“Is Mel okay? Just tell me ’cause I had a really shitty day so far.” Now the doctor seems confused, she hugs the chart against her body.
“Okay, let’s start with … eh … Melaena here is my patient since … eh well, since this morning. My name is on her chart and that’s why Barney called me in.” I’m slowly losing control and I feel like I’m going to faint. I remember meeting Mel and Kiara in the hospital just before them being kidnapped. It was Kiara’s menstruation shit or something. I fall onto the chair next to Mel’s bed, feeling as if my legs are going to give in.
“You better sit down.”
“I am sitting!”
“Damion, I’m an OB-GYN, do you know what that means?” Not really. It feels as if my chest is shrinking cause it’s extremely difficult to breathe right now. And the pain from the bruised ribs doesn’t help.
“They deal with womanly shit … a vagina doctor,” I say lethargic, my heart, mind, and body all shut down when the police told me Darren and his family escaped … I don’t have the energy for guessing games. My brain is not working at this moment, my mind is blank … I’m not even sure I know my own name right now.
“Well, yeah, but mostly we deliver babies ….” She looks at me as if that explains everything. And I should get on board, but as I said, my brain is totally not working right now.
I just stare at my father with a blank expression. He’s almost as white as Mel at this moment, Doc Barney’s hand on his shoulder as if he wants to give my father some strength, support, and encouragement.
“Just get out and say it!” I don’t mean to be rude, but enough is enough.
“Damion, son, Mel is pregnant!” I stare at my father as his words sink into my numb brain.
It feels as if I’m going to drop from the chair. My muscles turn into flubber, my bones to jello, and my brain explodes.
My mouth drops open but I don’t know what to say. Whatever I was expecting, it for sure as hell was not this.
I stare at Mel’s tummy as if the baby is going to leap out of there any second now, yelling ‘SURPRISE!’
Delayed shock jerks through me and I jump up – the chair falls over from the force.
“Fuck! She’s … fuck!” I push my fingers through my hair and clamp them at the back of my neck. “Fuck. I’m gonna be … shit!” Eventually, I look at Dr. Burden with wide eyes and I notice she hasn’t moved since I last looked at her.
“How?” I ask, and she cocks her head to the side, laughing softly.
“Well, my best guess is that you pushed your something into her something … no condom … your sperm found her egg … et cetera … et cetera … simple biology actually.”
“Ha ha … so not funny! The test we did was negative,” I interrupt her rather sarcastically, teasing explanation.
“Yeah, it happens sometimes.”
Then it hits me like a bucket of water … Darren … the blow to her tummy, the beatings she endured …
“Is it okay … the baby I mean … he punched her in the stomach … ”
“That’s why I’m here … to check on the little bean,” Doc Burden says warmly. Bean? Luke was right.
I wipe my face with my hands and pick up the chair while Doctor Burden pulls the sonar machine closer to Mel’s bed.
“Let’s see what the little one is doing in there,” she says. I nod and move closer to the bed. I’m nervous like never before in my whole fucking life. But also excited. I’m going to be a motherfucking father!
Everything makes a little more sense now, the book on the table, Kiara and Mel acting funny, the secret appointment, and even Mel’s reaction when Dean mentioned a girl being pregnant. She thought he was talking about her.
Fuck, how could I miss all of it until now? Dr. Burden pulls the sheet away and then squirts some gel on her still-flat tummy. She moves the transducer over her stomach checking the images on the screen.
Dr. Burden smiles and then she starts to explain, pointing with her finger at the screen, what she sees. Mel is around 8 weeks pregnant and I lean forward to see the screen better, my eyes finding the beating blob she specifies to be the heartbeat. My baby’s heartbeat.
Tears roll slowly down my cheek and I don’t even care to hide them. Shit, I’m going to be a dad. Me a fucking father … sorry fudging father! I’ll have to learn not to swear anymore … fuck.
“The baby is fine, strong heartbeat. It’s maybe moving a little too much.”
She leans forward, eyes piercing the screen, “Eh, it seems there might be a slight tear in the first layer of her womb, nothing too serious at the moment, but I’ll keep an eye on it while mom is here in the hospital. Congratulations, daddy-to-be.”
I let out a deep sigh, throw my head back, and close my eyes as relief rushes through me.
“What?” Logan asks behind me, I was so preoccupied I didn’t notice her family coming into the room. I turn around slowly. I wipe my watery eyes with the back of my hand. Shit.
“You knocked up my little sister?” Logan dashes forward, his face far from what I would describe as happy. I roll my eyes, here we go again.
“Melaena is about 8 weeks pregnant and the little bean is doing just great. Congratulations to all of you,” Dr. Burden now talks to them, unaware of the fact that they’re probably hosting murderous thoughts right now.
She patiently shows them the blob on the sonar, the tiny heartbeat. They all look spooked, I think if the doctor told them that a meteorite is about to explode into the earth they would look less shocked. For what feels like forever, they just stand there with dropped jaws and pale dismayed faces.
And then all of them turn to glare at me at the same time.
“I can’t believe a man-whore like you don’t know how a fucking condom works!” Uncle John shouts, throwing his hands in the air before he storms out of the room, my dad runs after him.
Then her three brothers circle around me like hyenas would a carcass – Jackson went missing as soon as we heard the Brown family escaped custody – thank God.
“Boys now is not the time or the place!” Doc Barney states and leads the three brothers out of the room without them uttering a word.
“Complicated … got it,” Dr. Burden says with a soft chuckle. Glad she’s seeing the funny.
“We need to take her to X-rays,” a nurse preps Mel to take her for a CT scan while the doctor writes on her chart. Mel gets pushed out leaving me standing like a statue in the room.
“You know, she was going to tell you tonight,” Kiara says, leaning against the door and I can see she’s been crying. “Even though she knows you don’t want to be a dad, I convinced her to tell you instead of leaving for South Africa.”
South-Africa? What the fuck was she going to do there?
Kiara’s words shook me deeply. Mel thought I wouldn’t want the baby, that I didn’t want to be a dad … because I lied about it. Well, I didn’t want Chloe’s baby … that’s for sure. But I lied about having a baby with her to make her feel better – and I actually made it worse.
“I lied,” I whisper, “I didn’t want her to feel bad, I thought she was too young. But seems I fucked up again.”