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Chapter Two “Congratulations Ms. Summers, the test was
positive. You’re going to have a baby.” Buffy blankly looked
back at the doctor, dread coiled rapidly in her stomach, and all she wanted
to do was reach over and punch that stupid happy grin right off his
face. That’s what her mind wanted but
her body was of a different thought. She sat stone
still. Her fingers gripped the arms of
the wood chair in unrelenting alarm. Her throat constricted. Panic seeped in.
She couldn’t breath. She shouldn’t have felt
the shocked panic that was consuming her to its very depth. She knew before
she even came here that she was pregnant but hearing it out of the mouth of a
man that wore a white coat and had pretty framed degrees all over his wall
made it sound so official – so damn real - that it was…well, shocking. The world suddenly
started to spin right down in the direction she never ever thought it would
go – at least not now – right to the shitter.
After everything she had gone through to get her life back on track,
here she was, sitting in a doctor’s office like a deer caught in the
headlights. The most despondent thing
about it was that this news should have given her the greatest joy in the
world, instead she wanted to puke. Her face paled and the
doctor’s smile faded as he touched her arm. “Are you alright Ms.
Summers? I know morning sickness can
be very unpleasant, I can prescribe something to help you in the beginning
months of your pregnancy.” “No, I’m alright. I’ve gotten use to it now actually.” She had to a point. The
more accurate description would be that she had finally gotten a handle on
how to hide her morning puke-fests from Angel and the gang for the past month
and half. Which considering what a bunch of suspicious overbearing thief’s
they all were hadn’t been easy. “You must be thrilled. I
look forward to meeting your husband.” Buffy cleared her throat
and sat up straighter in her chair. “Doctor Mills that is actually something
I need to talk to you about. You see, I’m not married and my boyfriend
doesn’t know that I’m pregnant.” His smile remained but
his eyes reflected his understanding and his sympathy as he gazed back at her
making her feel even more pitiful than she already did. “Oh, I see. Is this
something you two have talked about before, starting a family?” Buffy looked down at her
hands that were now clenched together painfully. Talked about starting a
family? Ha, that was a laugh. They’d
never talked about anything remotely like that. In fact, lately all they did was argue. For the past month Buffy
felt like she had been walking on eggshells.
Angel had been stressed out and on edge, and she, well, she had been
just as bitchy. She knew her reasons but she had no idea what his were, which
only served to cause her more stress which in turn made her even bitchier. “Um no, we haven’t but
that’s not the problem Dr.” At least she didn’t
think so. Actually she had no idea what Angel’s thoughts and feelings were
about kids but she had a suspicion that now would not be the time to even
bring it up even if he was open to the idea.
It was only recently that they had finally gotten The Order back on
track and there was no doubt in Buffy’s mind that that was Angel’s priority. “Dr. Mills, the problem
is that I…” she moved closer to him, her voice dropping to a whisper as she
spoke. “I um...” She was at a loss for
words. Telling him that she didn’t know who the father was made her sound
like a slut, on the other hand, if she told him she was raped than that
opened the door to way too many questions that she didn’t want to answer. So
she stumbled trying to find the right words to say. Thankfully Dr. Mills
seemed to understand her plight. He smiled at her comfortingly. “Miss.
Summers, are you trying to say that you are not sure who the father is?” Buffy’s face reddened
with embarrassment but she nodded her head. Dr. Mills smiled at her.
“Miss. Summers, you don’t need to be embarrassed after all it’s not the
fifties. You are not the first young lady to come to me in the same
predicament.” His understanding smile
and kind eyes comforted Buffy and she tentatively smiled back. “It’s just
that my boyfriend, he doesn’t know and well I…is there anyway we can find out
the paternity of the baby now?” She hopefully asked. He nodded. “We can do a
Chorionic Villus Sampling or CVS for short.” He smiled at her and Buffy felt
a wave of relief wash over her. “But it’s too early for that now. Once you enter your tenth week we can
perform it then.” Another four weeks! Panic seeped back in. She didn’t know if
she could last another two days let alone four weeks. “Is it accurate?” “It’s as accurate as
doing it when the baby is born. Of course you will need to bring in a DNA
sample of the prospective fathers. Will that be a problem?” Well if being dead is a
problem then…um…Yeah! She cleared her
throat. “Well I can bring in something from my boyfriend, but I’m afraid I
can’t get anything from the other…guy.” The doctor smiled at
her, “Well that’s fine. We can test your boyfriend and if they don’t match
then you will have your answer.” Ten minutes later Buffy
walked out of the hospital in a daze. Dr. Mills made
everything sound so simple and easy, she supposed for any other young woman
things would be simple. You tell your significant other that you’re pregnant
and hopefully he would be happy, but in Buffy’s world it wasn’t that
simple. Telling Angel she was pregnant
was the least of her problems. Telling
him he might not be the father was the real mind fuck. Her eyes watered with
unshed tears as she walked through the parking lot. She couldn’t believe this was happening to
her. How was she going to tell
Angel? There was no way to spit shine
this news up. No matter how she told him he was not going to take the news
well…at all. It didn’t matter if she
told him now or if she told him in four weeks. The reaction was going to be the same –
pain and anger - all directed at her. She got in the Cuda and
started it up then pulled out of the parking lot. “DAMN IT!” She screamed out her
frustration in the privacy of her car, her eyes no longer holding back tears
of wretchedness, they were now rolling down her face with gusto and showing
no signs of stopping. “Fucking asshole!” Parker, that son of a
bitch, even in death she couldn’t be free of him. You would think after putting six bullets
in a guy they would finally leave you the hell alone but no, not her scumbag
husband, that no good son of a bitch found a way to torture her from the pits
of hell that she hoped to God he was frying in. What the hell was she
going to do if Parker was the father?
Just thinking that put a bitterness inside of her that was hard to
swallow because she felt it not only toward Parker but also…toward the baby. Shame filled her and her
tears fell more rapidly. God, that was
a horrible thing for a mother to feel toward her child but she couldn’t help
it. When she thought of Parker she got
mad, she felt pain and resentment, she felt…trapped, and thinking that he was
the father of the baby that was in her womb only amplified those emotions and
whether it was right or not, directed them at the baby inside of her. What if Parker was the
father? Would she be able to put those negative feelings and emotions aside
and care for a baby that was his? What
if the baby looked like him? Would she be able to look into the eyes of her
psycho dead husband for the rest of her life, and with love? She honestly
didn’t think she could do that. The
only answer she had for that was an abortion and she wasn’t sure if she could
do that either. After all, the baby
growing inside of her was innocent. How could she kill an innocent baby? Her fists pounded on the
steering wheel. She felt helpless and that just pissed her off. She’d swear on her life she could hear that
little fuck cackling in the background. Laughing at her predicament and
enjoying her discomfort, her uncertainties.
But what if the baby was
Angel’s? She couldn't help but
smile at that. It would be nice to
create a baby that was made out of true love, something that was a little bit
of both of them. Nice? Who was she kidding? It would be amazing. To carry Angel's child in her womb, to give
him the gift of a son or a daughter, God the thought made her pulse quicken
with pleasure. It also surprised her. In all her life she
never once thought of being a mother.
She had been on the pill since she was sixteen and it only took one
month of being with Parker to know that he was not father material at all, so
having a child was never something she thought about much. Besides, back then she could barely take
care of herself let alone a baby. And
the very few times that she had allowed herself to wonder about it, all she
ended up doing was scaring the piss out of herself. Of course she was in a completely
different place in her life now. Her
circumstances had changed. She had
changed. But while she was a different
woman who had the love and support of a completely different man, she was
still frightened of being responsible for another being. The fact was even though she was a much
more grounded person, she was still trying to figure out just who she
was. Being with Parker meant
that she had to be what he wanted her to be.
So she had been a rough neck, a biker’s piece of property, she had been
a carjacker and a thief. Meek and
spineless, she did what she was told no matter how repulsive it was to
her. When she left and came
to Since being with Angel,
she’d morphed once again. Now she was
all about him. While she would do
anything he asked of her, do anything for him, she knew that Angel would never
disrespect or abuse that. She was in
love, deeply so, and she knew that feeling was reciprocated. She had also once more
embraced her gift. And this time it
was different than when she was with Parker.
Her gift was being used for good not just to line somebody else’s
pockets. She no longer felt guilty
when she took something that didn’t belong to her, because it was always from
someone that shouldn’t have had it to begin with. So a lot had changed for
her and it was all for the better. She
liked to think that things had changed for the better for Angel too at least
he told her that it had. But still,
was now really the time to bring a child into the mix? And was Angel even ready to be a
father? She knew that the identity of
his parent’s killer weighed heavily on him.
He hadn’t voiced it but he didn’t need to. She knew it was one of things that had been
bothering him this past month, the other, she had no idea but she was
confident enough to know that he would tell her when he was ready. Her mind stopped dead in
its tracks. He would tell her, Angel
wouldn’t keep any secrets from her anymore.
They had both learned their lesson last time. Hadn’t they? The pain of learning he had kept secrets
from her had almost destroyed her. That
memory was very much alive, the pain that had caused would never be
forgotten. And the look in his eyes
when he found out her secret had been unbearable. No, keeping secrets had almost ripped them
apart. She couldn’t do that again. She
wouldn't! So lost in her thoughts
and roiling emotions she didn’t realize where she was going until the car
came to a sudden stop. She turned and
looked out the window to find that she was sitting in front of her mother’s
house. She looked long and hard
at the little coral painted house with its white picket fence and for a
second she was dumbfounded as to why she had absentmindedly drove here. But then she saw her mother in the window
as she crossed the living room to water a plant. She had a small smile on her face, her
cheeks were slightly sun-kissed, and she looked happy. And why wouldn’t she be Buffy thought. She was married to a man that loved her, a
man that trusted and honored her.
Someone that held a deep respect for who she was as a person and as an
equal partner and not just as someone to warm his bed. A tender smile graced
her own features as she continued to watch her Mom. The woman hadn’t had it easy. Life with Hank Summers had been hard. Buffy was very young when her father split
and she didn’t remember much about him, probably because she closed it out,
but what she did remember was a man with sandy colored hair and hard brown
eyes that had always made Buffy wary and unsure as to where she exactly stood
with him. She wasn’t sure if Xander
and Kendra felt the same way about dear old dad because they never talked
much about him, then or now. Did they
have happy memories of their father? Buffy couldn’t remember one good happy
thing about the man that abandoned his family. What she did remember with a
clarity that made her feel dirty and unwanted were bitter eyes looking at her
with contempt. She couldn’t remember
those eyes ever looking at her older brother and sister that way. No it
seemed that her father’s unexplained anger was only directed at her and her
mom. Buffy could easily
remember the screaming and fighting. The mental and physical abuse, the
degradation that her father relentlessly heaped upon her mother had been
unbearable to watch. As a child Buffy
didn’t understand it. She only knew that seeing her parents fight and act
that way toward each other had made her sad, made her feel responsible some
way. Now, as an adult Buffy saw it for
exactly what it was – her father’s sickness. He had been a bastard just like
Parker. She softly chortled, she
never would have thought that her and her mom would have so much in common
but apparently they did. Just like her
father had delighted in making her mom feel insignificant and small, so had Parker
been with Buffy. From her car window she
watched as Giles suddenly appeared in the living room. He walked up behind Joyce and kissed her on
the cheek, and then he walked to the back of the house and out of sight. Joyce rebounded from the disaster that her
first marriage was. She’d found someone else, someone true to her. Just like Buffy had. If Buffy questioned
why she ended up here before, she didn’t anymore. Abruptly turning away
from the house, Buffy looked in the rear view mirror. She looked like shit and if she walked into
the house looking like this Joyce would jump on her. Quickly pulling out her bag she rummaged
through it and took out her make up bag. A little bit here and there would
hopefully hide the fact that she was a mental wreck who had just bawled her
eyes out the whole way here. Five minutes later she
was standing at the front door. She was scared, nervous, and really freaking
out about what she was about to do but underneath all that was the knowledge
that this was her mom. This was a woman
who had endured the same hell Buffy had, a woman who had found the strength
and the courage to move on with her life.
It was that strength and courage that Buffy desperately needed
now. |