AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Come in!”
The door opened and at the same time I heard a knock against the inside of it.
“Maddie?”
I saw Susan as I looked up from my script. She closed the door behind her and it clicked shut. “Hey. Got a second?”
“Yes.” I replied, as I stood from my chair and gestured towards the kitchenette. “You want something to eat or drink?”
Susan waved my invitation off as she walked in my direction and instead, sat down across from me at one of the trailer’s built-in dining tables.
My director was a slim, middle-aged brunette. A former bit-part actress, she’d worked her way up in the industry over the years and was just now coming into her own as a director. Even so, getting her on board hadn’t been easy. I’d heard she turned down two other projects to work on this picture because she loved the script so much. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit intimidated by her. But until now anyway, she’d been terrific and made me feel at ease. Still, in the time we’d been working together, she’d never come to my trailer like this before.
“Maddie, how are you feeling?” Susan said, as she placed her hands on the table, interlacing her fingers as she did. Lifting her chin up at me in a pose of suspicion she continued, “Do you think you’ll be ready for your scene tonight?”
The tang from the tomato sauce on top of my eggplant parmesan still lingered in my mouth as I swallowed hard and opened my lips to respond. But before I could get a single word out, she raised the index finger of her right hand.
“Maddie,” she began. “I have a job to do. As do you. But you see, I’m not able to do my job if I can’t rely on you to be here and when you are here, to be well. Now, I think you’re a talented actress but talent only gets you so far in this town. To succeed, you’ve got to be consistent and dedicated. Do you agree?”
Unsure of where she was headed with her statements, I nodded. “Yes, of course. I mean, I know I haven’t been feeling well and I’m sorry for that but you have my word I’m dedicated to this project. All I’ve ever wanted to do is act. This is a dream come true for me.”
Susan nodded her head as I spoke. “And I believe you Maddie, which is why this conversation is all the more difficult for me to have.”
I straightened up in my seat. “Um, okay. What do you mean?”
Lifting her right arm, Susan draped it over her heart as she began to speak. “Now, of course, your personal life is none of my business, so please don’t take this as me trying to intrude. It’s the last thing I want.”
Uh oh.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Of course not.”
Susan nodded and after folding her hands together on the table once more she continued, “Maddie, it wasn’t all that long ago when I was a young woman like you. And I vividly remember what I went through when I had my first child. I suppose what I’m saying here is, if you haven’t done so already, perhaps you should consider getting a pregnancy test done.”
I blinked at her in disbelief. Was I being that obvious? No one in the production knew about the relationship between Grey and me. We’d agreed to keep it quiet for the time being, even though when he was on the set, he spent a good bit of time in my trailer. I really had no idea if there were rumors going around or not.
Downplaying it, I shrugged and put on the best poker face I could muster.
“Susan,” I began. “I’m not pregnant. The problem I’m having is that I’m still having side effects from the food poisoning. That’s what the doctors told me.”
I swallowed. “It’s just stress. Really. Susan, you’ve got this all wrong. I am not pregnant.”
“All right,” she replied with a nod. “Then you won’t have any objections to getting tested. Correct?”
Twirling my hair with my right hand, I broke eye contact with her as she finished her thought.
“Maddie?”
I looked back in her direction again. “Susan, no disrespect but this is crazy.”
“Well, you might feel that way but there’s a lot people betting on the success of this movie besides yourself, and as the person responsible for putting it together, I can’t allow one of my stars to behave like you have been.”
She pressed her hands flat on the surface of the table and after sliding out of the booth, she stood and continued, “I’m going to have to insist you have a test performed. Otherwise, I can’t allow you to continue on in your current condition.”
I chewed my lip and with frantic effort searched my mind for any sort of objection. I couldn’t come up with a single one to counter her suspicions.
“Maddie, look, it’s not the end of the world. Even if you are, we can rework a number of the scenes so you aren’t showing quite as much down there. And although I’ve never worked for Mr. Sinclair before, he seems reasonable enough and…”
Horrified, I snapped my head up towards her. “Oh no, no, no. Please Susan, I don’t want him to know about any of this. Please.”
Susan wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “Well, Maddie, I don’t see how I have much choice here. This is the man’s film after all, his business. He has every right to know what’s going on with his employees. That’s especially the case if his lead actress is pregnant. Don’t you agree?”
I broke my gaze from her. As I looked down at the table, I picked at my fingernails. Just then, I felt Susan’s hand cover my shoulder.
“I won’t tell him anything right now, Maddie. I promise. But as soon as you get checked out, he’ll need to know what’s wrong with you.”
I exhaled and after lifting my hands to my forehead, I began to rub it with my fingertips.
“No you don’t understand, Susan. I… If I lose this job, that’s it for me. I’ll never work again.”
“Maddie, my goodness. Honestly, I think you have nothing to be worried about where Mr. Sinclair is concerned. He might not be a family man or settling down type but he’s far from a misogynistic ogre. I’m quite sure he’ll be more than reasonable about the whole situation.”
Dropping my forearms back to the tabletop, I laid my head down on them. Susan’s hand worked its way towards the center of my back. She continued to rub me as she spoke.
“Do we have an understanding, Maddie?”
“Yes.” I muttered.
“Good,” she began. “Do you have an OB of your own? If not, I can recommend mine.”
“Yeah, I have one.”
“Okay. I’ll expect you to get yourself checked out right away.”
“Mmm, hmm.”
“All right, then.” She removed her hand from my back and turned to go. “Well, I’ll leave you to finish your meal. We’ll need you back on the set in twenty minutes.”
I lifted my head up and after brushing the hair away from my eyes, I nodded.
A soft smile spread to her face. “Maddie, everything will be okay.”
I returned her smile with one of my own. “Thank you, Susan. Um, could I ask you for a favor?”
“Sure. Anything,” she replied, as she grabbed the door handle and leaned towards it.
“If it is true, will you let me be the one who tells Mr. Sinclair?”
“Of course, Maddie.”
MADDIE
At Susan’s insistence, I called and got an appointment with my OB, Dr. Anna Simms. After waiting in a lobby half-full of pregnant women which, uh, completely freaked me out, the nurse led to me back to the exam room.
It’s worth mentioning none of those women looked to be enjoying the process of having a baby. In fact, they seemed to be miserable. Reaching down, I caressed my belly and chewed on the inside of my lip. I was not ready for that, no way. I would never survive. I barely managed to keep up appearances as it was and the size of a couple of their stomachs…!
Uhhhhhhhhh!!!
Unable to sit still, I wandered around the exam room and poked around in places I shouldn’t. I couldn’t help myself. Why did they feel the need to bring me back here? I would rather have stayed out front. At least I could have watched television. After a few minutes, I gave up and sat on the exam table while thumbing through a three-year-old gossip rag.
Just then, the waiting room door opened and the doctor entered, clutching a manila folder against her chest. As I stood from the exam table, the thin tissue crinkled and tore. Trying to minimize the damage, I reached down to smooth it out causing it stick to my palms like flypaper. I rolled my eyes and tried to remove it as quickly as I could.
“Maddie,” Dr. Simms said as she entered. She noticed my struggles. With a soft smile, she continued, “Nice to see you again. Don’t worry. Happens all the time with women in your situation.”
I swallowed.
“My situation?” I asked with a hint of disbelief. Peeling the paper away from my skin, I continued, “What do you mean?”
“Oh,” she replied as she crossed her hands low in front of her waist. “What I meant is it’s normal to be nervous. You know, when you suspect you might be pregnant.”
“Right. That.” I nodded.
After a bit of admonishment for being more than a year overdue for my normal checkup, we got down to discussing the reason for my visit. Frankly, it felt good to just tell someone what I’d been going through without worrying about them judging me, firing me or in the case of Grey, uh, who knew? In any case, after performing my exam and asking me a series of questions about my symptoms, she sat down across from me in a rolling chair.
