9. Sophie
CHAPTER 9
Sophie
“ I don’t know why you’re peeing on a stick again,” said Becks, standing on the other side of the toilet cubicle. We were the only ones in the bathroom, which, given that it was located on the rehab floor of St. Helena Medical, was the least congested. “The other five were all positive. You’re definitely pregnant.”
That was completely true.
But denial was a powerful thing. I could easily ignore that little tidbit and sit on the toilet, wait for my bladder to refill, and try another test.
Who knew, maybe the first was faulty. Maybe they were all false positives. Who cared that it was completely unlikely and that it only happened less than one percent of the time?
Maybe I fell into that less than one percent category. Maybe I was one of the lucky ones.
“I might not be,” I muttered softly, not quite believing myself.
“You are!” exclaimed Becks against the door, her weight creaking the hinges of the stall.
I could see her sneaky feet beneath the door. “And it's fucking crazy, Soph. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely excited to be a godmother. I’d just never in my whole life thought you’d be pregnant before me.”
Neither had I.
Becks, who was my age, was already married to an adorable man called Caleb and lived in a lovely three-and-a-half-bedroom townhouse with a garden, where their golden retriever buried her tennis balls. They had their life together.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep a goldfish alive.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I muttered under my breath, and after I’d finally managed to pee on the stick, I walked out of the stall, placed it on the sink, and held my breath.
“Now the waiting begins,” said Becks. “Again . . . I bet you a hundred dollars it's positive.”
“No,” I said, not wanting to lose a hundred dollars.
Great . Even my subconscious believed I was pregnant.
It was only the rational part of me that couldn’t believe myself capable of raising a teeny tiny fragile baby. I could barely look after myself as it was. Some evenings, I was too lazy to cook and settled for microwave popcorn with Smarties scattered throughout it, and just the other morning I’d left my house forgetting to brush my teeth—luckily, I kept a spare toothbrush in my work bag for such forgetful occasions. And not to mention the fact that I would have to raise the baby by myself—
Alex’s face suddenly leaped into my head, but before it could settle, before I could think about what he’d say if he found out, I shoved the image away. I took a deep breath in, not yet glancing at the test, which required three whole, life-changing minutes to reveal its secret— although in my case, it was no longer a secret.
“We should probably get back soon,” said Becks, leaning against the tiled wall with one hand up to cover the yawn stretching her lips apart. “Don’t you have that outpatient this morning? The one Vicki sent you?”
"I do." I sighed, eyeing the very positive pregnancy test—Becks had glanced at it and given me that I-told-you face she wore way too often—before I wrapped it up in toilet paper and tossed it in the sanitary bin. "And he's probably waiting for me already."
Last night, Vicki had called me out of the blue. For a split second when I saw her name on my screen, my heart had raced so fast I thought it might leap out of my chest. I’d been so certain she knew I was pregnant. That she somehow figured out that I had slept with an orthopod at the medical seminar.
But then, Vicki had mentioned her ex-fiancé—I had no idea she’d even had a fiancé, let alone a former one—and how he’d injured his back and needed a consultation, and how he wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say. Thus, I had to be the one to evaluate him.
“I can’t believe she was engaged. Did she give you his name?”
“Nope. She said she would pass me a file about this patient before the assessment, it’s probably on my table now.”
“I am intrigued . . . So, what are you going to do, Soph?” asked Becks, walking behind me as we entered the rehab department. The space was basically a large gym with pale blue walls and motivational posters adorning them, and a faint smell of disinfectant and rubber lingering permanently in the air. They gym had a treadmill, two stationary bikes, parallel bars, a pyramid of stacked yoga mats, and resistance bands in every color. Beyond it was a narrow hallway that led off to a storage room and three private treatment rooms.
“What do you mean?” I asked, scanning the whiteboard with the patient list for the day. Not sure if Becks was referring to the terrible turn my life had taken or Vicky’s ex-fiancé I had to treat. Hopefully neither.
“About the baby,” she replied, sitting down on a red exercise ball, bouncing up and down until her brown ponytail looked like a helicopter’s propeller. “Are you going to tell the dad? Or sperm donor, or whatever you want to call him.”
"Sperm donor," I replied, unable to imagine Alex being a father, or accurately, refusing to. If I did—if I somehow remembered his soft, patient smile, the way his laugh came deep from his belly, the way he had slipped his jacket over my shoulders when I was shivering—, then the guilt for not telling him came swooping in.
What if he wanted to be a dad?
“Well, if you don’t want to involve the sperm donor in your baby’s life, which is perfectly fine, of course, Caleb and I will help you. You can even move into our second bedroom. We’ll raise your baby together—”
"Sophie," said a man's voice behind me. A familiar voice, a voice I had never expected to hear again. A voice that made my skin crawl my toes curl and every inch of my body heat up like a self-igniting spark.
I froze, my breath catching in my throat, and before he could speak again, I turned around to face him, my feet feeling so heavy I could’ve been wading through water.
Alex.
Alex, the ortho god.
“Sophie?” he said again, his brows pulled so tight together you could probably wedge a penny in there. “Are you seriously pregnant?”
My first instinct was to shake my head—profusely, until it threatened to fall off. It was more out of disbelief at seeing Alex here, after more than one month of trying, but failing, to forget about him, than anything else.
“So, you’re not pregnant? Because it clearly sounds like you are.” He turned his head in Beck's direction. Her gaze was fixed on Alex, as if she had stumbled upon something truly remarkable and was unable to move or speak. Then he focused his attention back on me, holding my eyes tighter than a vice grip. When I didn’t reply, he took a step forward and winced, his hand going to his back.
It was then that a whole new brick wall came toppling down. My world was spinning. Dizziness clouded the edges of my vision, and a twinge of nausea settled in my stomach. Two shocking revelations in the short span of a minute were like a bolt of lightning so bright it felt like the earth had crashed into the sun—Alex was the ex-fiancé with the sore back. Alex was Vicki’s ex-fiancé.
Fuck!
“This can’t be happening!” I cried, stepping back, my fingers tangling in my hair and tugging at the strands. I hoped the nightmare I clearly hadn’t woken up from this morning would just end and reality would snap back.
“What?” asked Becks, jumping up from the ball, crossing the gym to me but stopping short at the end of the mat when her mind made the connection. I could see the gears of her mind turn behind her eyes, the same way I imagined they had done for me.
“Wait,” Becks said, her finger up, as if she was ready to point at either one of us or possibly both of us. “Is this what I think it is—”
"You're Vicki's fiancé," I interrupted, my voice high-pitched, sounding less like me and more like a stranger. But then again, did I even know this Sophie? The Sophie who had a one-night stand, didn't bother with a condom, and was now pregnant?
"Ex-fiancé," Alex corrected, that deep frown unwavering. "We ended things for a good couple of months ago." His lips remained parted as if he wanted to add something. Probably something like, But it’s been over between us for far longer .
Such a cliché.
I shook my head again, refusing to believe that not only was I pregnant—which was already hard to believe in the first place—but also that I was pregnant with Alex’s baby.
Vicki’s ex-fiancé’s baby .
What a cruel joke.
I tore my gaze from Alex and directed it over his shoulder to the glass window in the door that looked into the hallway. The last thing I needed now was for Vicki to come through that door.
What would she do if she found out? Fire me? No. That was too subtle, too nice . She’d kill me. She’d lunge her tiny body across the room and gouge my eyes out.
I shivered.
“You need to leave, Alex,” I said, stepping forward as if I could push him out of the gym, press my palms against his chest and shove him out of my life. Then, for a split second, my mind wandered—what would it be like to touch him again? To feel the ridges of his stomach and the taut bowstring muscles of his biceps? And in that fleeting moment, I completely lost myself. “Please,” I added, my voice so much softer than before, as if I was begging him to leave, not because I wanted him to, but because I needed him to. Before I did something stupid.
“No,” he said, his eyes locked on mine again, the muscle in his jaw twitching.
Alex looked so different from the calm, collected, crooked-smiling version of himself I had come to know over that weekend, as if the news had completely unhinged him. There was a fire in his eyes—a soft, harmless fire, embers flicking in those golden irises, while the pulse of his heart throbbed in his temple. “Not until you tell me what’s going on. If you’re pregnant and it’s mine, I want to know.”
I flinched when he said the word mine, as if it didn't belong on his lips. In the same way, it didn't belong in mine. This baby wasn't ours, not yet, not until we fully accepted responsibility.
Alex's hand was still pressed against his lower back, knuckles kneading into the muscles. It was then that I noticed he wasn't standing completely upright, as if the pain was pushing him forward. A herniated disc perhaps.
The reason he was here in the first place.
Fine, I decided. If Alex wanted to stay, then he needed to be evaluated like Vicki had asked—especially before she arrived. Knowing her, she’d be here any minute to check on the progress of her VIP patient, or in his case, ex-VIP.
I quickly shot Becks a what the fuck am I going to do look, to which she responded by shaking her head and mouthing, “What the fuck are you going to tell Vicki?”
I shrugged because honestly, I didn’t have the answer to either of those questions. Not yet anyway. But standing around here wasn’t going to get us any closer.
“Treatment room,” I said, and without giving any more instructions, I spun on my heel and marched to the hallway, feeling both severely aggravated and strangely relieved when I heard Alex’s footsteps behind me.