Stay With Me

by London James

  Dr. Bianchi’s office calls for me to come in for a relatively quick appointment, so I pick a time close to the end of the day to skip out early from work.

  I wait for Dr. Bianchi in the same room I had my initial appointment in. She knocks on the door briefly and comes in with a nurse.

  “Hello again.” She’s wearing bright purple glasses this time. “How are you today?”

  “Better. I’m still really nauseous, but it might be getting better?” Or so I’m telling myself because I’m over being sick already.

  “We got your tests results back. You’re pregnant, Briony.” Her face is neutral, thank god, because if she had said it happily, I would have puked all over the floor in front of her.

  “What?”

  “The results came back positive.” She sits down on her stool.

  My blood is roaring in my ears, and the room seems to be turning sideways. “But… ”

  “Birth control is a great way to prevent accidental pregnancies, but there are a few pregnancies reported each year despite proper use. Usually it’s because the user didn’t take it at the same time every day. Making it less effective at preventing pregnancy.”

  I clutch the padded table, feeling myself start to hyperventilate. This is not happening right now.

  The nurse hands me a little plastic cup filled with water while Dr. Bianchi talks to me. I absorb exactly none of it because holy shit, I’m knocked up. Pregnant. With child. With Ash’s child, unless I banged some random guy in my sleep.

  Holy fuck. When I woke up this morning, I thought the craziest thing that would happen to me would be seeing the guy I always see on my commute eating an ice cream sandwich at 7:45 in the morning. Nothing on earth could have prepared me for this.

  “What… do I do?” I manage to stammer, sipping the water, half of it dribbling down my chin.

  “You have some options since it’s early.” She rolls over to the counter, where there are a bunch of pamphlets. She picks out a few and hands them to me. “It seems like you need a minute to process this.”

  “I need several hours to process this,” I say, my voice cracking.

  The nurse pats my shoulder and takes the water cup once I drain it.

  “It’s okay. I’m sure this is a shock.” She stands. “Regardless of what you decide to do, you should stop taking your birth control and we should check on the fetus.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today. Sasha, can you make sure there’s an ultrasound tech free?” Dr. Bianchi says to the nurse.

  The nurse says yes and leaves. I feel numb, like the whole world is now at arm’s length and I’m looking at it through dirty glasses. Dr. Bianchi leads me into another room, where they check on the baby with an ultrasound. I’m distressed that this bomb has been dropped in my life, but I let out a breath of relief when they tell me everything is okay.

  “You can stay in here as long as you need to gather yourself. Once you decide what to do, come back in.” Dr. Bianchi stands up from between my legs and pulls off her gloves. “Take care, Briony. Don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.”

  I hold it together until everyone is out of the room. Then I burst into tears.

  I pull out my phone and call Zara. She’s probably still at work, but I don’t care. She’s the only one I can trust to comfort me. If I call my mom, she’ll shit a brick and then jump for joy that she’s getting her first grandchild. Not exactly the vibe I’m going for. And I definitely can’t call Ben, because then he’d probably murder Ash. And telling Ash is literally the last thing on Earth I want to do.

  “Why are you calling me? Is something wrong?” Zara asks, picking up on the first ring. “Or did you butt dial me?”

  “I’m pregnant, and I need to go somewhere before I have a fucking meltdown,” I practically shout in one breath.

  Zara is silent on the other end of the line. “Where are you? I’m coming to get you right now.”

  I tell her. She stays on the line with me as she orders an Uber and speeds over to my doctor’s office. I cry the whole time as she talks to me about random nonsense to calm me down. Her office is in midtown, so it takes a while, but eventually she arrives. She comes inside to collect me and leads me back out to the Uber. Once I’m buckled in, we pull off.

  “We can’t go back to Ash’s place,” I gasp in a panic.

  “Calm down; we aren’t. We’re going to my parents’ house in Westchester.” She taps away on her phone. “My dad’s out of the country, and my mom’s out doing Pilates or whatever it is she does in her spare time. It’ll just be us.”

  “But what about Chunk?” I ask, sobbing. The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror, eyes wide with alarm.

  “Ah, damn. Can you tell Ash to feed him? Make up some story about helping my parents with some house stuff. I don’t know.” She huffs. “We’ll get him tomorrow, ok?”

  I wipe my tears with the back of my arm. All I want is his big blobby body tucked next to me.

  I cry most of the long drive to Westchester, just outside of the city. I don’t even want to know how much the Uber fare is. Zara just pats my hand and hands me tissues from her purse.

  Zara’s parents are loaded—her mom was a big-time model in the 90s, and her dad runs this high-end car engine company or something. Zara is always tired of her dad traveling and mostly seems exasperated by her mom’s attempts to stay cool and relevant. Either way, they adore her immensely, since she’s the youngest and the only one of their three kids who lives in close proximity. They’re actually excited to have her living at home again while we look for another apartment.

  Zara takes me up to her bedroom, which probably hasn’t changed since high school. It’s girly as all get-out, with pink everything and Audrey Hepburn prints on the walls. If I had a girl, would I go all out with pink clothes and toys? The thought makes me break down all over again.

  “Shit, I can’t even offer you a bottle of wine,” she mutters, propping me up with a bunch of pillows in her massive bed like I’m sick. “Um, want some tea? Cookies? Ice cream?”

  The thought of food with actual flavor makes me queasy. “Toast? Dry?”

  She nods. “If my mom’s eating gluten again, then I can get toast. If she’s not, can you deal with gluten-free stuff?”

  “I guess.” I don’t care, but I know I need to put something in my body.

  She leaves and comes back a few minutes later, with sparkling water and some toast. “Dad had some bread, thankfully. Eat.”

  I nibble on the bread, slowly but surely eating the whole thing and drinking all my water. Zara sits next to me, silent.

  “What happened?” she finally asks.

  I try to explain calmly, but all my words just come rushing out. “It’s Ash’s baby. We had sex without a condom because birth control is 99 percent effective when it’s used properly. Apparently, not taking it at the exact same time every day makes it less effective thought. Well, only in a tiny percentage of people like me. Or maybe Ash has super sperm. Who knows?”

  “Oh, love.” She squeezes my hand again. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Between this and the fire, I’m over everything.” I wipe my cheeks. “My savings took a massive hit when I had to replace all my shit, and now I might have to be a single mom.”

  “You’re sure Ash would just leave you high and dry?” She raises an eyebrow. “He’s a billionaire, and the kid is his blood. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “He doesn’t want to be with me because he thinks he’ll just dump me anyway. So I doubt he’d be down to be a dad.” More tears fall down my face. “I’ll be fine financially, but I don’t know how I’d work on BloomBrightly with a newborn.”

  Zara frowns. “What are you going to tell him?”

  “Shit.” I look up at her ceiling. She still has a Jonas Brothers poster up there from 2008 or so, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Zara still has a crush on Joe. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I want to end the pregnancy, because I’m thirty-one and clear
ly on the path to spinsterhood with my shitty taste in men. What if I don’t get another chance?”

  I do want to be a mom eventually. I always did. I just imagined it happening with a long-term partner, a stable living situation, and actual money. I probably have the money part down, at least.

  “That’s true.” She looks up at the ceiling too. “And I’m guessing your family doesn’t know.”

  “Not yet. I don’t know how they’d react. I know that Ben would be pissed if he knew it was Ash’s.” That’s one way to go about it—I can pretend to not know who the father is and just go on with it. But then I’ll be broke with a baby in the most expensive city on the east coast.

  I start to cry all over again, hiccupping and burrowing my face into Zara’s shoulder. Her familiar perfume is soothing, even though her shoulder isn’t particularly soft. She pats my hair and back.

  “I’m a mess, and I feel like shit.” I finally calm down again, feeling sleepy. I don’t even want to Google all of my symptoms, because that would only scare me more.

  “Why don’t you sleep? Or we can watch The Office or something on my laptop until you do.” She hops off the bed and goes to her desk.

  “That sounds good.” I snuggle under the blanket. She comes back and slides in next to me, opening Netflix. I somehow fall asleep before the theme song is even over.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ash

  I’m about to text Briony to ask what she wants for dinner when she texts me—

  Hey, can you feed Chunk tonight? I’m at Zara’s parents’ place, helping her out with something. One scoop of the diet food and one sardine?

  I frown. She hadn’t mentioned going to Westchester the last time I spoke to her. I don’t even know if she’s feeling better, but I don’t want to crowd her with questions about her health. She’ll tell me if she wants to. If I boss her around after basically saying I’m too emotionally constipated to have a girlfriend, she’ll probably rip me a new asshole.

  Yeah, sure. I respond.

  I feel a little sad that I’ll come home to a house without her in it, even though that’s how I’ve lived most of my life already. And we still aren’t back to normal after our… moment together in the kitchen, the other day. I doubt we will be until I face the issue and tell her what I’m feeling. I squeeze the bridge of my nose, the very thought of figuring it out making me want to curl up at my desk and never leave. But as John told me, I need to figure it out on my own.

  I go through the rest of my day absently, since my team is more than capable of handling everything without me standing over them. I even leave at 5:30, which is almost unheard of for me. I pick up some pad Thai and eat it in front of the TV, watching some mindless space documentary. Briony and I are in the middle of watching some shows, but I know that she’d be annoyed if I watched something without her. That’s another strike against us just being friends. I’ve heard Ben and Daisy arguing over what TV shows to watch and when throughout their whole relationship.

  Watching TV is only making me feel worse, so I go to my study. It’s one of my favorite places in the whole house, a quiet oasis that looks down onto the backyard. Everything is clear on my desk besides Chunk, who’s sitting right next to my keyboard.

  “What’re you doing here, bud?” I pick him up and put him on the floor. He meows loudly and struts out of the room, even ignoring Sarge when he trots inside. The two have finally started to get along, more or less. Since Chunk is so big, Sarge doesn’t see him as a snack. If Sarge is fine with cats, maybe I can adopt one. There are quite a few at the shelter where I adopted him.

  God, maybe I’m going to become one of those single guys with a lot of pets who act as his surrogate family. Briony made me see how much I indulge Sarge, as much as I don’t want to admit it. At least I’m going with dogs and not snakes or lizards. Those guys are a little off-putting if they’re as obsessed with their reptiles as much as I’m obsessed with Sarge.

  I just like animals. Sarge isn’t complicated in the slightest—he likes playing, eating, sleeping, and sitting on the couch with me. He’s happy when I’m happy and subdued when I’m sad. Tail wagging? He’s good. Tail between his legs? Probably ashamed for doing something bad. Easy. Straightforward. Not at all like a human.

  I can almost see Ben, Daisy, or Briony rolling their eyes at me, asking why I avoid the complications of humans. I never want to answer that question.

  I sit down in my huge desk chair and boot up my computer. My email comes up right away, and I see a new one from Nora.

  I click with a sigh. I went with Dad to his appointment that Nora had mentioned a few weeks back, only to not find out anything. Dr. Cross basically shrugged and said that he still didn’t have any answers as to why Dad’s heart sometimes beat erratically or why his pain was so severe. He threw out diagnoses like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome with a shrug like I had done when I Googled all of his symptoms. But I’m not a doctor, so I have an excuse for just guessing. Dad looked annoyed and told me he wanted to go to a different doctor right in front of Dr. Cross. He’s been through so many trying to get a diagnosis.

  Since Nora and I discovered that Dad is keeping us both in the dark, we tried to coordinate our accounts of Dad’s condition. She has a full list of all the medications he’s tried—there are over 30, with quite a few heavy-duty painkillers in there—and I have copies of his medical bills. I don’t know what a lot of the tests were, but Ben is going to help me out.

  Nothing new regarding your father’s condition. Nora’s email says.

  I let out a slow breath. He has a different symptom every other week. It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening. I pull up a spreadsheet, where I’m piecing some things together from memory. Pain is the most common thing he suffers from, followed by weight loss, digestive problems, and breathing problems. The symptoms get worse the moment he starts to get better. It’s like he can’t catch a break.

  I glance at my phone, debating whether to call Ben. He must still be in the office since he’s on email, but he doesn’t always answer chats right away. I shoot him a message anyway.

  AshJK: Hey, have you had a chance to look at those test names I sent over?

  The response bubble pops up right away.

  BenMcA: Yeah, there’s a lot of shit here. Can I call you in 30ish? Your dad might be doctor shopping.

  I open a new tab and look up what that means. Doctor shopping is when people go from doctor to doctor to either get the drug they want or the diagnosis they want to hear. I sit back in my seat. Dad does have some intense painkillers, but he doesn’t seem to have any addictive behaviors. Besides, Nora controls all of his medicine, and she hasn’t said anything about him asking for anything out of the ordinary.

  I drum my fingers on my desk. None of this is adding up.

  To kill time before Ben calls, I go outside with Sarge and play fetch. Chunk sits next to the window, eyeing us. He’s probably wondering where Briony is. Do cats miss their owners like dogs do?

  I nibble on my thumbnail. Maybe Ben knows more about what Briony’s deal is. She talks to him a lot.

  Ben calls a few minutes later.

  “Hey, thanks for calling,” I say, coming back inside. I slide the door closed in Sarge’s face, so he won’t track dirt in, making him whine. Chunk glares at him through the glass.

  “Hey. So yeah, your dad,” he starts. He sounds like he’s walking. “The tests he’s getting are random as hell. It doesn’t look like a doctor is looking at the results, then getting different tests based on what he knows. Or at least it doesn’t seem that way. It’s either that or your dad is going to shitty doctors who only want to make money.”

  I sit down on the couch. “I mean, the doctors he’s going to are supposedly the best in the area. Maybe they’re connecting dots in an unusual way.”

  “Maybe.” A siren blares in the background. “But if he’s getting all these medications, he might just be in it for the drugs.”

  I roll the idea around
in my head. I know addicts—it’s an unfortunate side effect that some people face when leaving the military. If they have PTSD, they might turn to drugs to numb the pain. But Dad doesn’t seem too dependent on the drugs he has, according to Nora, and isn’t big on substances in general. He hardly even drank when I was a kid. Then again, the painkillers are wildly addictive.

  “So it seems like he’s genuinely sick, but his doctors aren’t helping him the way that they should.” I scratch at my beard stubble.

  “Maybe. I don’t know, man,” he says. A car horn beeps over the sound of his voice, erasing whatever follows.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I was asking about Briony. How’s life as her roommate?” He says the words lightly, but I know he’s putting out feelers for anything being wrong.

  “It’s fine. She’s with Zara in Westchester for the night. Do you know why?”

  “No, she hasn’t really said anything to me lately. She mentioned she had some sort of virus, though.” The noise in the background quiets. “Has she seemed ok?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. I told her to go to the doctor and she did, reluctantly. She didn’t update me, though.”

  “Mmhm.” He pauses. “She tends to ignore her problems when she’s sick, so don’t take it personally. And everything’s good on the friend front?”

  “You want to just come out and ask me if we’ve bitten each other’s heads off?”

  He laughs. “Not really. But I worry about her, so can you blame me for asking?”

  “I can’t blame you. But she’s fine, more or less. I don’t know. Nothing about her has set off my Spidey senses.”

  Besides our whole relationship. If Ben is wary about how she’s doing without me mentioning that there’s drama between us, I don’t want to open that box of horrors. Yet another thing I’m pushing back in my mental queue.