Chapter 10 #2
“Harris, it’s Ana. You haven’t answered any of my other messages, so I’ll be blunt–”
Brie snatched the phone out of her hand and said loudly, “Ana has money that belongs to you. A lot. Call her, asshole. This isn’t a joke.”
Then she hung up.
“brIE! I can’t believe you did that!”
Brie just stared at Ana’s phone with a look of resigned disgust.
“What are you doing now?” Ana asked.
“Waiting for the asshole to call back.”
“He won’t! I told you–”
But Brie was right.
Her phone rang. Unknown Number, the screen said.
Ana knew.
Knew it was him.
“Hello?” Brie said as Ana reached to take over.
“Put Ana on. What’s this about?”
“Ana has a very valuable package for you.” Then she put the phone on speaker and set it between them.
“Ana?”
“Hi, Harris.”
“What is this about? Someone brought money for me?”
“No. Brie said that to get you to return my call.”
“Damn it, Ana. I don’t have time for this. I told you you could come to Morocco if you want–”
“But there is something critical I have to talk about with you.”
“Let me guess. You need to process your feelings.” His mocking laugh made Ana’s stomach turn.
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m pregnant. It’s your baby. I counted back the days and–”
“Of course it’s my baby, Ana,” he said harshly, but there was a quality to his voice that made her feel slimy. Gross.
Exposed.
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I am. I am, actually. I’m surprised that it worked.”
“What… worked?”
His laughter turned more sinister. Instant regret flooded through her veins. Calling him had been a mistake.
A big one.
“When I knew the feds were closing in, I figured I’d pull an Elizabeth Holmes.”
“A what?”
“Theranos? Hello? Elizabeth Holmes?”
“I know who she is. She founded that lab company and was convicted of fraud.”
“And she used her pregnancies for leniency during the trial.”
Brie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head as Harris’s words slowly seeped in. If Brie was reacting like this, then Ana wasn’t misinterpreting his words.
“You–you–” Brie sputtered.
“I poked a hole in the condom. A few, actually, just to make sure,” he said smoothly, as if informing Ana he’d accidentally given her caffeinated coffee instead of decaf, as if dispensing a trivial bit of information about a minor mistake.
“Hole? In the condom?” Ana said in a voice she didn’t recognize.
“And it worked. Huh. My swimmers are strong. This shows it.” Hubris had always been an issue with him, but this took the cake.
“You impregnated me without my consent!”
“Technically, I poked holes in the condom without your consent. Any intercourse has risks,” he said dryly.
“You did this to me on purpose because you thought you might get sympathy in court?”
“Never needed it, though. I got out of the country before it was necessary.”
“HARRIS!” she said, louder than her lungs seemed capable of producing. “You got me pregnant to manipulate a judge?”
“Sure. I guess. If you want to think of it like that.”
“We’re having a baby!”
“No,” he said slowly. “You are. If you want it. Get an abortion if you don’t.”
Brie gripped Ana’s hand with superhuman strength.
“I–I want to keep it.”
“Whatever. Your choice. Are we done here? Is this your big reveal? You somehow think I’ll get back together with you if you’re having a baby?”
“I was informing you that you’re going to be a father. We’ll be connected as we raise this child.”
“We? What’s this ‘we’ shit?”
“It takes two to have a baby.”
“You got my sperm. We’re done.”
“You–you don’t want to be part of everything?”
“Hell, no. I don’t plan to ever set foot in the U.S. again.”
Brie made a clapping gesture that would have made Ana laugh if she weren’t so miserable. So stung. So horrified.
Ana picked up the phone, as if touching it would make Harris’s words make sense.
“It wouldn’t bother you to have a child in the world who you never got to know?”
He made a dismissive sound. “No. I donated sperm in college for some extra money. I’m sure there are plenty of my spawn roaming around the Greater Boston area by now.
” He chuckled. “Remember that documentary we watched about the fertility doctor who used his own spooge to get hundreds of women pregnant? And some of them dated? Just watch out,” he added.
Ana dropped the phone and sprinted for the bathroom, the sick rising up in her throat.
She barely made it, one hand holding her hair back.
As her body emptied her stomach, she heard Brie screaming at Harris, a shrieky, no-holds-barred affair that made Ana feel extremely cared for. Her bestie had a temper that could be triggered easily, but only by injustice.
Harris was a walking fleshbag of unfairness.
He poked a hole in the condom? He did this on purpose, not to raise a child together but to use the baby as some kind of sympathy chip in court?
And if he’d done this six weeks ago, he knew a long time ago that he was in trouble.
Probably from the start of their relationship.
How had she missed this breathtakingly enormous level of sociopathy?
She was a therapist! She should know better.
And now she was pregnant by such an odious man.
Waves of nausea, followed by spasms throughout her belly, forced her to focus on the present, the burning bile, her body rejecting what she’d just experienced.
Only after she pressed her hot cheek on the cool side of the toilet and started to breathe slowly did she notice Brie behind her, in the doorway.
“I hung up on him. Prick. He really is that cold.”
“He wasn’t always,” Ana said weakly.
“I’m not judging your taste in men. I’m judging his lack of a conscience.”
“I feel so stupid. What did he say before you hung up?”
“That he doesn’t care what you do. Leave him alone.”
Alone.
Never had a word felt so profoundly freeing and so utterly terrifying at the same time.
Bzzzz
Ana’s phone buzzed in Brie’s hand. They both looked at it like it was a vampire rising up from the dead.
“He didn’t have a change of heart,” Brie said fiercely. “You know that.”
“I know.”
“Because that POS doesn’t have one,” her friend added, then looked at the screen. “It’s, uh, your mom.”
“Oh, no.”
“Sorry. I’ll ignore it.”
Her mom. The thought of telling her mom she was pregnant made her heart race, but she smiled at the same time, because this meant her mother would become a grandmother.
Maybe.
Being an only child had always carried its own burden. Her unicornuate uterus had dashed her own hopes of motherhood but, to her credit, her mom had never said a word about how it affected her.
And then there was Rick.
The text loomed large in the space where she breathed right now, Harris’s shocking mistreatment still stinging. How much more could she take? If her mother had a negative response, Ana would crumble.
She was resilient. Trained. Strong–but even the strong break eventually.
“Marian is going to be stunned when she finds out,” Brie said, as if reading her thoughts.
“Stunned as in good, or stunned as in bad?”
“I don’t know. I think she’ll be thrilled, but her first reaction might be a little…”
“Operational?”
They laughed. Marian DaSilva Gianetti was a woman of action. A planner. A fixer. When presented with a problem, she created a point-by-point template for optimizing everything.
Those qualities made her an outstanding hospice nurse. Empathy came after organization, when everything was aligned, and being present was all that was left.
Her first go-to would be making sure Ana would be safe.
Which meant her mother would immediately involve Rick.
“Marian and Rick are formidable,” Brie said, nodding slowly. “But this might be like a band-aid. Need to just rip it off and get it over with.”
“I still can’t believe Harris did that. Said that. He–he–” Overwhelming anxiety rippled across her skin. Processing what Harris had done was going to take countless hours with her own therapist.
“Yes, and–”
Ana’s phone rang–her mother. She quickly glanced at the text before deciding whether to answer the call.
How did the doctor’s appointment go? her mom had written.
Right. She’d told her about feeling under the weather. Mom was just following up.
What she thought might be the flu was turning out to be something very, very different.
With a sigh, she accepted the call and pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Ana! What’s wrong?” Marian might be a bit in her own world much of the time, but she could read her daughter like a book.
“I’m–well…”
“Bad news from the doctor? What is it?”
“It’s not so much bad news. In fact, it could be good news.”
“That makes no sense!” her mother exclaimed. “No one gets equivocal news from a doctor. Don’t soften it for me, honey, just say it. I’m a nurse.”
“I…”
“Whatever it is,” her mom said softly, voice suddenly shaky, “we’re here for you. Rick and I.”
Muddying the emotional moment with a mention of her stepfather took a bit of the sweetness out of it.
But just a bit.
“I–I never thought I’d say these words to you, Mom, but, well… I’m pregnant.”
An enormous sob, one that had been crouched deep in her gut, released itself, turning her into a ball of grief. Somehow, saying the words made her feel thirteen again, watching her mother take the phone call that changed their lives forever.
This felt that big and, somehow, that sad.
“Ana? Did you say pregnant?”
Ana nodded, then realized she was on the phone. Brie took the phone and switched it to speaker mode.
“Hi, Marian, it’s Brie. I’m here with Ana. She’s crying right now, and so am I. Yes, she’s pregnant.”
“Oh, my goodness! Brie! Are you–what is–pregnant? Pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Who is the–is Harris..?” Her mother’s question ended with a slow hissing sound. It was an expletive.
One of the chambers of Ana’s heart turned to a cloud of pure shame.
“It’s Harris, Mom. Harris–”
“DID THIS TO HER!” Brie shouted. “That asshole poked holes in the condom!”
Ana looked at Brie in astonishment as her friend clapped her hand over her own mouth.