My heart is beating too fast. It sure seems like my heart is beating way too fast. Maybe I should go to the hospital - is this how people die? Trying to assure themselves they won't? How dumb would it be if I died trying to convince myself I was overreacting?
No one would know, though. They'd just find dead me. They wouldn't be able to see the panic or the questions. They wouldn't know the toll I paid. Hell, they might think I died peacefully. I can't have that.
I guess I better not die.
(Reserved for Dan comments)
ReplyDeleteI feel you.
DeleteHis assistant said it would be easy. Open the vacuum pack, stick it in, press the plunger, knocked-up city. None of the others had a problem with it. But Jess, knees splayed on the pink toilet seat of her Barbie-inspired bathroom, froze. She’d never been scared. Not like this. She ran marathons, she’d jumped out of planes, she’d always been up for a new challenge.
ReplyDeleteBut she was starting to have second thoughts. And thirds. And fourths.
Her hand shook, beads of sweat dampened her forehead and the back of her neck, and she almost dropped the damned thing in the toilet. The instructions said she’d have fifteen minutes after opening the package. She rested the plunger on her bare thigh, took a deep breath, reminded herself why she’d decided to go through with this.
At first she thought it was a joke. That he was trolling her, or someone was, because she’d made some stupid comment on social media about why all these jerky guys online said she should be barefoot and pregnant.
The first message was “If you have my baby I’ll buy you a lot of totally sick shoes.”
It made her laugh. Every other account, it seemed, was some kind of parody of the World’s Richest Man, but this one was cleverer than most.
But when a guy in black came to her door with an NDA and a dozen roses, she realized this was no parody. She’d dropped to a chair after he left, blinking herself back to reality, then read the letter that had come with the document, a selection of words jumping out at her. Your decision. No obligation. Adoptive families available. A great thing for humanity. No physical contact required.
No physical contact…what in the name of Brave New World was this, she thought. But then, as pictures of him from the news and the web came into her mind, that, at least, was a relief. He didn’t do anything for her.
But then she saw the number of zeros in the contract. Did the calculation in her head. Nine months of incubation, with free medical care, would net her enough to pay off her student loan with enough left over for graduate school.
Then she could be on her merry way to the life she’d always dreamed of—getting a master’s in oceanography, studying the delicate barrier between the sea and the land. So she’d signed the paperwork, submitted to the health screening, and the package had arrived at her front door.
But now…
She checked her watch. She had five minutes left until the world’s most expensive sperm expired. Heat flushed her face; her heartbeat pounded into her ears. The plastic syringe had made an imprint into her thigh.
“No harm no foul if you fail to conceive. But you must have supplied proof in the form of the empty syringe and the enclosed affidavit that you injected the specimen…”
The words from the contract had amused her when she first saw them. But now they had a savage twist to them, and she felt like a brood mare on a farm.
But the money…
She brought the syringe between her legs again. Hesitated a moment. But she couldn’t move it closer. With her other hand, she collected some of her vaginal secretions, wiped it over the plastic, and shot his South African wad into the john.