Chapter 17

Kailee

A pparently, there are two types of magazines in gynecology offices. One type is the typical magazine appealing to women in their early twenties with advice on getting a man and giving him great orgasms. On the flipside, the other option is a flock of parenting magazines with pictures of babies wrapped in bath towels. I never thought I'd say it, but I could go for a Time or a US News and World Report about right now. None of the options on the shelf appeal to a woman in her early thirties who knows her way around a dick but isn't sure she'd make a great mom.

I stick out an index finger toward one of the magazines with a newborn yawning on the cover like I'll be electrocuted if I touch it. I need something to read, though. The doctor is running fifteen minutes late .

I take a deep breath and resign myself to just grabbing it off the magazine rack when a dark shadow looms over me. Turning to see why a stranger in a doctor's office would want to be right against me, my eyes only meet toned pectorals in a gray t-shirt. The familiar hint of laundry soap and cedar fills my nose, and my eyes momentarily flutter as my brain recognizes it. Moments later, I slowly tilt my head to look into the eyes I know well enough by now.

"What the holy hell are you doing here?" I whisper, the magazine rack forgotten. I put my hand out and lean against the beige wall, steadying myself.

Chase purses his lips for a moment and then nods like he's talking himself into something. "Liam told me you have an appointment. I want to be here for you. Is that OK?"

I blink and shake my head a bit, trying to understand. "You want to be here? Why?"

"Because I wasn't the other day, and I feel awful about it. I didn't mean I couldn't handle the baby, Kailee." He runs his hand up my arm, and I tremble with the excitement of his touch. His proximity. He's here . "I was shocked and meant I couldn't handle talking about it right then." He closes his eyes and inhales through his nose. "I know you'll be pissed I ask this, but I just need to make sure. It's mine, right?"

"Yes," I say. "And I'm not pissed. It's a legitimate question."

He looks around the room to see if our conversation has drawn attention. Only a middle-aged woman is across the room and reading a paperback. She isn't paying one bit of attention to us.

"Why didn't you tell me?" His forehead crinkles in concern, and my heart breaks into a billion pieces.

"I –

"Kailee Lipshitz?" a nurse asks. She holds an iPad and looks between me and the middle-aged woman.

My hand immediately shoots into the air like I'm in school. "Right here."

"Come on back and bring your…partner?" At least the woman didn't automatically assume that Chase is my husband. That would have made an already awkward moment even more embarrassing.

I follow the nurse and realize Chase isn't behind me when I reach the door to the inner sanctum of the office. "Are you coming?" I ask.

Chase shoves his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans. His shoulders slouch. "Do you want me there?"

I hesitate because I don't want to seem too eager. I grip the doorknob as the nurse stands next to me, patiently understanding that something is happening. She doesn't rush us. I almost hug her for understanding.

"I want you here, Chase. I'm scared. Will you please come with me?"

Maybe it's the look of fear on my face. Maybe he just really cares about me. Maybe it's both. But Chase Barnett flexes his jaw and straightens his shoulders. He walks to the door and cups my face before pushing his nose to mine. "I'm sorry I wasn't here for you the last couple of days. But I'll be here for every doctor's appointment from now on. Understand?"

I nod, my eyes the size of dinner plates at his voice's firmness. He's never talked to me like this before. It must be his police voice – the voice he uses to tell people to drop their weapons and put their hands in the air. I almost go to the wall and spread my legs so he can frisk me. There's something so comforting that he's taking control now.

The nurse clears her throat, bringing us out of our little world. She waves at us to follow her until she takes me to a scale. I hand Chase my purse and step onto it as the nurse writes down my weight, which is two pounds less than what I usually weigh. I'm sure the nausea hasn't helped my body.

I follow the nurse to a small exam room, and she waves me onto the exam table and points to a chair for Chase to sit in as the nurse gathers my vitals like blood pressure, pulse, oxygen level, and asks me all manner of embarrassing questions that I answer honestly, even though I worry what Chase will think. My blood pressure is a little on the low side, and we discuss that. My pulse is a bit fast, and it's probably a result of not eating much. Yes, I have endometriosis. Chase hangs his head and stares at the floor when I confirm I'm not on birth control, and we didn't use a condom. My periods are always irregular. I don't track them. I didn't think I could have kids. I've never had a sexually transmitted disease or been pregnant before. I confirm the date of my last pap smear.

I shake and tremble the whole time.

The nurse whisks from the room after she directs me to get undressed except for my socks and gives me a small gown to change into behind a thin curtain that separates me from Chase. He doesn't invade my privacy or try to peek. He periodically cracks his knuckles from nerves but is otherwise quiet.

I hate the silence between us. "Sorry you had to hear the entire history of my vagina," I whisper from the other side of the curtain as I dangle my legs over the high exam table.

"It was nice to be formally introduced."

I snort a laugh. "Feel free to tell me any embarrassing bumps or secretions from your balls from now on. I just want to make it even."

"Sometimes I get a bit of razor burn when I manscape."

"Are you scared, Chase?"

"I'm petrified, but I know you are too, so I have a lot of catching up to do on the fear."

"Are you only here because Liam told you to be?" I have to know.

He sniffs a little and stands. Tentatively, half his face appears around the curtain, and he stares at me for a second, his expression kind. "I asked him where it was and what time. I'm here on my own volition. We should –

"Hello," Dr. Dewson says as the door swings open. "Oh, who do we have here?" she asks, opening the curtain.

"This is Chase. He's the father."

"I see." She sits in the seat by the computer and logs in to my chart. She hums a bit as she looks over my reason for being here and my medical history. "So, we're having a baby, huh?"

"Apparently."

She nods and glances at our faces. "I'm assuming this was a surprise."

"Yes, ma'am," I whisper.

"A big one," Chase says.

Dr. Dewson blows out a breath and fully swivels the chair to face me. She respectfully looks into my eyes and somehow manages to bring the room into total calm with her posture. "What are we thinking?"

"We don't know," I say.

Chase stiffens and looks between me and the doctor, but he doesn't say anything.

Dr. Dewson gives a curt nod and then stands. She walks over to the sink and quickly washes her hands before reaching for gloves. "Let's take a look and see where we're at so I can give you any information and answer questions that may be able to help. You're spotting?"

"Yes."

"How much? "

Chase quickly sits behind the curtain again as the doctor positions me in the stirrups and squirts lube on her fingers. She inserts her fingers and presses on my stomach in a manner that makes me wonder where she went to medical school. Is this normal procedure? My eyes flick to the curtain, thankful Chase isn't watching me get a pelvic exam. I squeeze my eyes shut as I think about the doctor's question. "Um, just the one day. It was like a light day of my period."

She removes her hand and pulls off her gloves. She puts a paper over my crotch area, and she whips the curtain open to reveal a startled Chase. His eyes bounce around the room like he doesn't know where to look.

"Any nausea?" Dr. Dewson asks, sitting down again.

"Just a couple of times until about the ninth week." Look at me tracking my symptoms properly. If I wasn't so tired, hungry, and scared, I'd be proud of myself. "It's been all the time the last couple of weeks, though. I can only keep down…" My voice trails off, and I look at Chase, then away again. "Peanut butter."

Chase smirks and reddens, looking at his feet.

"I can send you home with some meds to control it enough for you to get something in your system. If you have problems going forward, you need to call me so I can help. I can't help with everything, but I can with that."

"OK," I say, nodding.

"We're going to do an internal ultrasound. I want to see how the baby's moving. Would Dad like to watch? "

"Uh…" His voice trails off, and he looks at me. He leans closer to the exam table. "Would I like to watch?"

"You can." I don't want to deny him anything since he's here.

Dr. Dewson removes a wand-like structure from a nearby machine that I thought was a heart monitor. Then, she opens a condom and rolls it over the wand as I watch in utter horror. Apparently, this is a sex toy machine.

"Is that a dildo machine?" I ask before I can think better of it.

Chase is also eyeing it like he's not sure whether to pick me up and run out of the room or stay and watch my gynecologist shove a condom-wrapped sex toy up my lady area.

"I get that a lot, but no. It's a transvaginal ultrasound. It's how we do ultrasounds in early pregnancy, although you're almost at the point of your first external one. I don't have that equipment here. It's something you schedule downstairs. I'll only be a minute."

I nod and let her lube up the wand. I hardly even notice when my hand is suddenly full of a masculine one, a thumb stroking circles on my palm.

Dr. Dewson slides the wand inside of me and swivels the screen toward us so I can see the black and white blurs on the screen as she adjusts the picture and moves the wand around, trying to capture a picture on the screen.

Eventually, a small blip that looks like an average jellybean comes into focus. It looks like a little blur as it bounces just a bit and something that looks like a pencil eraser pulses. Chase and I freeze, and Chase moves closer to the screen, squinting. "Is that it?"

"That's it. I'd say about eleven and a half weeks from the size and look."

She presses a button on the machine and some pictures spit out onto a small tray. I didn't even think about getting pictures of the baby at this point.

She quickly removes the wand and instructs me to scoot up the table. I hand her the paper covering the top of my crotch and abdomen and quickly adjust my gown. "Why did I spot?" I ask, out of breath.

Maybe it's seeing the baby, but it somehow makes this all a lot more terrifying. My heart pounds. My armpits feel uncomfortably warm, and a drop of sweat rolls down my temple. "Is this because I drank, had sex, and…had sex?" I ask. If Dr. Dewson thinks I'm insane, she doesn't show it. Perhaps she sees lots of single, broke women in her office pulling their hair out and wailing against the fact that they don't want their baby but also really want their baby.

She holds up her hands. "No, Kailee. A lot of women don't realize they're even pregnant until seven or eight weeks. They continued with life. Sex is definitely fine and enjoyed up until delivery in a healthy pregnancy. It can cause a bit of spotting, so it could happen again, but some spotting can be normal." She goes back to the computer and scrolls through my chart again. " At your last checkup, you said you only drink a couple cocktails a week socially. Has that changed?"

"No," I practically whisper.

"As long as you weren't binge drinking every weekend, you've nothing to worry about an occasional couple glasses of wine the last few weeks."

"I, uh, work at a weed truck that serves brownies and…stuff." I sniff and wipe my face, and Chase's hand runs down my back. "We often eat the leftovers or sample while we bake."

Dr. Dewson tilts her head to the side. "Did you stop when you found out you were pregnant?"

"Yes. I wasn't sure I'd keep it, but I stopped just in case."

Chase's head turns to me, tilting, and his brow furrows. If he has questions about my abortion thoughts, now isn't the time for that very necessary conversation.

"Same directions," Dr. Dewson says. "Try not to fret about it. Baby's heart sounds good, and it's moving. Growth is comparable for a baby of that gestational age. We'll just move forward."

"Does the hospital take my insurance?" I hate that I ask the question, but I need to know if medical bankruptcy is going to be a real thing in my life.

Dr. Dewson checks my chart again and squints. "The Affordable Care Act covers the maternity checkups. Everyone gets that. Your insurance has to cover a few things, but there could be a copay for hospital visits, and many plans don't cover the doctor on call or anything like an epidural. The anesthesiologist' s bill is separate. It could be several thousand dollars, but you'll have to talk to your insurance company."

I take in a deep breath, and my eyes bug out of my head. I can't afford to give birth in my own damn country. I have nothing.

"Is any specialist covered by my insurance?"

"The lactation consultant, and you get a free breast pump."

"Oh, well, happy day."

"Handled. Don't you worry about any of it, OK," Chase whispers into my ear, smoothing my hair back. I watch Dr. Dewson as she practically swoons over Chase's words. I'd like to, but I'm too worried about being indebted to him.

"Can I exercise and…stuff?" I ask, changing the subject. I'll cry over the medical bill issue later. I also don't want to have sex right at this moment, but it would be nice to know I could in the next few months.

That's if Chase ever wants to touch me again.

Wait. Why am I so concerned about sex with him when he acted the way he did? The thought moves through my head, but I quickly push it away. I'm not sure I'll keep this baby, let alone keep the man who sired it and then acted like a dick by running away when I told him I'm pregnant.

Dr. Dewson smiles and nods. "I can't see any cause for concern with this, Kailee. You have an active fetus, and your uterus feels as expected. We'll get some blood work to check your hormone levels, and I'm sending you home with some prenatal vitamins you need to take while you consider your next move. Activity and even sex are fine as long as you're not actively spotting. I'd wait a few days for right now, though."

"What about my endometriosis? Will that make things harder?"

"I'm not going to lie. You'll have to keep your appointments. Every single one. After we get to the third trimester, you'll be classified as high risk for early delivery and watched closely for preeclampsia."

"Pre what?"

"High blood pressure. Endometriosis can also cause early delivery. Do not be one of those pregnant women who plans a vacation to Tahiti in their thirty-eighth week. We'll watch you closely when you get there. However, everything looks OK now, and women with endometriosis history deliver full-term, healthy babies all the time once they do get pregnant. If the baby is sticking, we'll roll with it. If baby decides to unstick in the next few weeks, you'll need an office visit, but there's nothing we can do to stop a natural miscarriage at this point. Basically, it is what it is, and right now, it's growing quite nicely."

We all sit in silence for a few moments. I wish I could open a flap into Chase's mind to figure out what in the world is going through his head right now. He's had much less time to adjust to this. I'm sure his head is spinning with questions for me.

Something tells me it will be a long day with some discussion I've been putting off .

Dr. Dewson stands and hands me a packet. "Here is some information about your stage of pregnancy." She picks up the pictures from the tray. "These are yours. I know you have some tough decisions, and I've included information about those choices in the back of the packet. I can't give you more information because the state of Missouri and the Catholic hospital system I'm associated with forbids me even talking about it and have tied doctors' hands, but I can point you to this number here." I look at the number she taps with her index finger way down at the bottom of the page under a bunch of religious-affiliated birth and pregnancy centers. "You understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and you need to schedule your sixteen-week appointment and ultrasound for twelve weeks at the desk before you leave. I already sent the orders. Go ahead and schedule. You can always cancel if you decide not to go through with the pregnancy. Call the nurse line if you have any questions, OK?"

I nod as she pats Chase on the arm before leaving the room.

I dress in silence behind the curtain as Chase paces on the other side. I can see his outline as I pull up my panties and fasten my bra. He runs his hands through his hair and shakes his head, nods, then shakes it again.

I open the curtain and walk out of the room with him behind me, and we're silent as we head to the front scheduling area. I make appointments as Chase opens his phone and updates his calendar with the dates I work out with the scheduler. He doesn't fuss if he has something scheduled those days. He simply adds them to his phone without expression.

When we're out of the office and standing in front of my car, he finally speaks. "I have to go into a counseling session with the police counselor about the shooting, and then I have a meeting about some cases they want Liam and me to work on when I'm back in the bullpen. I want to talk about this, though. Can we take a few moments over the next couple of days to think and then talk?"

I nod and walk to my car, a tear already threatening to run down my cheek. When will this crying ever stop? "I think that would be good. Um, do you mean where we are with each other or where we are with the baby?"

Chase looks at the keys now in his hand. "Both."

I nod. Chase walks to his car without hugging me, and I bite my lip. I will not let him go like that. Hell no.

"Chase! Wait." I jog over to him, and he steps toward me, his head cocked to the side. When I reach him, I throw my arms around his body, hoping and praying he hugs me back.

I practically swoon with relief when he wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head. His arms are so tight around me that I can hardly breathe, but I revel in the feel of his chest against my cheek as he takes a breath – like that will be enough for us. His face is in my hair, and I rub his lower back as he holds me .

I've never felt so safe. So cared for. So much like this is going to be OK whatever we decide. I just hate the feeling that he's holding me like this only because of the baby. The thought gnaws into my soul like an emotional party pooper. Whatever I feel with him, however safe he makes me feel, I cannot get into a relationship with him just because we have a child together.

A car honks at us, and we break our hug as we realize we're standing in the middle of the parking lot and blocking traffic. When we move out of the way, Chase kisses me gently on the cheek, and I suddenly remember I'm holding a packet of baby stuff. "Here," I say. I pull out the folder Dr. Dewson gave me and ruffle through it until I find one of the pictures. "You should have one of these."

Chase smiles and takes it from me before finally backing away and looking at his watch. "We'll talk soon, Kailee."