A Broken Fate by Cat Mann
****
I waited with Max in one of Dr. Phillips’s cold, ugly, green-ish examining rooms. The doctor was running behind and I was thinking wistfully of just walking out when he finally brushed through the door and graced me with his presence.
“Ah, my favorite patient,” Phillips said as he breezed through the doorway. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Ava. How are you feeling?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Fine, I guess.”
“Have you been keeping up on your meds?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled a tad and shone his annoying light in my eyes. He placed the diaphragm of his stethoscope on my chest and ordered, “Deep breath.” He listened for a moment, moved the scope to a new place on my chest, then placed it on my back and continued asking me to breathe deeply until I began to feel a little lightheaded.
He furrowed his brow at me and pressed his fingertips together.
“Ok, Ava ...what’s going on?”
I ran my fingers through my hair.
“Umm, I don’t know, really. I have been sick a lot lately, quite tired, too. I can’t seem to keep my food down. One minute I am fine and the next minute a wave of nausea hits me like a ton of bricks.”
“Any fever?”
“Nope.”
“Coughing, sneezing, chest pain?”
“Nope.”
“Just fatigue and nausea?”
“More or less, I guess.”
“How long have you been feeling this way?”
“I don’t know a couple weeks, maybe a bit longer.”
Dr. Phillips pushed the call button and spoke into a little speaker.
“Liz, can you come in here for a minute and take Max to the treasure box?”
I looked at Max, then I looked at Dr. Phillips. He just smiled.
Liz, Dr. Phillips’s toothy nurse, came in and took Max by the hand.
“He might be interested in the new coloring books we just got … maybe he could sit at the desk with you for a bit and color. We shouldn’t be too long.”
Liz nodded and walked out of the room with Max bouncing happily behind her. I felt a first glimmer of alarm.
Holy hell, what’s wrong with me?
Dr. Phillips handed me a calendar as soon as the door closed.
“Ava, when was the first day of your last menstrual cycle?”
I could feel the color drain from my face and my stomach was assaulted by all kinds of uncomfortable feelings.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled and looked down at my knotted fingers. “I’m never regular, you know that. My anxiety messes with my cycle; sometimes I don’t have a period at all.”
“Just take a quick look at the calendar and tell me as best as you can remember. Have you been taking your birth control pills?”
“Yes,” I said, blushing.
My mother had put me on birth control years earlier to help regulate my periods and the pain they caused. The pill helped until I met Ari and my life turned upside down. I stared down at the calendar as it trembled in my shaky hands. I pointed to a date on the calendar and Dr. Phillips raised an eyebrow at me.
“Do me a favor, Ava and lie back on the table.”
As I did, Dr. Phillips turned on a TV monitor, flipped off the light then came back to my side. “I am going to do a real quick sonogram just to make sure.”
I couldn’t respond. My throat was too dry to talk. I just lay my head back and closed my eyes. I focused on breathing in and out. I was somewhat aware that Dr. Phillips had squirted some goo on my tummy. Suddenly the room filled with noise. It was a loud, rushing whoosh-whoosh sound. It was the beating of a heart. I gasped and my eyes flew open in shock. Dr. Phillips smiled at my response and nodded his chin to the large monitor displaying a somewhat blurry curved form with a recognizable head, two little arms and two little legs.
“I’m going to put you right at twelve weeks, Ava. Congratulations!”
I gaped open-mouthed at my little baby. Ari’s little baby. Oh, my God, our little baby. My eyes filled with tears. Dr. Phillips handed me a tissue and held out his hand to help me sit back up.
“How is this possible?” I whispered after a long moment.
Phillips frowned. “Well, for starters, Ava, birth control is not always effective and your body is under too much stress. All I can say for sure is that you are definitely pregnant.”
He handed me a fuzzy picture of the baby and I wiped my eyes again with the tissue. Dr. Phillips wrote out another prescription: “Vitamins - don’t even think about throwing this one away. This isn’t about you, it’s about little Alexander.” I nodded. I couldn’t process the information. Truly, I was in shock. I couldn’t put the array of emotions that surged through me in order. I was, in turns, astounded, weepy, frightened, brilliantly happy and touched by sadness that my mother would not see this child. Phillips handed me a business card, my autopilot kicked in, and I mechanically took it from his hand.
“Here is the name of an excellent obstetrician, the best in my opinion. I’ll call her today and set you up with an appointment. She’ll probably want to see you in four weeks. I’ll send her your chart. Remember, though, this pregnancy will not get you off the hook with me, Ava; I want you back here in eight weeks. I mean it.”
“S-sure,” I said, glancing down at the business card for a Dr. Niti Patel.
“You should begin to feel better in the next week or so, maybe even sooner; morning sickness usually lasts only during the first trimester. If you have any questions between now and then, feel free to call either myself or Dr. Patel.”
Dr. Phillips handed me a pamphlet with a little blue-eyed baby on the front and then a folder full of pages of do’s and don’ts.
I swallowed hard.
“Do you need to talk this through, Ava? That’s what I am here for.”
“I don’ … I don’t know what to think or say or do right now.”
Dr. Phillips let out a breath and sat down on his stool.
“This baby is pretty unexpected then?”
“Uh huh.”
“Let’s start by breathing, Ava.”
I talked with Dr. Phillips for a bit and he helped get me through a slight anxiety attack.
When I was a bit calmer, Dr. Phillips gave me a brief hug, then walked me out of the room and down to where Max was coloring.
“Hiya, Mama. Baby.”
My jaw dropped. Clotho. Max knew about the baby. He had known from the start. I smiled at him and showed him the grainy picture. He nodded and pointed, “Uh huh, baby!”
I put my pointer finger up to my lips.
“Let’s keep it a secret for a little bit, ok?” Max grinned mischievously and grabbed my hand to leave.
Once Max and I made it out to the car, I took a few deep breaths and called Ari. I knew if I didn’t call him right away, he would call Dr. Phillips’s office – and I wasn’t ready for him to know my new information quite yet.
“Thank you for calling baio! You have reached the office of Ari Alexander, Fauna speaking, how may I …
“Fauna, this is Ava. Can you put me through to Ari?”
Man, I really have to tell Margaux that the little thing she makes the assistants say is super annoying.
“Sure, Mrs. Alexander, he’s around here somewhere; I’ll page him for you.”
A few seconds later Ari picked up the phone.
“Hi Max and Beautiful, what’d Phillips say?”
I played with a strand of my hair.
“It’s just a little bug.”
I was so thankful to be having this conversation on the phone. If we had been speaking face to face, Ari would have known in a heartbeat that I was being dishonest with him.
“Wow, that’s a relief! Are you feeling any better?”
“Yeah, I feel great.”
Whoa, those words were truer than I intended them to be.
“Good, I’m happy.”
“Yeah, I’m happy, too. I’ll see you when you ge
“Ava, I love you, too.”
I took Max to lunch and was able to keep my food down. Then we set off to get Ari some birthday presents. Max helped me pick out a few gifts and then fell asleep in the car on the ride home. I carried him in from the garage to bed and made quick work of wrapping up Ari’s gifts. Ari’s birthday was Sunday. I had to play it cool until then. I took the folder Dr. Phillips had given me and walked back to the study and began to read.
No sushi. That sucks. The rest I could live with. I hid the folder in the bottom drawer under Max’s adoption documents. He had been officially named Maximus Egan Xenos Alexander, son to Ari and Ava Alexander, soon to be big brother to Baby Alexander.
A few days after Aggie had been released from the hospital, Ari and I sat down with her and Andy to talk about Max. Ari explained that Max had begun to call him Daddy, and that he and I were planning to keep Max with us now that the danger of Kakos No. 7 was gone. Aggie understood and agreed with us that we should raise Max.
“It’s for the best, I know,” she murmured and then turned to us with a loving smile. I had been half expecting more of a fight, but I reminded myself that we were dealing with Aggie now and not No. 7. Aggie was nothing but love and understanding. And since the cancer that had been plaguing her had been a phantom illness imposed upon her by No. 7, she was healthy again and would be the best grandmother on the face of the planet.