by Jess Bentley
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’re Mr. Pierce Cochran, correct? Mr. Pierce John Cochran?”
I finally look up, and when I do, I’m not entirely sure what to make of the scene that lays before me. A man stands in my doorway, a chubby man in an ill-fitting suit with the twirled mustache of a cartoon villain. And he’s holding a little girl. She’s somewhere between one and two years old, and she has curly blonde ringlets, and huge green eyes. Eyes that look a lot like my own.
“I am. I mean. Yes? The company daycare is on the third floor. I’m not sure what I can do for you up here.” Even as I say the words, I know that’s not why this man is here. Everything in my heart is telling me that my day is about to get a lot more complicated than dropped phone calls and missed staff meetings. The man walks into my office and sits down without being asked, as the little girl smiles and giggles in his lap. He looks equal parts exhausted and amused.
“Mr. Cochran. My name is Roger Bailey and I am a private practice attorney that handles mostly real estate and the occasional wills and trusts. But recently, I had a new client come to me with a very interesting request, and given the nature of that request, and the timeliness of it, I couldn’t turn them down. So, Mr. Cochran, here we are.”
I try to remain calm, and focus on the lawyer, instead of the little girl, who I swear is looking straight through to my soul. “And may I ask who exactly the other half of ‘we’ is?”
He bounces the little girl on his knee, and she laughs in a way that feels familiar, yet entirely foreign. “This is Chloe Louise Cochran, your daughter.”
The silence that fills the room is louder than anything I could possibly say. I’m not even sure how long I am sitting there, just staring at the little girl. Eventually, the lawyer gets impatient and clears his throat. “Mr. Cochran?”
“My daughter? That’s ridiculous. She’s what? Two-years-old? Where has she been all this time? Who is her mother? And how do I know I’m really her father? This could be a shake-down.”
Bailey reaches into the briefcase at his side and pulls out a stack of papers, sliding them across the desk to me. “Ridiculous or not, Mr. Cochran, it’s the truth. You are welcome to have a DNA test conducted to prove parentage but I’m sure you’ll find that everything is in order. As far as the identity of little Chloe’s mother, I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
“Confidential? What the hell do you mean confidential? You have to tell me who her mother is!”
Bailey points to the paper at the top of the stack. “I don’t, actually. You see, the mother was in a very… precarious position that left her unable to care for the girl, and it was her wish that Chloe be allowed to move on without you coloring her life with memories of her mother. So, you will find that all traces of the little girl’s parentage unrelated to you will be impossible to find.”
“How did you manage that?” I sputter out.
“Never you mind. All that matters now is that Chloe is cared for, per her mother’s request of me. And I am quite sure that you don’t want to see this sweet little angel, your daughter, end up in the system. Can I count on you to make sure that doesn’t happen, young man?”
I sit, staring at this squat little man, holding a perfect little baby with my facial features, and have no idea what to do. I can’t even remember ever holding a baby, let alone considering becoming a father. I feel like I’m going to be sick, and can’t seem to be able to form any kind of coherent sentence. Everything coming out of my mouth is gibberish.
“I don’t. I can’t. Where. How. I’m just. I’m here. You. But she. You. Me. Why. Uh… yes?”
The next thing I know, Chloe is sitting in my lap, Bailey is handing me his business card, and walking back out my door as suddenly as he appeared. I look down at Chloe, her long eyelashes fluttering and her little hands reaching out to me, and I do the only thing I can think of. I pick up the phone on my desk and dial.
“Mom? Can you come to the office?... No, now. It’s… an emergency.”
Part Two
Arie
New York City, Present Day
I’m curled up in a hospital bed in Sloane-Kettering hospital, frantically pressing the release button on the device that administers my pain medications, but nothing is happening. I know it’s too soon for another dose, but the drugs aren’t working anymore. It’s taking more and more of them to even make a dent in my pain. The doctors are absolutely baffled by my condition at this point, mostly because I was supposed to be dead six months ago. Yet, here I lay, hospital bills mounting, pain getting worse, and no closer to any answer than I was when this whole nightmare started.
Worst of all, I haven’t seen my daughter in six months. I have no idea how she is doing, if she is happy and healthy, whether Pierce is taking good care of her. I made Mr. Bailey promise to cease all contact with me after he handed Chloe over to Pierce, but now that I seem to be clinging to life in spite of every diagnosis, my dreams are plagued with thoughts of the little girl I gave away. What if I did it for no reason? What if I live to be a hundred, just miserable and in pain the whole time? Is that any kind of life for a little one anyway?
If I’m not thinking about Chloe, or how sick I am, I’m thinking about the loan sharks from whom I borrowed money to pay off the first round of bills. I put all my chips on being dead before I’d have to pay them back, and now…I’m still here. Not only do I owe some very violent men close to $75,000, but I’ve added over $100,000 to my mounting debt. So far, the hospital has been cutting me some slack because I paid off the initial bill — they certainly didn’t care where the money came from the first time. But I don’t think their generosity will last forever, and the longer I live like this, the more money I am going to owe. Being sick and terrified? That’s no way to get better. If getting better is even an option for me.
My day nurse, Alicia, comes into my room with a syringe and a bowl of broth. I feel my body go stiff at the thought of eating, but they keep trying to make me eat anyway, even though most of my nutrition comes in the form of IVs these days.
“Honey, you’re never going to force that machine to do anything it doesn’t want to. But I got permission from Doctor Gould to give you a little booster. She’s going to be down soon to talk with you. In the meantime, is there any chance today you can take a few spoonfuls of this broth? Even one?”
I shake my head and curl up into a tighter ball. “No, thank you. Just the medicine.”
Alicia sighs. We have the same conversation every day and I never change my answer, but it doesn’t stop her from asking. “All right, sweetheart. Here is your shot,” she says as she injects the drugs into the IV line. “Close your eyes until Doctor Gould gets here.”
It’s only seconds before a wave of dizziness washes over me, and I don’t care about my pain anymore. All I care about is sleeping. The drugs make it impossible for me to keep track of trivial things, like the time, or what day it is, so when I hear my name, I have no concept of how long I’ve actually been asleep. I open my eyes and see Doctor Melanie Gould sitting next to me on the bed. Her long red hair is swept up in a stylish braid, and her usually tired eyes seem to be alight with an excitement I’ve never seen in her before.
“Arie, I need you to wake up. I need you to confirm you’re with me. We need to have a talk.”
I shake my head a little, trying to wiggle loose the cobwebs of sleep. “Yes, I’m awake. What is it?”
“Arie…I have something very important to tell you. You don’t have pancreatic cancer.”
For a second, all of the blood in my body stops flowing. “I… what?”
“I’m going to be straight with you, Arie. If you had pancreatic cancer, you would have been dead by now. So, I’ve been running some tests and looking through all of your scans and charts. I believe you have something called intestinal ischemia, or more specifically, acute mesenteric artery ischemia. Basically, you have blood clots all through your intestines, causing blockages. It has all the same symptoms of pancreatic cancer, bu
t it takes a lot longer to do you in. You had a mass in your pancreas, but once that was removed, that part of your illness was all resolved.”
I try to sit up, but the pain stops me, so I just prop myself on the pillow and reach out for Doctor Gould’s arm. “What does this mean? Am I still going to die? Is there a way to treat it?”
“We’re going to have to do surgery to confirm, and if I’m right, we’ll have to remove the clots, and possibly remove damaged sections of your intestine. You may have to be on medications to prevent infections, and future clots from forming again. But Arie… if this is the answer, then you won’t just live. You’re going to feel 99% better again in less than a month.”
She barely finishes her sentence before I burst into tears. I never imagined a future in which I’d be alive, let alone feel normal again. The concept is so overwhelming I can’t even process it. A flood of thoughts and emotions overtake me all at once, and then, two thoughts win out.
Oh god… the loan sharks.
Oh god… my Chloe.
Pierce
New York City, Present Day
I hear the sound of a crash from the kitchen, then a scream, and I almost knock over my laptop trying to scramble up to my feet from the couch. The last time I saw Chloe, she was sitting safely in the confines of a playpen just on the other side of the living room, playing happily with her blocks. I took my eyes off her long enough to answer some emails from the office, and apparently, that was all she needed to jimmy open the lock on the playpen gate and toddle her way into the kitchen. By the time I get to her only seconds later, I find her on the floor, covered in the flour and sugar she has somehow knocked off the counter by yanking down a dish towel. She looks up at me with a grin, and I have to stifle down every ounce of exasperation I’m feeling at having to give her a bath for the third time today.
If it isn’t already clear, I have no idea what I’m doing. In fact, I have less than no idea. Sometimes, I think I might have been reverse engineered to the point I am incapable of taking care of a child. On the day the lawyer dropped Chloe off at the office, I’d called my mother to come help. Of course, little did she know, I had intended to hand her Chloe and request that she watch her. Just until she was eighteen or so. Mom had walked in my office, cooed and fussed over what a beautiful baby Chloe was, said how happy she was to have a grandchild, and then smacked me across the back of the head with a well-manicured hand.
“You made this mess. You figure it out. I’m not a babysitter. And I’ve already raised two children. I’m happy to be a grandparent, but you’re the father.”
Dad had not only backed her up, but made it crystal clear that anything other than welcoming my child into the family with open eyes was going to be a PR nightmare (thanks, Dad). So that night, Dad had all my things moved over to a penthouse apartment owned by the company in a newly-renovated high-rise in midtown, bought me a bunch of baby stuff I had no clue how to use, shook my hand, and told me, “Good luck, son! See you at work tomorrow. Be sure to utilize our fabulous company daycare program!”
Seriously. Thanks, Dad.
I wish I could say I feel like Chloe’s father, that there was some kind of instantaneous bond and I knew she was mine from the moment I saw her. But the truth is, sometimes I still feel like I’m living with a tiny roommate who screams at me for food and wakes me up in the middle night for no reason. Of course, the family insisted on a blood test, which unequivocally confirmed she is mine, but there are days when I look at her and she feels like a stranger.
Maybe if I’d had time to adjust to the idea of being a father. But as it stands, she may as well have been left on my doorstep in a basket. I know things will change, maybe even soon, but right now? Being a single dad sucks. After work, all I want is a nap, a beer, and five minutes to myself to watch a football game. Instead, I have this tiny creature literally crawling into my lap and biting me. Which she has done. Several times.
As I get Chloe into the bath and begin rinsing the partially-formed cake batter out of her curly blonde tendrils, my phone starts ringing. I see it’s my mother and put it on speaker.
“Hello, Pierce? It’s your mother, Carol.”
Why does she announce herself like we’ve never met before? Every damn time.
“I know who you are, Mother. What is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
She lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, darling, Your father and I have decided that you are spreading yourself too thin and need some help with Chloe. We’ve placed inquiries with a local agency about hiring someone to come in and watch her nights and weekends, just at first on a trial basis. Then maybe full time if you all get on well enough. Your father thinks it’s a little unseemly for his grandchild to be using the free employee daycare, though I think he’s being a proper snob about it.”
“When isn’t dad a snob?” I ask as Chloe starts blowing bubbles off the top of the bath water, making herself laugh hysterically. “He told me to use the daycare, you know.”
“You know him. He doesn’t quite know what to say when it comes to Chloe.”
“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know much of anything about how to interact with his kids, let alone his grandchild.” I sigh and lean back in my chair. The weight of the world seems to fall on me. The daycare at work is good, and my parents are in my shit, complicating things again. I guess I’m the one who had the kid. And the shitty grades in college. And the naked arrest. I bite my lip.
“Fair enough, poppet. You may be getting some calls from applicants for the job so just make sure to answer your phone. And hire someone quickly. Your father says things are about to get even busier at the office now that you have this government contract.”
I roll my eyes. “Is there anything dad doesn’t tell you? That was supposed to be entirely confidential.”
“You know your father. Kisses to Chloe!” She hangs up before I can say anything else, and I know this wasn’t so much a conversation as an edict. For all their talk about me taking responsibility, my parents still treat me like a child more often than not, and it only got worse when I came back injured. In this case, however, I can’t say I’m upset. The idea of having someone to help me with Chloe is undeniably appealing, and it would give me the opportunity to get back to work full-time, instead of just “whenever I can manage it,” like I am now.
I tuck the phone into my jeans and turn back to Chloe, who holds up her wet arms in the air and waves for me to pick her up. While she is walking really well for her age, she still doesn’t talk. Not even half-formed words or baby talk. We took her to a doctor, who said she may have delays in her speech due to all of the changes she’s endured, as well as any possible trauma we can’t really know about. Once a week, I take her to a speech therapist who works with her on developing her language skills, but so far, not a peep. Mom thinks she’ll just talk when he’s ready, and I’m happy not to rush her. She cries or babbles when she needs something, and until she’s prepared to talk, that will have to do.
I dry Chloe off and put her in a pair of pink cartoon character pajamas, and we plop back down on the couch in front of the TV, where I put on her favorite Disney movie. It was Frozen last week. Now it’s Sleeping Beauty. She does something that sounds like humming when the Tchaikovsky music plays, and her little fingers reach up and curl into my hair. It isn’t long before she falls asleep in my arms, and as her tiny chest rises and falls, and her little eyelashes flutter while she dreams, I feel a knot form in my chest.
It feels a lot like love.
Arie
I take a deep breath as I open the heavy wooden door to the bar on Avenue F where Danny told me to meet him. The truth is, I’m lucky he wanted to meet me in a bar, and didn’t just show up at the hospital the day I walked out. I don’t even know how they found out I’d been released, but I guess that’s why these guys are so good at their job, and why they always get their money back… one way or another.
I’d only been out of the hospital for a few days when my
cell phone started ringing. First it was Leo, the loan shark I’d borrowed the money from in the first place. When I explained my situation and asked for more time, I was not-so-delicately informed that I’d had more than enough time, and my time had run out. Then Danny started calling, and Danny didn’t sound like he much patience for anything. Danny would probably steal the rosary from a nun if it would get him a few bucks closer to getting his money back. And Danny was the second-to-last stop before the end of the line, in which a man with a gun followed me into an alley and decided teaching me a lesson was more important than money.
Disappointing Danny meant my life was over, once again. For someone so young, lately a lot of people have been telling me I’m going to die.
When I walk in the bar, every eye turns and stares at me, like I’ve invaded some sort of private club and their withering glances alone will be enough to send me back into the street. But in the corner, a burly man with a beard leans over from a booth and gestures for me to join him, so I assume that’s Danny, though I’m not sure how he knew what I’d look like. To be fair, I have a feeling there isn’t much these men don’t know about me by this point. I just hope they haven’t dug deep enough to find out about Chloe. Bailey promised he’d do everything in his power to make sure she could never be traced back to me, and he seems like a man of his word.
I sit down across from Danny, and he just stares right through me. When he speaks, his voice his thick with a Newark accent, and it booms throughout the bar.
“I’d ask if you want to join me for a beer, but you shouldn’t be spending any money right now.”