by Nancy Adams
In the corner stood a hapless-looking Paul, unsure of where exactly he was needed. He and Claire had fooled around for a lot of the antenatal sessions and now that he needed the information that he’d been supposed to learn there, he’d forgotten almost all of it!
“Why don’t you come and hold Claire’s hand,” the midwife offered him.
Paul, happy to be given some direction in proceedings, came by Claire and offered his hand. But it was no good; both her hands were gripping onto the bedsheets with all their might and there was no room for his fingers among them. Looking down at Claire, he felt terrible pangs attack his heart at the sight of so much obvious pain in her. He wanted more than anything for that pain to stop. He felt an increasing anxiety with each passing hour that the baby wasn’t born. It had been five hours now since they’d arrived at the hospital in his car.
Claire meanwhile did her best to keep her breathing as controlled as possible while the baby attempted to heave its way out of her. Earlier, she had begun labor on her back, but this became very painful for her and the midwife had moved her onto her front.
“One big push,” the midwife said as she came around behind Claire. “We’re nearly there. The baby’s crowning and we just need a little more.”
Claire looked up at Paul and lifted one of her hands to him. He instantly took it and she squeezed his hand with all her might, making the poor guy wince, as she heaved with everything she had left in her.
“AHHHHH!” she screamed out, the veins in her face popping out, Paul’s hand crumbling in her grip.
“There we are,” the midwife called out as she took the baby in her hands.
The room filled with the high-pitched first wail of a newborn child. Claire instantly began crying in relief, slumping onto her front, panting heavily, the young girl having experienced one of the hardest things that a human being can ever go through. As she lay there, Paul bent down and kissed her on the top of the head, her hair soaked with sweat.
“Would you like to cut the cord?” the midwife asked him.
Paul smiled and looked down at Claire. She merely smiled back up at him as she attempted to regain her breath. Paul went around and the midwife held the baby while he cut the grisly cord, taking his first look at the child and seeing that he was a boy. The midwife then took the baby boy, weighed him, and cleaned him up, before handing him to Paul neatly wrapped in a blanket.
Paul carried him around for Claire to see. When she looked up to see her child, she smiled, before shaking her head and falling into tears.
“I can’t, Paul,” she wept. “Please, take him away.”
Paul felt an instant shroud cover the joy he’d felt shining through him only moments before. He simply nodded and took the baby to the back of the room, where he placed him in his little crib.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sam and Jenna held each other in a lingering embrace as they stood at the edge of the helicopter. It was time for her to leave and the two had been rather forlorn since waking together that morning in Sam's large bed, wrapped up in his white Egyptian cotton sheets. They had been very quiet at breakfast and as Jenna had packed, Sam had sat on the end of the bed feeling as if something were dropping out of him.
Now, the pilot waited for her impatiently as the two lovers almost refused to part. They held each other for nearly five minutes until Jenna finally climbed inside the craft. As Sam went to close the door behind her, Jenna quickly stopped it by grabbing the handle and swung her head out of the gap for one last kiss. Sam leaned forward and took her face in his hands.
“We'll see each other soon,” he whispered to her. “Just three months.”
After that final lingering kiss, Sam shut the door and backed away, and the helicopter lifted into the sky. As it lurched upward, Jenna gazed down at the ever-diminishing Sam, her hand pressed to the glass. When he was out of view, she let out a melancholy groan and turned away, slumping back into her chair. In her chest, she found that her heart was beating rapidly.
It wasn't long before the helicopter arrived at the airport and Jenna climbed out. As she emerged, she found Sam's black Learjet waiting for her. She climbed inside and was soon on her way to L.A. During the whole flight, Jenna remained deep in thought, her heart feeling swollen. On arrival at LAX, she went straight through the airport and to the little garage that held her all-white Jeep Wrangler. After that, she paid her parking fee and was zooming out of there, the midday L.A sun searing the asphalt of the freeway. The traffic wasn't too heavy and she made it to Beverley Hills in no time. She was about four blocks from her apartment when her phone went off in her handbag.
Jenna pulled over so that she could answer the call.
When she had, she pulled her phone out of her bag and saw that the number was unknown. Usually she'd put it straight down, but it could have been Sam, so she answered it.
“Hello?” she said as she answered.
“Ah! Mrs. Blackwell,” came a man's voice that she didn't recognize, a smugness to its tone. “You must have arrived back then. It’s practically impossible to get mobile coverage at the reserve.”
“Who is this?” Jenna asked in annoyance.
“Stan Bormann, Jenna—your boss, so to speak. I take it you've completed your report on our illustrious wonder, Sam Burgess.”
“Yes, I have,” Jenna replied in a firm voice.
“And when will it be ready for us?”
“Right away. I was gonna swing by the offices tomorrow and present it to the board in person like we’d arranged.”
“Of course you were. But I think you should swing by my place now and show it to me first.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don't, your eminent career as a practicing psychiatrist will be over.”
Jenna's heart dropped and she felt unable to say anything, her lips twitching.
“I'll text you my L.A address,” Bormann stated, not waiting for an answer. “I suggest you come and meet me.”
With that, Bormann hung up the phone and Jenna sat in her Jeep in shock for a moment. Shaking herself and getting it together, she started up the engine and turned the vehicle around in the road, before roaring out of there and toward the address Bormann had texted her.
Half an hour later, she was driving through the gates of a huge Hollywood mansion. When she pulled up outside the large, pillared house, a man dressed in a black suit, black shirt and black tie, wearing mirrored Aviator shades, was there to meet her.
The man opened the door of her Jeep and immediately said, “Mr. Bormann is awaiting you in the lounge. You just walk into the house and take the first right. He'll be waiting for you there.”
After that, he didn't say another word and Jenna emerged from the car in a daze, holding in her hand the folder containing Sam's report. Before long, she was entering the lounge where a well-groomed man, obviously Stan Bormann, was sprawled out on a large red leather couch. When she entered, he merely waved his hand in a nonchalant manner toward a chair that sat in front of him.
Jenna seated herself, placing the folder on her lap, and they sat opposite one another in silence for a while.
Bormann then gradually beamed her a knowing smile.
“Is that the report?” he asked, nodding toward the folder.
“Yes,” Jenna mumbled.
“Can I see it?”
Jenna let out a sigh, picked up the folder and tossed it across to the slouching Bormann, the thing landing on his lap. He continued to glare across at Jenna and then, with sloth-like movements, he listlessly picked the folder up and began leafing through the report.
Having spent a minute or two flicking through it, Bormann tossed it across the room, scattering its pages all over the floor, before leaning forward and fixing a laser-like glare on Jenna. Slowly, he placed his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in the palms of his hands.
“So from your report you say he's all okay,” Bormann said after a while, “and that there’s no need for him to go thro
ugh any six-month sabbatical from company affairs.”
“Yes. Sam's perfectly healthy and I think that he is more than capable of making the decisions of his own company.” Jenna put emphasis on those final three words. “And I will tell the board the same tomorrow,” she added.
“No you won't, Mrs. Blackwell,” Bormann said with a sinister casualness. Then, changing his tone slightly, he added, “Do you know much about the Soviet Union and the KGB? Or at least the GDR and the Stasi?”
“I studied some of it in college. We looked at the psychological effects of being spied upon and living in a society in which people are constantly surveilled.”
“It's a good system,” Bormann grinned. “As long as the information is accurate and the laws are reasonably fair. But have you ever heard of kompromat?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“It’s an old Russian Soviet word meaning ‘sensitive information’. Do you know what the state would often do when it had a piece of kompromat on one of its subjects?”
“Usually they went to prison or were blacklisted, usually both. After that, they were only able to get menial jobs and were unable to travel.”
“Yes—those were the little punishments of it all when things went by the book. But did you know that often the state didn't act on the intel in any official capacity. Often they would haul the person in, show them the evidence—the kompromat—and then cut them a deal. You see, if the person had some meaning—was high up in the echelons of power—it meant that the KGB had a powerful ally, someone they could trust, because they were blackmailing them. You see, a person's secrets can always be used to bend their will to your own. With a person’s deepest secrets, you hold their soul in the palm of your hand. The KGB often held dossiers on the highest ranking officials, so that they had an axe to hold over the official's heads, keep them under their control.”
“Where are you heading with this bullshit?” Jenna asked indignantly.
Bormann smiled, sat up, grabbed a remote from the side and switched on a television situated on the wall behind Jenna, so that she couldn't see what was on the screen unless she turned her body all the way around.
But she didn't need to see, however. What was on the screen was abundantly clear the moment it was switched on. She knew instantly from the sounds that had suddenly filled the room through the television’s surround speakers.
It was her and Sam making love.
“You were employed to see Sam as your patient, were you not?” Bormann asked slyly as he slouched back in his couch.
“Yes,” Jenna mumbled pitifully, staring down at the ground in front of her, before adding in a despondent tone, “Turn it off.”
“Pardon?” Bormann let out, having not heard her faint, trembling voice.
“TURN IT OFF!” she screamed at him with full force.
“Okay,” Bormann shrugged, and he switched it off.
“How did you get that?” Jenna let out angrily, turning sharply to Bormann as she did. “Sam said his place was secure.”
“The problem with genius,” he began in his usual, casual tone, “is that it thinks it's too great to be foiled. Sam sure has made his home his fortress, but the moment I became CEO, I had my own geniuses hack into his home security system. The last six months since I did it, there's been very little that’s happened in that house. But when the board showed me your photo when we were deciding which shrink to send, a plan formed in my head and I knew it had to be you—the beautiful Jenna Blackwell, all alone with sad old Sam. And you didn’t disappoint me. For the first time since my boys cracked his CCTV, I got something worth recording.”
“So what,” Jenna said, “you hand it over to the state medical association and I'm disbarred. My career ruined. All my work.” Jenna shut her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? “Fuck it!” she exclaimed as she opened up her eyes and pointed them straight at the sneering Bormann. “Go to them. I've still got my writing career.”
“I'm afraid it's not simply a case of that, Mrs. Blackwell,” Bormann let out in his cloyingly knowing tone of voice. “This won't just find its way to your overseers, it will be released to several pornography producers in the city. I’ll make sure that every teenage boy from here to Shanghai is gonna be pulling his shit to this—the billionaire fucking his sexy shrink! You think you can fuck a man like Sam Burgess and walk away. This thing's gonna haunt you forever. We'll release a statement to the effect that you were actively seeking Sam because of his money and because he could make you famous, thus furthering your precious writing career. We'll state that you were planning to release a tell-all memoir on it. I even have the L.A. Times ready to state that you attempted to sell them the story for a million dollars.” Stan now bent forward and met her burning glare with one of his own. For the first time, his casual expression changed, hardening to a fierce sneer and he growled, “You don't get it, Mrs. Blackwell. I'll fucking ruin you!”
Having underlined his speech with this final sinister statement, Bormann sank back into the couch. Jenna meanwhile sat in absolute shock. Her whole life was spinning around her and she wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and swallow her. A sudden nausea hit her stomach and she thought that she would be sick. But she held it in. She wouldn't suffer the indignity of being ill in front of that man for all the world.
Without looking at Bormann, and with tears welling in her eyes, Jenna said, “So I take it you want me to write another report stating that Sam is incapable. You want me to have him removed from any decision-making processes as far as the company is concerned, so that you can have him and his company in your own pocket. Am I right?”
“Very good, Mrs. Blackwell. You're right on the money there. I want you to betray your boyfriend in the most awful way—by having his company taken away from him and giving him no option but to abide by my rules like every other employee of Techsoft. He needs to learn that he's nothing but a big brain. The real muscle comes from men like me.”
Jenna turned sharply to face Bormann and snarled, “You really are a terrible piece of shit, you know that?”
Bormann simply smiled, bent forward and whispered, “In my world, that's the biggest compliment a man can get.”
Jenna wiped her eyes and asked if she was free to leave.
“Of course,” Bormann replied. “All I need is a yes or a no. Which is it?”
Jenna stood up sharply and without looking down at Bormann, she simply said, “Yes.”
The creepy CEO let out a huge grin like a cat standing over a trapped mouse, one paw pinning down its tail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The day after giving birth, Claire was lying in her hospital bed signing the last of the adoption forms. Paul was sitting silently beside her watching the whole thing with a sadness dwelling inside of him, but knowing that essentially it was for the best.
Once she was finished filling it all in, Claire looked up at the woman from the adoption agency and asked, “Are you taking him today?”
“Not yet,” the woman replied as she packed the forms away into her briefcase. “He’ll stay in the hospital for another few days and after that, he’ll be sent to a foster mother for a short time before being allocated with a couple.”
“How long will it be before you allocate him?”
“Well, usually within one month. We have several families that are waiting, so it shouldn’t be any longer than a month.”
Claire gave a wilted grin to this. It wasn’t long after that when the woman left. Once she was gone, Claire simply sat in bed gazing up at the ceiling, Paul sat beside her holding delicately onto her hand.
“I’ve been meaning to say,” he began as they sat alone, “your ma called several times last night.”
Claire turned sharply to him. The night before, Paul had taken her phone outside into the hospital car park while she was sleeping. It was primarily so he could use it to call Beth and inform her that Claire had had the baby and was alright. However, the moment he switched it on, Paul
found several messages from June. As he’d gotten off the phone to Beth, Claire’s mother had immediately called. The first one he’d ignored. But then she phoned again, and again. So he’d decided to pick it up.
“She did,” Claire said.
“And I picked it up,” Paul admitted.
“Why?”
“Because she seemed desperate.”
“What did she say?” Claire wanted to know.
“She’d had a bad dream about you and couldn’t get back to sleep,” Paul explained to her. “She wanted to check if you were okay, she said that she dreamed you were in a lot of pain. It was spooky.”
“Not really if you knew my ma,” Claire retorted. “She worries so much about me, my brother and my dad that she constantly dreams of us being in some kind of pain or general trouble.”
“Yeah, but the day you were giving birth?! I mean it wasn’t twenty minutes after I left you.”
“I guess,” she let out in a sad tone.
Claire felt a pang in her heart. A pang of guilt. She hadn’t seen her mother in over eight months. She’d given every excuse under the sun to prevent contact, making her mother infinitely unhappy in the process. She’d then had a baby in secret—something that was supposed to be shared between mother and daughter. Claire felt so guilty in the eyes of her mother and it filled her with abject sadness.
“Where did you say I was?” Claire asked.
“I told her that you were in the library studying and that you’d left your phone around my place the night before. I said that you were good and that I wouldn’t be seeing you until the next morning when we had class together and that I’d get you to call her as soon as possible.”
“What else did she say?”
“She asked all about me and what I was up to and whether I was hopeful of passing the year. Then I did something stupid that may piss you off.”
“What could you possibly do to piss me off, Paul?”
“Possibly this,” he said nervously.