweetheart, don’t put your mouth on that.”
My eyebrow rose in question. “Hi, Mom,” I answered. “Is that how you always talk to Marcus when I’m not around?”
She laughed at my lame attempt at a joke. I was hoping it would cover the anguish in my voice.
“No,” she replied. “I took Zander overnight. Brian and Grace needed a date.”
“Did you force them out on one?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Well, I might have suggested it. Okay, I strongly suggested it. Those two needed some alone time.”
“And you needed some Zander time?” I guessed, hearing her make raspberry sounds into the phone. My stomach flip-flopped nervously.
“Well, I’d never turn down time with a handsome man,” she joked.
Closing my eyes, my head sank into the pillow as I pictured the two of them, sitting on the balcony of her oceanfront apartment. Marcus had lived alone his entire life, renting an apartment near the hospital for years. When my mother and he had gotten married, they’d decided to splurge, buying a beautiful condo right on the beach, so Marcus could surf whenever he wanted. She’d sit out there, watching him disappear into the waves, as she drank a glass of wine and read. I imagined her doing much the same with Zander—minus the wine. It was still early morning there.
“So, what’s up with you? You sound kind of down. There wasn’t anything wrong with your doctor’s appointment yesterday, was there? I got worried when you didn’t call.” she said, her tone turning serious.
Taking a deep breath, I answered, “No, Mom. Everything is fine—just a little cold. I didn’t want to disturb you on your flights back home. This call was purely selfish. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Oh, well, that’s sweet of you,” she said. “And now, you can hear Zander as well,” she crooned. Her voice dropped an octave as she began babbling back to him.
; I stayed silent for a moment, listening to her, as she fussed over him.
It must have been breakfast time because she shouted, “Don’t you dare spit that out!” She laughed and then said, “You little troublemaker!”
Despite my mood, I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to my mother interact with Grace’s child.
Would Mom’s reaction be the same with mine? Or would it be much like Jude’s with nothing but fear and panic?
I’d just lied to my mother about my health and the entire experience left me feeling cheated and robbed. Robbed of the happiness and bliss that comes from telling my husband I was expecting our first child. Robbed of that exquisite joy of seeing his eyes flare with pride as he swept me up into his arms, ready to tackle this new journey in life. I felt stripped of those jubilant calls we would make together, huddled around the phone, as we shouted to our friends and relatives that we were pregnant.
That was how all of this was supposed to be.
“Mom,” I started, biting my lip to keep the emotions at bay, “what was it like for you when you found out you were pregnant with me?”
The line was silent, and I realized my question might seem out of the blue, so I followed it up in a rush with, “I was just wondering since you had Zander there, and I was thinking about Grace and the day she told me she was expecting.”
“Well, it wasn’t easy,” she answered.
“How so?” I pressed further.
“I was alone, young . . . scared. Your father—the man who donated the sperm,” she corrected herself, “bailed and there was just me against the world.”
She never liked to refer to him as my father. She never liked to refer to him much at all. To talk about him gave him importance, and in her mind, he didn’t deserve any. After the small amount I’d learned, I tended to agree with her.
“How did you make the decision to—”
“Keep you?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“I’ll be honest. It wasn’t easy. I don’t envy anyone who has to make that decision. Society has its opinions on it, one way or another, but it truly is a personal decision, and I wouldn’t judge anyone who has to make it. I debated it for days until it finally dawned on me.”
“What?”
“How many times a day I said the word me,” she said. “Every reason and every argument I could think of for ending the pregnancy all boiled down to me, how it would affect my life. Then, I realized how self-centered I sounded. I was balancing the life of a child, a life I’d helped create, all because of me. I decided I’d spent too long focusing on the word me, and it was time I started looking out for someone else’s well-being first.”
A sad smile tugged at my mouth. “And you’ve been doing so ever since.”
“Best decision of my life,” she answered.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“For what?” she asked. She continued to coo back and forth with Zander.
“For loving me, for choosing me, and for telling me exactly what I needed to hear.”
I hung up before she had a chance to respond.
Jumping quickly off the bed, I dialed a new number on my phone and began making plans, ones that would perhaps thin the thread my marriage was dangling on.
But it was time to think beyond the idea of me or even us.
I needed to protect our child.
I needed to become a mother.
I’D BEEN STARING at the blank computer screen for what seemed like hours now.
After Googling every possible thing I could think of, trying to figure out anything and everything about Lailah’s condition, I was left with more questions than answers.
There was a reason the doctors always warned against the Internet.
A plethora of information could be helpful or turn even the most optimistic person into a crazed hypochondriac.
Right now, I had no what idea what to think.
There were cases, people even, that I’d found online that were similar to Lailah. They had given birth to full-term healthy babies and lived to watch their children grow. But there were also the horror stories, the ones that made my stomach turn from just thinking of the possibilities.
How could we risk it? Why would we want to?
If Lailah wanted to be a mother, there were several other safer options for us. After everything we’d been through to get here, could we really be so careless with her health?
I hadn’t gotten a shred of work done in the time I’d been in my office. I had marked myself out that day anyway, so besides my secretary, I wasn’t sure anyone really noticed I was here.
It gave me peace and silence, which only made the thoughts in my head that much louder.
Rising from the desk, I stretched out my neck and shoulders and walked toward the large windows overlooking the city below. Whenever I found myself stressed from work or in need of some sort of resolution, I usually found myself here, tracing the steps of my father.
Counting didn’t work much for me today, so I focused on Lailah. Thinking of her was my calm in the storm, my anchor when things got to be more than I could handle. But today, her smiling face was replaced with the harsh angry words we’d exchanged and the hurt and betrayal I’d seen in her eyes as she sat across from me, protectively curled around herself.
I felt bitter, useless, and fucking cheated.
What if my interference in her life had just delayed the inevitable? What if, by stepping in and paying for her heart transplant, I’d somehow just altered fate, and now, it was all catching up to us? Was this my punishment—getting her back, only to lose her all over again?
So many thoughts were swimming around in my head that I didn’t hear the door swing open or the sound of my brother’s voice until he was mere feet from my hunched over frame.
“You look like shit,” he said, his dark eyes taking in my appearance.
My eyes followed his gaze downward and nodded in agreement. My shirt was a wrinkled mess, half-untucked. I hadn’t shaved, and the cuffs of my sleeves were rolled up in a way that basically said, Fuck it.
“Feel like it, too,” I replied.
“So, what’s up?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets, as he began walking around the room. “Newlyweds have a fight?”
“Don’t,” I warned, my blood turning cold.
“Oh, come on, Jude. You didn’t think it was going to be rainbows and unicorns the whole time, did you?”
I gave him a hard stare and watched as he smirked.
“Oh, you did.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I would have thought better of you than that, little brother. Marriage is . . . well, marriage is kind of like buying a hot new car. You drive that baby off the lot, take it for a spin, and think life couldn’t possibly get any better. But then, your baby needs an oil change and a tire rotation, and suddenly, something is leaking, and it’s all demand, demand, demand until you trade her in for a new model. That, or you just never buy in the first place. That’s my motto. Much simpler that way.”
My feet moved faster than my words, and I found him wedged between my fist and the wall. “Don’t ever speak of my marriage! Do you understand?”
Even though my hand was pointed at his face, he just smiled. “Testy today.”
My punch sent him to the floor as my lungs burned, and my vision blurred.
“Do you feel better?” he yelled, wiping blood from the corner of his lip. “Or do you need more?”
He stood up and slipped out of his jacket, tossing it to the side. Holding his arms out wide, he said, “Come on, Jude. Hit me again. Will it help? Punching your jackass brother around?”
I didn’t know why, but suddenly, Roman became the sole reason for every goddamn problem in my life. No amount of reason or logic could talk me out of my overwhelming need to put him in his place for destroying everything I’d worked so hard to achieve.
He held his own as I tackled him to the ground. I gave him one last punch before he retaliated. I felt a jab to my side as I pummeled his s
tomach. He got in a few good punches before I had him in a headlock. He was quick, but I was stronger—and fucking pissed.
With a grunt, I pushed him away from me, both of us heaving and gulping in breaths as fast as we could take them. I felt warm liquid trickling down my lip, and my tongue darted out to find the coppery taste of blood. I looked up and found Roman rubbing his side and mumbling under his breath.
“Lailah’s pregnant,” I said softly, finding a spot on the floor, as I nursed my wounds.
Roman’s head whipped around, and our eyes met.
He understood. He might not have been around much, but he was right on point with the risks and the weight of it all.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I have no clue,” I answered honestly.
“Does Mom know?” He walked over to the seating area, grabbed a couple of Kleenexes, and handed me one.
I held it to my mouth and felt a slight sting. “No. Please don’t tell her—not yet at least.”
He nodded silently. “Go home, Jude. You don’t belong here right now.”
I opened my mouth to protest, a hundred questions ready to fire off all at once.
“I’ve got it.”
I looked at him with a mixture of doubt and surprise.
“I can be a grown-up when I choose to be. Get the fuck out of here, and go be with your wife. This will all be here when you get back.”
I rose from my place on the floor, feeling every aching muscle in my body. Roman had been the one in the headlock, but he sure hadn’t gone down without a fight.
Grabbing my jacket from the back of my chair, I made my way to the door but stopped short. “Thanks, brother,” I said.
He nodded. “We both know I’m not doing this for you.”
“Either way, I’m grateful,” I replied before making my exit.
Ever since they’d met, Roman had developed a soft spot for my wife. Lailah would play it off and say it was just his budding humanity, but I didn’t agree. He had a driving need to protect her just like the rest of us did.
