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Eden
My stomach churns as I wait for the doctor, still wondering what the hell came over me two months ago. I knew better than this. Especially sleeping with a complete stranger, but god, he was just so…sexy and growly and alpha male, while still being sweet somehow and it completely sent me spinning. I mean, it wasn’t enough to have had to go searching to find Alan simply to plead my case, only for him to have a disgusting security guard drag me out. But then for that security guard to be a total sleaze and try to grope me, only to be rescued by that growly hunk…it was way too much for one day, let alone ten minutes.
If giving him my virginity up against a wall in a somewhat public place wasn’t insanely out of character enough, it naturally had to be compounded by someone trying to come into the room. That hurtled me back down to reality like a gunshot, and the humiliation of knowing what I just did sent me running.
And now…well, now I get to add ontoallof that by being pregnant.
I mean, I seriously knew better than this. If not by the way I grew up, then with the situation I was already in that had me at the health club certainly should have been more than enough reason to remind my ass as to why you don’t sleep with someone without protection. Let alone that you don’t sleep with a stranger.
My mom was sixteen when I was born. A couple stupid nights with some sweet talker left her pregnant with me, and him straight out the door when he learnt she was pregnant. It was just me and Mom after that. As soon as she graduated high school her parents kicked us out. They died in a house fire some neighbor caused trying to cook meth when I was eight, so it really was just me and Mom.
And whatever boyfriend she had at the time.
I thought Alan was different. I mean, he wanted to have a baby with my mom, and we both thought our life was changing for the better. True, we were still living in our house, not with Alan, but that didn’t seem that strange at the time. Now, I can see it for what it was—Alan wanting to play around still.
Maybe it would have been different if Mom hadn’t ended up pregnant with multiples. But until the accident, Alan was still coming around, paying the mortgage since Mom was on disability thanks to having four babies growing in her. Yeah…she wound up pregnant not just with the twins they found on the first ultrasound, but quadruplets when the boys ended up being triplets.
They’re six months old now, have been home with me for the last three after finally graduating from the NICU. I’m so thankful that none of them need lots of medical care now that they’re home. They were ten weeks early but were amazingly healthy considering there was four of them. It’s still a miracle that they’re alive, that the accident didn’t hurt any of them, even if it ended up taking Mom from me, leaving me responsible for four babies at eighteen, nineteen now.
Last year we celebrated my birthday by going to the health club, Alan scheduling Mom and me massages. This year I celebrated it alone, learning I was pregnant, and wondering how my life had delved into this madness.
I was a week away from graduation when the accident happened. Mom had a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t drive herself. Since I was out of class, I volunteered to take her. A truck came out of nowhere, running a red light, and we were the unfortunate ones that took the impact out of the line of traffic moving through the intersection.
The driver walked away with no scratches, which made me madder despite being relatively uninjured. A few bumps and bruises, some cuts from the glass of the windshield, whiplash, and a sprained wrist mainly. He’s being held responsible for the accident and Mom’s death, which thankfully means most of the medical bills are being covered by his insurance.
After they learnt a pregnant mom of quadruplets was the victim, they stopped fighting. I guess they didn’t want any bad press when there was no way to claim that we could have avoided the accident. There was a car right in front of us that we ended up clipping as it was, and it all just steamrolled from there.
When I called Alan to tell them they were taking Mom into surgery to have the babies he claimed he was stuck in an important meeting. By the time they got the babies out, Mom had bled out from a splenic rupture, and they weren’t able to save her. As soon as I got the words out to Alan, he told me to forget his number, that he wasn’t going to raise babies he didn’t want, let alone raise them by himself.
In the craziness of everything, the house ended up foreclosed on, and I had to find an apartment. Then I had to kit it out with things for the babies, which took most of Mom’s tiny life insurance policy. We’re barely getting by with the remainder of it and with four babies, the costs just keep rising.
I finally got us approved for benefits after being named the babies’ guardian, but even with that, I still have to pay for clothes and diapers and everything else to come for them. I’m sinking into a hole, and I wanted Alan to at least support the babies financially, if nothing else.
The state won’t force him to take a paternity test, he claims he never was involved with my mother, and despite telling them that he paid for our mortgage for months, they couldn’t prove it because the jerk sent in money orders to keep it off his bank records. Turns out, he had another younger girlfriend the entire time and he didn’t want her to find out about Mom.
So, unless I could afford to sue him, which I can’t, the only option I had was appealing to him in person. It’s bad enough that he had his other girlfriend with him that day, but for him to tell her I was a delusional stalker that kept trying to force him into a relationship withme, had me super-heated. Then mix in the security guard, and it’s no wonder I wasn’t in my right mind.
Dr. Miller comes into the room, giving me a smile that simply makes my stomach churn further. She’s the only ob in town I know. She was Mom’s doctor and when the home pregnancy test turned up positive, I called for today’s appointment immediately.
“Eden, stop,” she says as my hands twist the fabric of the gown into a little ball. “I’m sure this is not what you were anticipating, and I know it’s likely frightening for you with everything you’re going through with your brothers and sister, so I’m not going to beat around the bush. You are pregnant. I’ve reviewed the ultrasound, everything looks fine, but I did want to be the one to tell you that its twins.”
“What?” falls from my lips on a snorted gasp, little fuzzies flying through my vision for a moment as I grip the edge of the table tightly.
“With your mom’s unexpected surprise of the triplets, I had them do a thorough exam, and there are two sacs, two heartbeats. You’re having twins.”
“This isn’t happening,” I groan, covering my face, forcing myself to breathe in and out to stop from throwing up as I tend to do when I get stressed or nervous, as well as to keep from passing out at the news. I mean, I can’t afford to add one more baby to the mix, let alonetwo. Two more babies in diapers will bankrupt me. Even if I can manage to breastfeed, there’s no saying I’ll be able to do it exclusively with twins which means more formula and I’d only qualify for more help if I can’t find their father.
Although right now, considering that I don’t even know their father’s name, doesn’t make that possibility that farfetched. Just the thought of going back to that place to try and find him makes me super nauseous. There’s no telling what he’ll do if I try as well. I mean, he could be worse than Alan ever was.
“I want you to take some time and think about what you want to do,” Dr. Miller tells me when I lower my hands from my face. “You do have options, but it’s important that you decide what you want to do soon to keep you and the babies healthy. As I said, take a few days and think it over. If you want to schedule another appointment to talk through it, I’ll let the girls at the desk know to work you in whenever it’s best for you. If not, we’ll schedule your next appointment in two weeks. You’ll be right about twelve weeks at that point.”
I’m sure I missed a buttload of what she said but I nodded, waiting for her to leave before I get dressed, stopping at the desk in a daze to take the appointment card from the nurse there. The insanity of everything going on swirls around me keeping me in a fog as I walk out the doors, and I stop as the cooling air of fall hits me in the face.
I blink a couple times, knowing without needing to think about it that there’s no way I can get rid of these babies. I can’t give them up anymore than I could give up my brothers or sister either, which means I have to work up the nerve to find the twins’ father and see if he’s willing to help me with them. I’ll admit, the thought of him not even wanting to be involved in our lives hurts like hell, and I cling to the hope that he’ll be as sweet as he was when I needed his help when we met.
I let out a slightly shuddered breath, and move towards the steps, giving a polite smile to the woman heading up them that’s grinning from ear to ear. She looks like the other excited moms-to-be from the waiting room, and I wish that could be me, but there’s just too much craziness going on for it to be.
I reach the steps just as she closes in on the top of them, and before I almost realize what’s happening, her smile slips from her face and she starts to crumple. My heart races as she begins to teeter backwards, remembering when it happened to Mom. Thankfully, it was only one step, and she wasn’t hurt, but there’s twenty or so here, and I moved to reach her, grabbing the handrail behind her to keep her from falling backwards down them.
