by Austin Bates
The doctor looked back over his notes before answering. “Depending on when the baby was conceived, it’s not out of the question for something like this to be missed. Yes, he was in the hospital, and we did plenty of blood tests at the time and none showed signs of pregnancy. Which can only mean the fertilized egg had not yet been implanted. Implantation generally takes about a week from conception. Since you were discharged to your parents’ care in less than a week, then it’s entirely plausible for us to have missed this since it was so early in the pregnancy.”
“I’m gonna go ahead and order that ultrasound for you. Once the tech is ready they’ll take you over and take a look. We should be able to tell pretty quickly how far along you are.” Without another word, the doctor turned and left the room.
“How...” Hunter’s voice trailed off. He stared towards his feet as his mind reeled. “Twelve weeks? So...I was already...when I lost my...” Even with the doctor’s explanation he couldn’t wrap his head around how it was possible or the implications.
“It doesn’t matter how,” said Vincent, folding his arms. “The only thing that matters is what are you going to do about it?”
Hunter looked over at him with a bewildered expression.
“If you want my opinion, you shouldn’t keep it. It’s another memory from a past you don’t have. You got pregnant in a different lifetime. You shouldn’t be held to a decision that you personally never actually made. You’re someone else now. It wouldn’t be fair for you to have to deal with a child for the rest of your life because of that.” Vincent eyed him with a cold glare that sent chills down Hunter’s spine.
“But...I mean, who...”
“That doesn’t matter either,” insisted Vincent. “All that matters is what you want. You’re the one that has to carry a baby to term. You’re the one that’s going to be stuck caring for it.”
Vincent’s intensity was overwhelming, but Hunter remained strong. He wasn’t about to make a decision just yet. Whatever choice he made was going to be life altering. It wasn’t something he could simply rush into. Not without figuring everything out first. There was so much he didn’t know.
“The longer you wait, the harder it is,” continued Vincent. “You can’t put it off.”
“Vincent, please stop. Just let me think,” blurted Hunter. “I’m not ready to decide yet. Please just let me figure this out.”
Vincent lapsed into silence, but it was clear he wasn’t pleased. His early proclamation of love for Hunter’s strong personality seemed to be unfounded. It was obvious he preferred the much weaker and more pliable Hunter.
If he wanted any sort of advice on this situation, he was going to have to go to someone else.
HUNTER DITCHED VINCENT at the hospital. He mumbled some sort of excuse about needing to be alone to figure things out and had gotten a taxi to take him home. The whole ride back he had debated on who to call. Who should he turn to for advice in a situation like this?
Part of him wanted to call Allen, but he wasn’t ready for Luke to learn about his pregnancy. The ultrasound had confirmed that he was roughly twelve weeks pregnant. There was no doubt in his mind Luke was the father if they’d been engaged and planning their wedding at the time.
His only other option was one he had tried to avoid at all costs. But he didn’t know who else to turn to. As he dropped onto the sofa in his apartment, he pulled up the number on his phone and made the call.
“Hunter?” Melinda sounded unsure of herself when she answered the phone. He didn’t blame her, he’d never called her first before. It was always the other way around.
He swallowed, trying to remove the dryness from his throat. “H-hi Mom,” he managed at last.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You don’t sound very good.”
Hunter’s voice broke and for a moment he found himself unable to speak at all. Tears of frustration welled in his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, but just as he thought he’d gotten everything under control, another wave of tears spilled forth.
“Honey?” Melinda sounded worried. “Are you at home?”
“Y-yes.” Hunter’s voice cracked and the word came out as a half choked sob.
“Sit tight. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
True to her word, Melinda reached the apartment in half an hour. She let herself in with her own key and immediately went to Hunter’s side. He hadn’t moved from the sofa since he’d made the call. His eyes were fixed on the blank wall across from him.
Hunter looked over at his mother as she sat beside him, and for the first time he understood what family was. She hadn’t asked him anything, she was simply there for him. Just like she had been when he woke up from the hospital and for every step of the way through therapy. He didn’t remember every bump and scrape and birthday, but that didn’t matter.
All that mattered was she was there for him.
“I’m pregnant,” he sobbed as she sat beside him. He handed her the black and white ultrasound pictures. “They said it’s twelve weeks along.”
Without a word, Melinda sorted through the pictures. A moment later, she pulled him into her arms and held him.
The closeness, the support, and her love enveloped him. He buried his face in her arms and allowed himself to cry and vent all of his frustration and anguish. In between tears, he told her everything that had happened with Luke and Vincent. He explained his confusion and his constant battle to try and distinguish himself from whom he had been before.
Melinda said nothing until he was done and his tears had dried. She merely sat and listened as he shed the emotional weight that had been holding him down.
When he finally stopped talking and sat up again, she spoke. “There’s always a place for you if you want to come home,” she offered. “We can pack you into the car, and I can take you back home right now.”
Hunter was silent for a moment. He had struggled so hard to get out of his parents’ house and be on his own again. Now, not even a month later he was ready to jump on her offer. He’d been wrong, he wasn’t ready for any of this. He wasn’t ready to be on his own. He needed time, he needed space to figure out who he was and what he wanted.
“If you do that though,” continued Melinda, “you need to understand you’ll be giving up everything you have here.”
Hunter’s heart skipped a beat and he glanced over at her.
“If you come back home,” she continued, “we’re more than willing to have you. But your father and I can’t afford to help you keep up your payments on this place. If you’re not living here, you’re going to have to let it go. You know we live out in the suburbs. It’s not a bad drive really, but any friends you’ve connected with here are going to have a hard time coming to see you. It’s going to be difficult for you to go see them since you don’t have a car or a license. Those friendships will suffer and you’ll grow apart.”
“But maybe that’s what you need. Some distance so you can clear your head and figure out who you are. Maybe you’ll realize that they don’t really mean anything to you at all.”
His growing friendship with Allen and the art dealer job he’d been training for would probably be lost. Not to mention that his chances of ever seeing Luke again were almost nil. Did all of that really mean nothing to him? Could he just run away from everything? Did he want to?
“How am I supposed to decide what to do?” he asked.
“How does anyone decide anything?” asked Melinda. “If you sit around waiting until you have all the information and all the pieces to the puzzle, you may find the opportunity has already passed you by. You can’t wait forever. You’ve got to do the best you can with the information you’ve got.”
“If I go home with you, I’m never going to progress beyond this point. Am I?” He looked over at Melinda and she shook her head slowly. “I’m always going to be stuck like this. I won’t be able to grow and become an actual functioning member of society if I let this beat me.”
“I’m not a magician
. I don’t have a crystal ball that can see into the future. All I know is, whatever happens next is up to you.”
Hunter rose from the couch and took a deep breath. He tried to focus on what he wanted, on the future he saw for himself, but it was all a blurry mess. In the midst of all that blur, however, one face kept emerging. Luke.
His feelings about Luke were still confused. How was he supposed to know if Luke really wanted him or just the memory of him? Could he enter into a relationship with someone who was still in love with a ghost?
Hunter absently pressed his hand to his belly.
“You should at least give him a chance,” said Melinda softly, as if reading his mind. “Even if you don’t want to be with him anymore, that baby is only half yours. If you don’t want it, then you should at least give him the opportunity to care for his child.”
Vincent’s argument sprung to his mind.
“But I’ll still have to carry it and give birth,” said Hunter. Did any of that even matter to him?
“You do,” nodded Melinda. “But I think, if nothing else, you owe it to your past self to at least try and make sure this baby is born.”
“But I didn’t make the decision to get pregnant.” Hunter realized he was parroting Vincent, and he silently hated himself for it. That didn’t change the fact that on some level he shared all of the fears Vincent had pointed out to him.
“Neither did your past self,” stated Melinda, looking Hunter directly in the eye. “Think about it. You were an up and coming lawyer who would’ve made partner in less than a year. You were also less than a month from getting married. You were taking off, and the sky was the limit. You didn’t have time to be a dad. A baby would’ve put the brakes on everything you had in motion. So this isn’t something that your past self did to you. This is a situation you would have found yourself in no matter what.”
Hunter looked away from her. What she’d said made sense. It didn’t change the fact he didn’t remember the act of actually getting pregnant. Chances are his past self wouldn’t have remembered either. That didn’t mean he was any more comfortable with this than he had been before.
“Let me ask you something,” continued Melinda as Hunter returned to the sofa once more. “You said you slept with Luke, right?”
Hunter nodded slowly.
“Did you use protection?”
“No. But this baby—“
“Is still yours and Luke’s baby. This is no different than if you’d gotten pregnant from having sex with him last week. It’s just a little bit further along. That’s all.” Melinda seemed to think that was the end of the conversation because she rose from the couch and headed to the kitchen.
“But he doesn’t love me,” insisted Hunter as he followed after her.
“Bull,” spat Melinda. She stopped in the kitchen and turned to look at him. “There’s one thing both you and Luke need to get straight. You’re you. That’s it. There’s no past Hunter and current Hunter. You’re a single person. You might not remember anything about it, but you can’t change all the things you did before. Luke loved you before, he still loves you now, and that’ll never change. You two are punishing yourselves and everyone around you because you’re caught up in this notion that somehow you stopped being everything you were before.”
Hunter stopped short. It was as if he’d just been slapped across the face. His entire body quivered as he tried to wrap his head around what she’d said. No. She was wrong. He was different now. He was decidedly different. He was making new memories and it wasn’t fair of other people to hold him to his old thoughts and commitments.
Was it?
He swallowed. “Mom...I don’t...I’m not who I was.”
“Hunter,” she stepped towards him and took his hands in her own. “You are. Just because you don’t remember, doesn’t mean you’ve lost everything. Your quirks and mannerisms are all the same. You still have the same habits and preferences. You can’t remember them sometimes, but they’re there. I understand you’re confused and lost, but underneath all of that you’re still Hunter Kilder. And no, I’m not just projecting because I want my son and I want him to remain the same and never change. I’ve always been honest with you.”
“You’ve spent the last several months running from your past, fighting who you were, and trying to avoid anything that might make it seem like you’re following in your own footsteps. But I think that if you stopped running for just a minute, you’ll find that you didn’t have anything to run from after all. In fact, you might actually enjoy it.”
Chapter Sixteen
Luke’s hands were trembling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. He’d thrown himself into his work to avoid the thoughts that plagued him. Dozens of cityscapes had been painted and ruined adding to his collection of broken scenes. He had no other inspiration than the raw emotion that seemed to run through him every minute of every day.
Allen had been unable to distract him from his frenzied artistic endeavors. As far as Luke was concerned, the world outside of his apartment might as well not even exist anymore. Hunter had rejected him, and his world had crumbled.
All of the advice and discussion he and Allen had about the matter ended the same way. Hunter had made a decision, and Luke was unwilling to force the matter. He hated the thought of forcing his former fiancé to be with him out of obligation or persuasion. He wanted Hunter to choose him because he wanted to. That was the only thing, in his mind, that would make any of this better.
On the day of the gallery show, he was late. He had stood in front of his bathroom mirror for nearly an hour trying to decide whether or not he was actually going to put in an appearance. He finally concluded he owed it to Allen to at least go for a little while.
Reluctantly, he cleaned himself up and dug out a decent looking outfit from his dresser. With a heavy heart, and leaden feet, he left the apartment. He felt his chest tighten as he passed the door to Hunter’s apartment. Not wanting to chance an encounter with his former lover, he hurried into the elevator.
The chilly mid-winter wind blew past him as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. It was early evening. The street lights had already come on, and the lights of the city were aglow.
As he drew closer to the gallery, his pace slowed considerably. He tried to mentally prepare himself for the hubbub and shoulder rubbing of the city’s elite. Everyone would want to shake hands with the artist, they always did, but none of them wanted to meet a man that looked like his heart had been ripped from his chest and thrown in the gutter.
He forced a smile, practiced pleasantries, and tried to will himself into a better mood. It was important to look as if he was overjoyed to be there, even if his smile was fake.
By the time he reached the gallery, it was already full of well-dressed individuals sipping champagne as they paced the interior. Luke hovered outside for a moment, staring through the windows. None of the paintings had been hung too near the windows, the direct sunlight during the day would have harmed them. That made it difficult to see which of his paintings was getting the most attention from outside.
“Looks like I’m not the only one running late,” said a voice that sent Luke’s heart into the pit of his stomach. He glanced to his right and saw Hunter standing there wrapped in a coat and heavy scarf. His bright eyes almost seemed to glitter in the cold and his breath followed him like a cloud.
Of course Hunter would be here. He’d been training with Allen for this very night, hadn’t he? Luke could feel his pulse quicken. Despite the days they’d spent apart, their last night together played through his head. The heat and phantom smell of sex caused a chill to run down his spine.
“Don’t make it awkward,” said Hunter, looking away and burying his face in his scarf. The cold had made his cheeks rosy and the tips of his ears pink.
“S-sorry,” said Luke, trying to think of something to say to relieve the tension in the air. “I couldn’t figure out what to wear. That’s why I’m late.” He forced a chuckle t
hat he hoped sounded more relaxed than he felt.
“I didn’t want to come,” admitted Hunter, simply. “I knew you’d be here. I...” he looked back over at Luke. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something. This isn’t really the time...” his voice trailed off as several pedestrians walked too close to them. He resumed once they had passed out of earshot. “This isn’t really the time or the place for the conversation we need to have. But I’d rather it take place somewhere neutral.”
Luke frowned. What was left to say? Unless Hunter wanted to try and push their relationship forward again, and he doubted that, there was nothing more to talk about as far as he was concerned.
Despite his reservations Luke heard himself say, “Just tell me where.”
“The park, tomorrow at noon,” said Hunter without hesitation. He looked as if he’d been practicing that for a while.
“Okay.” Luke nodded in agreement. He didn’t trust himself to say much else.
“I’m heading inside,” said Hunter, stepping past him towards the entrance. “Don’t take too long out here. They’re here for you after all.” A moment later, he disappeared inside.
Luke sighed and tried to regather the resolve that he’d prepared on his walk over. Taking a deep breath, he followed after Hunter.
The moment Luke entered the gallery, he knew something was wrong.
Hunter had frozen in place less than five feet from the entrance and was staring wide eyed at the wall ahead of him.
The painting was impossible to miss, displayed on the far wall opposite the entrance so it was the first thing you saw when you entered the gallery. A large canvas featured Hunter, nude, from an extremely low angle. Luke had taken a Polaroid of him from below and painted the picture from that. He’d been experimenting with non-traditional portrait angles and Hunter had been all too willing to accommodate him.
Unfortunately, this Hunter didn’t remember any of that.
“That wasn’t supposed to be here,” said Luke, quickly stepping towards Hunter. “I gave Allen plenty of other images to use. That was supposed to be in storage.”