Chapter 20 Kastian #2
An hour later, I arrived at the doctor’s office that I was meeting Doll at.
It was crazy as hell how I’d been so meticulous about having a baby and choosing a mother for my child and ended up having an oops baby any damn way.
I did some research and found out that plan B pills simply prevent an egg from releasing.
If a woman has already ovulated, it won’t work.
Which was how Doll ended up pregnant. I had to look at it like it was meant to be.
We tried not once but twice to prevent pregnancy.
Even if it didn’t happen the way I’d planned it, I couldn’t be mad at it.
Doll was cool. I’d known her for years, and I doubted she’d change.
She wouldn’t be able to dance while pregnant, but it didn’t matter because I’d look out for her.
As long as she was able to maintain her lifestyle, I didn’t think she’d have a problem with not being my woman.
Doll had never been pressed about titles.
She simply did her. Even without a man’s help, she did well for herself.
There were more than a few times when a celebrity or something came to the club and doll left with six or seven thousand dollars.
Once during Memorial Day weekend, she made $20,000 dancing Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Anything she got from a man was an added bonus.
Doll lived in a two-bedroom luxury apartment, she drove a BMW, and she traveled monthly.
I arrived before her, so I sat in the car with my mind racing.
It felt like I was having an out of body experience.
Knowing Ryder was a snitch had my chest tight.
I was damn near as sick as if I would have gotten word that he died.
It was almost the same because I couldn’t fuck with him ever again.
From middle school through high school, we talked almost every day.
When we both started hustling, we saw each other every day.
Him becoming my right-hand man was inevitable.
I wouldn’t have asked anyone else. And the nigga was a rat.
I saw Doll’s car pulling into a parking space, so I got out of the car and walked over to hers. When she killed the engine, I opened the door for her. “What’s up?” I tried to mask the bad mood that I was in.
“Hey. I’m better,” Doll smiled as she emerged from the car. “You know I was panicking at first like bitch how are you going to travel and still live your best life with a baby? But I know you’ll be an amazing hands-on father, so I stopped tripping.”
“Damn right. My shorty will forever be good. You could leave and never come back, and I wouldn’t even press you. I’d take my seed, and we’d live a bomb ass life.”
“I love that for me and my baby.”
I held the door open for Doll, and she walked past me.
My insides twisted as I thought about the fact that the Feds might end up snatching my ass up the same way they got Lox and Ryder.
I had waited all these years to have a kid, and my ass might not even be around for it.
Sad part was, I couldn’t even be mad at anyone but myself.
I had been successful in real estate for a long time.
Continuing to sell drugs was some shit that was based off greed.
I could leave all the money I had to my child, but it still wouldn’t top actually being there.
Doll completed the paperwork that the receptionist handed her while my left leg bounced anxiously.
Women were sprinkled throughout the waiting room.
One white woman looked like she was about to pop and from what I could tell she was alone.
Maybe her dude was at work. Maybe he wasn’t around.
Maybe he was in jail. I had to force myself to stop thinking the worst because I would be embarrassed for sure if I had an anxiety attack in the doctor’s office.
No one aside from Ryder, Lox, and Persia knew that I had panic attacks.
It wasn’t something that I wanted people to know.
Persia. Thinking about her and how she helped me during my last panic attack brought me back to the memories of how she took the news about Doll being pregnant.
Since leaving the game, my life had been so peaceful.
Business was going well, and I was happy.
Guess the saying is true when things are too good, the bullshit is bound to come.
The bullshit was coming toward me at rapid speed.
From every direction I was being hit with one curveball after another, and it was starting to take a toll.
The PA finally called Doll to the back. I waited as she got her vitals taken, answered some questions, and peed in a cup. She got undressed, and we waited for the doctor to come in.
“You nervous?” she asked.
My gaze lifted and landed on her face. I was nervous for a lot of reasons but her being pregnant wasn’t one of them. “Nah, I’m good. What about you?”
“Nervous as hell. What if it’s twins? Twins run in my family.”
With a chuckle, I shrugged. “You’ll just be having twins then.”
Doll groaned. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to carry them.”
The doctor came into the room before I could respond.
With a smile, he introduced himself to me and Doll.
He asked her a few more questions then asked her to lay back, so he could do an ultrasound and listen for a heartbeat.
When Doll’s pregnancy was confirmed the week before, she was told she was six weeks.
Now, she was seven weeks. I didn’t even know they could hear a heartbeat that early.
Her stomach was flat as a pancake, and she’d only missed one period. The human body was amazing.
Despite not having a clue what I was looking at, I watched the screen intensely.
The black and white image didn’t mean anything to me because I didn’t know what I was looking at anyway.
Doll was very early, so I wasn’t expecting to see much.
Maybe I was concentrating too hard because I hadn’t even noticed that it had been at least a minute, and the doctor hadn’t said anything.
“Is something wrong?” Doll lifted her head slightly.
I glanced at the doctor, and he didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
He continued moving the instrument around on her stomach and didn’t respond right away.
He pointed at a round spot on the screen.
“This is your embryotic sac. However, it’s empty, and I can’t find a heartbeat.
I think you’re experiencing a blighted ovum. ”
“What’s that?” the panic in Doll’s eyes was similar to what I’d seen in Toya’s more than once. At that point, I was starting to think it was me. Four failed pregnancies with me being the common denominator?
“It’s when the embryo implants in your uterus, but it fails to grow.
That’s why there’s a sac. You were in fact pregnant.
The baby just didn’t develop. Sometimes it’s because of a chromosomal defect in the fertilized egg.
We don’t always know the reason why for these things, but there is nothing you could have done to cause this.
Once your body realizes that you are no longer pregnant, you will more than likely pass the sac on your own.
There will be bleeding like a regular miscarriage. ”
“How long does that take?”
“It should only take a couple of days. Make an appointment with the receptionist to come back in three days. If your body hasn’t already passed the contents of your uterus, I’ll perform a D&C. I’m sorry. These things can be hard to experience.”
Doll swallowed hard and nodded. Maybe God was trying to tell me that I didn’t need kids. Maybe I needed to start listening. Every failed pregnancy Toya thought it was because there something wrong with her. We never once considered that it could be me.
“Guess I don’t have to worry about that mommy makeover,” Doll joked with a sad smile.
I didn’t even know what to say when I should have been an expert in the matter. I’d been through it enough.
“You good?” she questioned.
“I should be asking you that.”
Doll sighed and sat up. “I’m okay, I guess.
I was freaking out at first. For all of three days, I’ve been getting excited and now nothing.
Funny how fast things can change. I’m glad it happened so early because if it had happened a month or two from now, I just might be a mess.
Maybe it was from me taking the plan B,” she chewed her bottom lip.
“I doubt it. Some things just weren’t meant to be.”
Doll nodded and got up to get dressed. Literally nothing was going right.
My mood was becoming worse by the second, and I needed to go home and be away from people.
Soon, I wasn’t going to be able to fake it, and I was going to end up snapping.
That was something I wanted to avoid at all costs because if I crashed out on the wrong person, it wasn’t going to end well. I had way too much going on.
I stood with Doll as she made her follow up appointment, and I put it on my calendar, so I could accompany her.
“You sure you’re good?” I asked as I walked her out to her car. “You need anything?”
“What if I said I wanted ice cream and cheesecake?”
I chuckled. “Then you can get that. I have to handle some business, but you order it and pig out until your heart is content. I’ll stop by and check on you later.” I pulled money from my pocket and gave her $100.
As I drove home, I felt like I was in some kind of matrix.
What else could go wrong? I couldn’t get home fast enough.
I had to get to something that would take the edge off before I flipped my shit.
I had just pulled into my driveway when the collar of my shirt began to feel like it was choking me.
That was the first sign that I was close to spiraling.
Walking inside my house, I went straight to the alcohol.
Pouring a drink would be faster than rolling a blunt.
I poured a hefty amount of bourbon in a glass and drank half of it in one gulp.
The burn in my throat and chest didn’t even bother me as I immediately finished off the rest. Warm alcohol gave me a rush faster than cold alcohol did.
The almost full glass of warm liquor indeed gave me a head rush.
I poured more then grabbed a cigar and a jar of weed.
By the time I was done rolling the blunt, I felt slightly better, but shit was still messed up.
“Damn,” I hissed out loud as I thought about Ryder. My best friend. The man who knew more about my drug empire than anyone else. The person I trusted information with that no one else knew.
I took another sip before looking around for a lighter.
Closing my eyes I pulled from the blunt and held it in my lungs for as long as I could before exhaling.
I wasted no time hitting it again and again.
Halfway through the blunt my second glass of alcohol was gone, and I was high as shit.
Finally, my mind had stopped racing. I stopped thinking about Doll’s pregnancy, or her non pregnancy, Persia, Ryder, or Lox.
After the blunt was gone, I stared at a blank television screen for I don’t know how long before I went to take a shower.
I was a man. I couldn’t be weak and emotional.
Even though the stress was weighing me down, I still had to go check on Doll later.
But in the meantime, I just needed to be by my damn self.