Second Chances: Novella One

by Jo Briggs

  He shook his head in turmoil, disbelieving what he was hearing, and thinking it was simply another ploy to make things rocky between him and Layla.

  Adam shrugged. “I guess she’s hoping to stir up old wounds and cause some friction so that you will agree to meet her.”

  Evan was enraged that Caggie would try to blacken Layla's name with such a thought. As much as he wanted a child to connect him to Layla he didn’t want any untruths being spread about her in the papers.

  “You tell her from me that unless she agrees to a paternity test for Lily, and tells me the real truth about what she deleted, then I’ll see her in court rather than any meeting room. Also, if she even dares to publish the video, or if any rumours about Layla and her child appear in any newspaper, I promise that I’ll destroy her.”

  Layla

  Layla heard every word that was spoken. She paled considerably, lingering outside the kitchen and not daring to enter at that moment. Cursing Caggie, she determined quickly that the time for her confession was right now. Feeling less than composed, she entered the kitchen. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I would like to express my intent to have it out with her, no matter what.

  Evan shook his head. "I honestly don't want to get you involved."

  "Well, I’m already involved," Layla said firmly. Moving to stand in front of Evan’s chair, she placed a hand on his shoulder as her eyes communicated with his silently.

  Sighing, Evan nodded a reluctant agreement.

  In the past, Layla had always managed to persuade Evan to do anything that he had initially refused. She could penetrate even his most stubborn moods and, clearly, this effect on him had not dwindled.

  Turning to Adam, Layla said, "If you don't mind, I need to speak to Evan alone for a while."

  Evan straightened up from this chair. Looking puzzled, he tilted his head to one side as he looked at his cousin and then back at her.

  "Of course," Adam answered, allowing the couple some privacy by departing from the room and closing the door behind him.

  Evan looked questioningly at Layla.

  "Seeing Adam reminded me of our last day together," she said, noticing him stiffen at the memory. "What Caggie said has made me think that I really need to give you some background on what happened after I left, and what has sparked her latest accusation." Layla guessed that she sounded more confident in what she was saying than how she felt deep inside.

  "Layla, it was a long time ago," said Evan, taking some steps forward to lessen the distance between where they both stood.

  Layla sighed. "I know, but it has to be said. The day I left it was because the doctor said I probably couldn’t carry another viable pregnancy, because of the amount of blood loss. I knew how much you wanted to be a father, and I didn’t want you to be saddled with someone who couldn’t give you that. They started talking about operations…"

  Evan pulled her to him and a light drop of tears hit his shirt as her head came to rest against his shoulder. "But, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I loved you. You were my life – children or no children." His voice began to rise as the obvious pain that had long been repressed surfaced once more.

  Layla tried to lean away from Evan, so that she could look at him on a level, but he misinterpreted her intent and tightened his grip. "Evan, can you release me, please," she responded.

  "Why do you suddenly not want me to touch you?" asked Evan, hurt showing on his face as he did as she requested.

  "Evan, I simply wanted to move my head up, so I can look at your face properly as we continue this conversation," Layla replied, patiently.

  His hurt expression switched to relief, as he settled for simply holding her hands as she opened her mouth once more. Nothing came out as Layla struggled with how to word her next sentence. Random events, leading up to finding out about Bennett’s existence, flashed through her mind: the nightmares, fatigue and sickness, a client calling her too fat, and her modelling agent literally frogmarching her to the doctors.

  Her London GP had recommended a particular doctor in New York, in whose care she now was. The person was a female gynaecologist who specialised in the aftercare of trauma-induced miscarriages and high-risk pregnancies.

  “I’m going to organise another round of blood tests since you’re still suffering from disrupted sleep and nausea,” the doctor said, glancing over at a downcast Layla, after silently perusing the notes her old doctor had faxed over. “Have you menstruated since your surgery?”

  Layla shook her head.

  “And that was about eighteen weeks ago?”

  Layla nodded. “Yes. My cycles have always been somewhat sporadic, so that’s nothing unusual.”

  “And when was the last time you had unprotected sex?”

  “About fourteen weeks.”

  “Do you experience any residual pain around the injury area?”

  “Slight soreness, but not any pain as such, but I do experience a strange fluttering at times.”

  The doctor looked at her strangely for a moment and asked, “Flutterings?"

  “Yes, not quite where the injury was, but in the abdomen surrounding it.”

  “Okay, if you go behind the curtain and take off your top, I can have a closer look at the wound.”

  After gently probing the scar above her right hip and the surrounding abdominal area, the doctor wrote something in her file, and then asked Layla to dress and sit back down.

  “The area seems to be healed perfectly, so I don’t believe that is what is causing your symptoms. I’m going to send you over to my colleague in the centre to have them do an internal and abdominal ultrasound within the next hour. The receptionist will be able to give you directions, and then I’ll see you back here later today, after the scan.”

  Layla sighed at the prospect of waiting around all day, even if it were within the state-of-the-art private health practice. “Alright, but do you have any idea what is going on?” she asked.

  “I have my suspicions, but I’ll get a better idea after the tests – we should have a definite diagnosis by the end of today.”

  Layla gave the doctor a small smile, relieved that a conclusion to her general feeling of poor health might be in sight.

  Three hours later, she found herself on a narrow bed in one of the ultrasound rooms. The technician had placed the familiar cold gel over her lower abdomen before doing a few sweeps with the scanner. An image came up on the screen, but Layla did not understand what she was seeing. The technician made some notes and then said she was going to get the doctor.

  A feeling of uneasiness swept over Layla. She had had ultrasounds before and no one had ever needed to send a doctor in during the examination. She wondered if the fall had caused irreparable internal damage to her abdomen. At the time of her surgery, the doctors had told her she was lucky to escape with just the damage she had done.

  The door opened to reveal the technician and the doctor, who performed another sweep of the scanner over Layla’s belly. “Okay, well, it would seem all your nausea was caused by this area here,” the doctor said, turning to smile for the first time as she indicated a prominent shape on the screen.

  Frowning, Layla tried to make out what part of her anatomy the shape corresponded with. “What is it?”

  “This outer shaper is your uterus, and inside there is a thirteen-week-old foetus.”

  “F-foetus? H-how can that be?” Layla stammered, her hand clutching the side of the bed as she stared at the screen, incredulously.

  “Well, it would seem you fell pregnant almost straight away after the miscarriage.”

  “But they said the chance of another baby was greatly reduced because of all the scar tissue,” Layla argued, unable to believe what she was being told.

  “Sometimes nature can prove even the best doctors wrong.”

  “Can you tell if this baby is well?”

  “The measurements show it’s a little on the small side, but nothing to be overly concerned about, so we will need to keep a close ey
e on you through the rest of your baby’s gestation,” the doctor replied.

  “I can’t believe it,” Layla finally responded, after struggling to find her voice through the powerful sense of shock vibrating through her.

  “I realise it’s a lot to take in, after all you’ve been through. I suggest you have plenty of rest, eat well, and I’ll see you again in another couple of weeks,” the doctor suggested. “The bathroom is through that door. Once you’re cleaned up, you are free to leave."

  The revelation had taken several days to sink into Layla’s mind properly. At first she wondered if she had dreamt it all. Finding the paperwork for another appointment to have a scan in her handbag, she knew it was all too real. At home, Layla had quietly disappeared into her room, where she spent the rest of the day searching through pages of information on the internet.

  As thrilled as she was to be having a baby still growing inside her, Layla could not help but wonder how to handle this turn of events. When should she inform Evan about the new baby? Did it mean that she should go back to him? Yes, she missed him terribly, but her heart had started to heal, and she was not sure if she wanted to leave New York, now that she was here.

  Following more sleepless nights, Layla decided Evan did deserve to know about the child, but that she would not change her mind about needing to remain single. The existence of a surviving baby did not change the fact that she was not ready, emotionally, for such an intense relationship as the one she had shared with Evan.

  With that settled, the next significant problem was how and when to tell him.

  Layla is still standing in the large kitchen, facing Evan as she pulls back from her thoughts of the past into the present.

  "In those first few weeks of being in New York, I continued to be ill, but I simply put it down to the stress of everything. Then, at a check-up with a new doctor, she asked me to have another scan. I was informed that, although I had lost one child, there was clearly another one there in its place. She explained that it was conceived four or five weeks after my fall.” Layla continued staring into space rather than looking directly at him.

  Layla presumed that Evan would remember the last night they had made love, right before he went off on a business trip; the one that ended with her walking out on their two-year relationship.

  She glanced up to find Evan staring at her, open-mouthed. "I presume something happened to that child too?" he asked quietly, his voice so low that she could barely make out what he said.

  Layla avoided his eyes and gulped as she gathered her wits about her. "No, my child was born, a son, on the twenty-fourth of June, 2010. However, there were some complications."

  Evan

  Evan pulled his hand away from Layla’s, feeling a mixture of pain and anger as he glared at her. As the words ‘I had a son’ echoed through his brain, he could not quite believe what was happening.

  "I don’t understand. The boy I met on Skype could’ve only been three or four at the most, so he’s too young to be from that pregnancy?" Evan’s voice trembled as confusion raged through his head while he tried to make sense of everything. “You mention complications. Do you have two sons or did ours die?”

  “No, just one son – ours,” Layla explained. “Bennett is simply small for his age. He is four and three-quarters."

  A well of betrayal tightened inside his chest. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

  “I did tell you. The messages Caggie deleted told you about his existence.”

  Evan shook his head, still confused. “Even so, I didn’t employ her until four months after you’d left, so why did you wait until you were almost seven months pregnant to get in touch?” The tone of his voice was accusatory as he glared indignantly at her.

  “It was a difficult pregnancy. I couldn’t cope with the news for a long time, and then, of course, I didn’t expect to have my messages deleted by some unstable secretary who was shagging you,” she retorted.

  “I’ve already explained my regret over getting involved with her. I just don’t understand how you could have kept silent about something as serious as this for five years.”

  "I was too unwell to think straight when he was born,” Layla added, “and for a considerable amount of time afterwards."

  “What do you mean?" He couldn’t help but feel a rush of concern before the red, angry mist overwhelmed it once more.

  "No part of the pregnancy was easy. I was sick all day, every day. I couldn’t work, but luckily I was staying with Annette and Lawrence, so they took care of me. Not in a money sense, I had enough of my own for that, but just support and stability. I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia when I had a few weeks remaining before my due date, and I had to stay in the hospital. It became dangerous and Bennett was born prematurely, after I had to have an emergency C-section,” she paused, taking a deep breath before continuing.

  “My baby was developed enough to survive, but he had to have some steroids to stimulate lung growth. Delivered at thirty-six weeks, he spent two weeks in the neonatal unit for monitoring. I was in intensive care myself, but in time they were satisfied that I had no lasting damage. Bennett, on the other hand, suffered some hearing loss. He is classed as partially deaf, due to the complications of pre-eclampsia, and he had some surgery when he was small to increase the scope of his hearing.

  “In that first year I was a complete mess as I had postnatal depression, brought on by the stress of my parents, our relationship and all the complications with the baby. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for my aunt. Nevertheless, after some treatment, I started to stand on my own two feet again."

  Evan keeps his expression guarded and stony throughout Layla’s long speech as he silently took in every word. When he finally spoke, it was with a fierce tone. "How come no one thought to mention he was mine, even during the years since then? Did you force Cameron and Ava to keep this from me?"

  "They simply don’t know that he’s yours,” Layla replied, sighing. “I had no contact with anyone in my family, except my aunt, uncle and Keely, for the duration of my pregnancy and for a long time after Bennett was born. Ava and Cameron didn’t meet him until he was nearly two. Because he is pretty small for his age, they presumed he was much younger than he is, and the result of something brief while I was in New York. They never directly asked me directly who his dad was, and I never volunteered the information, but I would not have lied about it. I felt it was better that perhaps they didn't know as so much time had passed and you still hadn’t tried to contact me."

  Scowling, Evan’s voice trembled with emotion again. "I would have if I had been given the chance.”

  Layla

  Layla rolled her eyes in exasperation, having had enough of him blaming her for Caggie’s interference.

  “What did you expect, Evan? As far as I knew, you had ignored my messages. I wasn’t about to fly across the ocean on the off-chance that you hadn’t intentionally ignored them. If you want to be angry with someone, take it up with Caggie. She’s the catalyst of all this.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m extremely angry with her and I will deal with her, but seven years of silence are also hard to forgive,” he replied.

  Layla did not want to stay in the house a moment longer, with Evan repeating that things were her fault. How could he not understand her side? She had spent three years thinking he had rejected their child, and then a further eighteen months simply putting her son first while she waited for Evan to return from his sabbatical in Chile.

  “I’ve explained my reasons, Evan, and I have been understanding in regard to your errors with Caggie, but you do not seem to be offering me the same consideration.” Grabbing a nearby notebook with a half written shopping list on it. She flicks to the next page and tears it out. Using the pen that had been sitting with the notebook, she wrote something down. “Now I refuse to stay here another moment while you debate whether me protecting my son is forgivable, or not. Once you’re ready to stop being so judgemental, you will know where to fin
d me.”

  With that, Layla stormed out of the kitchen, past a surprised-looking Adam who had been standing just the other side of the kitchen door, and upstairs where she threw her remaining possessions into her suitcase haphazardly, not caring about anything other than getting the hell out of Evan’s house.

  She descended the stairs just as he was heading up them.

  “Please don’t run from our problems again,” he pleaded.

  “I am not running. I just can’t be around you right now,” Layla responded, avoiding his wretched gaze. “I’ve called a cab, which should be here in a few minutes.”

  “Okay, well, can I at least contact you about meeting my son?”

  She nodded, feeling her resolve weakening slightly. “No matter what happens between us, you can see him whenever you like, but I would prefer you wait until you have thought long and hard about who you want to trust – Caggie or me – before you get back in touch.”

  With that, Layla shuffled past Evan and out of the house. She stood waiting outside, determined not to cry until she was safe in the taxi, which was thankfully making its way down the long driveway.

  Evan

  Dejected, all Evan could do was watch Layla from the window. He knew her well enough to know that he would have to become much more accepting of her reasons than he had been so far, if he were ever to persuade her to come back. Judging by Layla’s angry exit, he feared it would take more than just a day, or two, before she would be calm enough to talk to him again.

  Despite the heavy weight of anger residing in his head, Evan’s heart felt as if it was being ripped out of his chest again; five years of pain reopened and it was raw.

  Evan and Layla’s story continues in Second Chances: Two which is available now.

  If you enjoyed this book please take some time to review this book where you purchased it from.

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