Right Now, I'm Anyone's

“Congratulations, Miss Cole...or should I be giving my commiserations?” a young, dark-haired Latina woman who had introduced herself to Georgia and I as Dr. Maria Cortez when we had arrived in her office twenty minutes earlier. I noticed that she wasn’t the same doctor as last time, which was quite odd as they normally don’t mix and match when it comes to pregnancies. Her eyes strayed from me as she gave Georgia a very subtle look before taking her seat back behind her desk. She placed a thin, pale brown folder down on top of her desk before closing it and beaming at me in a reassuring way. She was friendly, with warm eyes and a kind smile that set my mind at ease a little.

“The pregnancy test that Dr. Rogers ran on Monday has come back as a positive,” she explained, making sure to keep her warm smile in place on that pretty face. “We can confirm that you are just shy of nine weeks, Miss Cole.”

I actually couldn’t speak. Like, I couldn’t get my voice to work or my brain to work to make my voice work. All I could do was sit there and stare at Dr. Cortez with my mouth wide open and my heart hammering still, even though she had already confirmed my fear. I clutched tight onto Georgia’s hand like a security blanket and felt her flinch whenever my nails dug into her skin. Since I was doing such an abysmal job of speaking for myself, Georgia cleared her throat to get Dr. Cortez’s attention.

“I don’t think Leila was really expecting this; she and her boyfriend didn’t plan to get pregnant,” Georgia said with a level voice, returning the doctor’s smile. “Maybe she should know what options she has right now?”

Dr. Cortez nodded her head in agreement. “Certainly, that would be a good idea”-she paused to turn her attention back to me-“There are two ways that you can deal with an...unwanted pregnancy at this point. The first would be the termination of the foetus, which will be legally available to you for up to twenty-four weeks into your pregnancy – after that, there’s nothing we can do. The second option would be to go through with your pregnancy and give birth to the child, and during the time before the birth, you may set up an open adoption with a suitable applicant or applicants.”

Dr. Cortez looked at me with patient expectancy in her eyes, waiting for me to swallow the large breath I had just sucked in. The whole abortion thing was still something that deeply disturbed me, and still definitely out for the count. The idea of giving my child up – however unplanned or unwanted it was – to strangers that I didn’t know. How could I know if they were trustworthy? What if my child ended up hating me for giving it up? My life isn’t derelict, I earn good money and I have a permanent residence – meaning that I’m perfectly capable of raising it. It wouldn’t be able to see the reason for me giving it up.

“Miss Cole-Leila,” Dr. Cortez said. “I know it isn’t my business, but is there any reason your boyfriend didn’t accompany you either of the two times you’ve been here?”

“He doesn’t know that I’m pregnant yet,” I said in a quiet voice. “I wanted it confirmed first before I told him.”

No, I was hoping that the pregnancy test Georgia made me do was faulty, and that I wasn’t pregnant so that I could just go back to my own life and forget about everything that happened over the last few months. But now that I was definitely pregnant, there was no way that I would forget because there was no one hundred percent guarantee that Levi was this baby’s father. Georgia squeezed my hand lightly and said, “What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Now, now,” Dr. Cortez interrupted. “If she hasn’t decided yet, she still has plenty of time, just don’t leave it for too long.”

“No,” I said, letting go of Georgia’s hand to run my own through my hair. “I’m not comfortable with either of those options.”

She nodded her head and folded her hands on top of a maroon book that lay neatly on her desk. She sat back in her chair and gave me another smile, with nothing but sympathy in her eyes. “That’s understandable, Miss Cole. Many mothers, regardless of whether they want the pregnancy or not, are extremely uncomfortable with their options and often choose to keep their child”-she paused to look down at the book as she flipped it open to the page she wanted-“And since it seems you have made your decision, would you like to be booked in for an ultrasound session?”

Ultrasound? As in, seeing the baby? My baby? I bit my lip for a moment before I nodded, feeling oddly calm. “That’d be amazing, thank you.”

“How does...” she started, running her finger down the page of the book. “Tomorrow, around 10:00AM sound. It’s my only free appointment until Monday.”

“That sounds perfect,” I said, actually smiling for the first time in what felt like weeks. “Thank you again.”

“My pleasure, just report to reception tomorrow at ten,” she smiled. I stood up out of my seat – with Georgia following suit behind me – and let myself out of Dr. Cortez’s office as she started writing something down in the maroon book. Georgia and I walked in total silence until we were outside of the doctor’s surgery, just a couple of minutes away from Flux. I pulled my coat tighter around me as we walked and felt the flakes of snow land on my face and melt.

“Well, that was actually quite surprising,” Georgia said, glancing at me uneasily as we walked with our hands in our pockets as extra insulation against the cold. “I mean, I knew you wouldn’t have an abortion, you’re too...sappy.”

“You thought I’d give it up for adoption?” I asked, shivering despite my hat, scarf and gloves.

“Well, yeah,” she said. “You said that twenty-two was too young and with all the stuff kind of drowning you and I now...I don’t think you’re stable enough to bring a baby into this.”

I shrugged my shoulder. “I have a feeling this baby will bring us closer more than anything else. It’s what he wants, and I’m kind of excited about it, but not at the same time.”

“Oh, no,” she said, rolling her eyes as she laughed once. “Please don’t tell me you’re only going through with this as a way to fix your relationship! That’d be rueller than aborting the thing, Leila.”

I flinched away from her criticisms – after all, if it wasn’t I’s baby there would be no relationship to save. “No, not as a relationship saver. After all that, I kind of want it now. Plus, imagine if I put it up for adoption and the couple turn out to be lunatics or something? Or if my child grew up and hated me for giving it up; I couldn’t stand that.”

“I know, Leila, I do understand what you’re saying,” she said, kicking at a little pile of snow, soaking the leg of her jeans through. “But just think about the options some more. If you go through with it, you won’t be able to go out nearly as much as you’d like, or have fun like a normal twenty-two year old is supposed to.”

I shrugged again. “I don’t care that much. It’d be worth it I suppose.”

“If you say so,” she said, giving up. “When you going to tell ‘ole scumbag?”

“I really hope you don’t mean I,” I muttered darkly, no longer in the mood to argue with her about what I was doing with my life.

“Of course I do.”

“Soon, then,” I snapped. “I’m telling my mum and dad first, before him.” And maybe I’ll tell Dean after that...no, I don’t think so.

“I know you’re pregnant, but don’t start being pissy with me.”

Oh, the audacity. “Don’t start bitching about my boyfriend, then, and I won’t be.”

“I’m right, though,” she mumbled angrily. “Yeah, lately he’s been treating you right, but the second he even looks at you funny, I’m kicking his backside from here to Bangkok and back again.”

“I, just shut up,” I snapped. “I’m so tired of you constantly talking shit about him; he’s being a perfect angel to me, he hasn’t done anything at all to provoke you.”

She muttered “Except being born” and I stormed away from her in anger. I avoided her for the rest of the day, and when I saw her she didn’t make an effort to talk to me. I arrived back at Flux at about one in the afternoon, just under an hour after I had chosen to take my lunch break and go and get my results from the doctor. I walked into the building and went upstairs to put my stuff away, before heading back downstairs again. John had put me back on bar duty, since the upcoming shows were nothing but DJ sets that didn’t need any special light settings until about mid-February, when he had lined up a few gigs – Futures, Last Witness, a band named TRC and a couple of others he hadn’t cared to mention.

I walked across the echoing, cavernous room to the bar, where Zoë was stood hard at work. She had changed a lot since the last time I saw her – she had dyed her blonde and blue hair bright purple, removed all of her piercings except for a stud in either cheek, her bridge piercing and the dermals in her hips, and I had noticed the plugs in her ears had changed from plain black to black and vibrant pink zebra print. The shaved section of her head had grown out, lagging behind the rest of her long hair.

I noticed that she was slamming boxes down onto the counter, glaring at everything and everyone who dared come into her sight. I raised my eyebrow just a little bit – she seemed perfectly fine when I was leaving to go on my lunch break. It was obvious that everybody else was giving her a wide berth so that they wouldn’t be in the line of fire. She didn’t seem to mind me being nearby, though.

“Hey, Zo,” I said softly, ducking underneath the door of the bar and walking over to where the crates were, leaning down to carefully pick one up. “Everything alright?”

She just growled and moved past me to collect another crate, which she slammed down onto the bar top again. “Angry.”

“I can see that,” I said, placing the heavy crate of Corona onto the bar, making sure not to hurt myself or my...ugh, baby. “Has something happened since I left?”

She just exhaled a massive gust of breath, pausing in the middle of collecting another crate as she combed her fingers carefully through the perfect quiff in the middle of her head. “I just got some bad news and stuff earlier, to do with Frank. The short and short of it is that next time I see him, I’m cutting his dick off and making him eat it.”

“Wow, I’d hate to be Frank right now,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “What did he do?”

Ten minutes later, Zoë had finished explaining that the ‘bad news’ she got was a photo from Frank’s friend, a photo that she didn’t know existed, and there were apparently more. It turned out that when she and Frank had returned to the hotel after the Krazyhouse – totally hammered – they had indeed had sex. But what she didn’t know was that Frank had been taking photos of the whole thing. She pulled her Blackberry out of the pocket of her low-rising baggy jeans, tapping in a couple of things before she handed it over to me, showing me a blurry photo of her in the all-together, that had come in a text message from his friend after they had searched through his phone.

“Oh, my God,” I said when I finally got my voice to work properly and my jaw back in its normal place. “Have you talked to him about it yet?”

“Yeah,” she said as she leaned back against the bar and sighed. “I called him as soon as I got the text and he told me his mate took his phone and sent the photo’s to everybody in his address book, including me. I went mental on him for having the photo’s in the first place and he called me a crazy bitch, so I’m not speaking to him, fucking prick.”

“He shouldn’t have taken the photos without you knowing to begin with!” I shuddered, trying to imagine how I would react if somebody did that to me, or what might happen if somebody did that to me. Zoë and I lapsed into our usual comfortable silence and carried on with our work – stacking crates, re-filling fridges, replacing liquor bottles, cleaning the bar top and the drink mixing areas – for another couple of hours. I flitted through the room every now and then, without glancing in my direction of course. It stung that she was ignoring me and I felt sorry for telling her to shut up, but then I reminded myself that she was being, well, not that good a friend.

“What’s with the little princess I today, eh?” Zoë asked, chuckling as she noticed the way I kept her head down as she walked past the bar. “Thought she was your best mate?”

“She is, I suppose,” I answered, ticking off the names of different alcoholic beverages on a checklist John had given to us to keep track of stock. “We had a bit of a disagreement earlier on and she isn’t really being the best friend she could be.”

“What happened, like?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “She just started going on and on about how my boyfriend was a scumbag – again – and wasn’t being too supportive. I told her to shut up and leave it be.”

“And she’s just walking around ignoring you because she’s being a bitch?”

“Apparently,” I sighed. “It doesn’t really matter; I’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.”

*****

“Oh, princess, is that you slamming around all over the place out there?” a familiar voice called from the other side of my home, near where each of our bedrooms where as I slammed the front door closed behind me. The world’s hugest smile swept across my face and I dropped everything I was holding down onto the floor by the door, before running across the living room towards the direction where Dimitri’s voice had come from. I heard my belongings spilling out of my bag, but I didn’t care.

“Dimitri!” I squealed when I reached his open bedroom door, panting slightly from running. “I missed you so much!”

He beamed broadly at me and wrapped his arms tight around my shoulders without another word as I hugged him back. It felt so good to see him again, after all the drama that had gone on, it was really lovely to see a friendly face – one of the friendliest I knew – for once. Even though, Georgia only knew snippets of my life – the pregnancy, minus the affair – it was nice to have someone that just didn’t know. Or at least, someone I thought didn’t know.

“I should be so God damned angry at you right now,” he said, chuckling into my hair as he turned from side to side with me still in his arms. “But I missed you far too much to be that much of a bitch about you not telling me shit.”

I laughed and pulled out of our embrace. “What in the world are you going on about, Chesnokov?”

He just rolled his dark eyes at me and walked around his bed, opening the cabinet opposite where I stood as I watched him. He started going through it briefly, before pulling out a familiar looking white and blue stick. “Care to explain this little device to me?”

“Well, Dimitri, that’s a pregnancy test,” I said, trying to keep the facade up a little while longer. “Normally, when a woman thinks she might be pregnant, she buys one and takes a piss on the end that you’re holding.”

He grimaced and dropped the test onto his bed when he realised he was holding the end meant for the pee. He fixed me with a hard look and raised his eyebrows at me before he said, “Going to stop being evasive and explain properly who’s that is and why it was in your bedroom when I came home today?”

I shrugged my shoulders and sat down on his bed, with my back to him. “Maybe.”

“Leila,” he said, crawling over to kneel beside me as he nudged the test out of his way. “Tell me, please, I feel like I’m missing everything. No more secrets; I’m one of your best friends, you can tell me.”

“Fine, okay?” I sighed. “It was in my room because it’s mine; my test, my pregnancy, my baby etcetera.”

“So, you’re actually pregnant?”

“Yep, the doctor told me so this morning,” I said, nodding my head as if it confirmed it further.

“So,” he said, losing some of that fatherly sternness from his voice. “You’re having a little Levi or Leila?”

“Maybe,” I said, grimacing. He didn’t catch on to my discomfort and didn’t ask why I sounded so unsure about my answer to his question. His wrapped his arm around my shoulders again and made a little excited noise, which I found odd, because he never really openly expressed his liking for kids. In fact, I was pretty convinced he preferred them not to be around. He kept trying to get me to talk to him about baby names, but I wasn’t up for talking about it at the time; I had ages to decide, of course.

I’d only just gotten home from work, and in the sheer excitement of seeing Dimitri after almost a month, I had forgotten how tired and hungry I felt. I started feeling kind of ill towards the end of my nine to five shift, and Zoë said she didn’t mind if I left early as she had the bar covered and John wasn’t in. Maddox bumped into me just as I was about to leave the building, wrapped back in my coat and other outdoor attire, and offered me a lift with him and Callum so I wouldn’t have to trek through the snow. I told Dimitri that I was exhausted and he offered to make me a cup of tea – I quickly decline, of course, just in case.

When I had eventually gotten to my room alone, after collecting my bag and coat from the floor by the front door, I rummaged through my bag to find my phone. I took it out and looked at it for a moment, biting down on my lip in debate for a couple of minutes. I sat cross-legged on my bed and put my phone down in front of me, staring at it for a while as I tried to build up the courage to ring both of my parents, and then somebody that hadn’t tried to contact me since he told me he loved me.

My bones almost jumped through my skin when my phone started vibrating on the mattress before me, halfway through my debate on whether or not I should even call Dean – and whether or not I should tell him there’s a possibility that he was going to be a dad. I blinked at my phone a couple of times, before I answered it hastily. “Hello?”

“Hey, babe,” Levi said, making me exhale the breath I had held in anticipation. “I was calling to see if you wanted to do something tomorrow; it’s your day off, right?”

“Oh, hello!” I said, trying to mask my slight disappointment with happiness. “Yeah, it’s my day off tomorrow, but there’s something I have to do tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah? What is it?” he asked, as the front door of my home slammed shut, followed by a loud happy squeal that signalled Georgia’s arrival and that she’d seen Dimitri. I fumbled around for a moment or two, trying to think of a reason so I wouldn’t have to tell him big news over the phone; it was something I’d rather do in person.

“I-um...I’ve got a doctor’s appointment at ten.” I cringed slightly, scrambling for further explanation. “You know, I thought I should get checked after being so sick last month...”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Well, that’s a good idea. Do you want me to come with you? Then we can go get some food afterwards?”

I chewed my lip for a moment – I tried to convince myself that there was no harm in Levi coming with me. I mean, I was going to see my unborn child, it was only right that he could do it too. “Yeah, that sounds good. Just us, though?”

“If you mean ‘will my parents be joining us’,” he laughed. “The answers no; Mum’s decided she wanted to fall out with me for a while. Lord knows why.”

“Good,” I said, trying not to sound absolutely euphoric. “That they won’t be there, I mean. Not that she’s not speaking to you. I have some important news to tell you, anyway.”

“That sounds really ominous”-I heard him breathe as he paused, before laughing-“As long as you aren’t breaking up with me or something, okay.”

I laughed back, realising that everything would probably turn out okay – as long as I didn’t think about Dean, or the possibility that he could’ve fathered my baby too much. “I’m not going to break up with you, loser. Its good news – or at least I’m hoping it is – so don’t worry.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “Despite my curiosity, I’ll let you tell me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I smiled. “Meet me at the doctor’s near work at about ten to ten, please?”

He said that he’d meet me there, and we said our goodbyes before we hung up again. I sat my phone back down on the bed in front of me and completely ignored it for the time being, as I lifted my black work shirt up to reveal to smooth, pale skin underneath it. I placed both of my hands on the small bump that had formed under my skin and felt my lips tug into an involuntary smile. There was something else, though, something else that kept pulling my good mood back down. It was this little nagging thing in the back of my head, telling me that Levi wasn’t the father of this baby and that he shouldn’t be the one to come with me to the ultrasound.

Maybe something in me knew that the baby I was carrying wouldn’t turn out to be his. That scared me half to death, more than anything else I could possibly think of – even childbirth. My smile faded into a frown and my hands stopped in their circle-making on my bloating belly as I considered the faint possibility. I shouldn’t have tried to lie to myself so I’d feel better, but I did. I told myself that I was being so stupid; of course this baby belonged to Levi – I loved him, I wanted him. Just because Dean and I hadn’t used protection one time, that didn’t mean I was going to have his child. A condom could’ve just as easily split between Levi and I. But common sense and biology were against me; the timing made sense – the last period I had was just after mine and Levi’s night in, and stopped around the end of October. And obviously, when you don’t use a condom, you can get pregnant.

My phone buzzed again on the bed, not scaring me half as much as it had the first time. It only vibrated once, signalling that I had a new text message. I picked up my phone, smiling already because I thought that Levi was texting me for some reason or another. He wasn’t.

From: D
Time: 5:08PM

I think we have to talk.