Jared Shenko

Pregnant?

How could I be?

I wondered how far gone I had been. I had completely forgotten the usual phenomenons that reminded me of womanhood every months. I had missed my period for two months straight and hadn't put in a fist of care as to why. I just thought how good it was to not have to worry about tampons for the past couple of months.

Two months ago, I spent a night in a strip club, with a man, a stranger who had his way with me and paid me for it. I needed a huge amount of money for the treatment of my little sick niece. I was desperate; desperate enough to have sold my body to that one man, that one night.

I called it my ultimate sacrifice in this life. I made it in vaine though.

It was just one time. One time that I didn't feel anything but voids upon voids of complete emptiness. One fucking time!

But then, my mama would always tell me before; sometimes, that's all it takes; one time.

I had just lost a child! How was I getting another one? I wasn't even done grieving. I wasn't even ready. I had neither the energy nor the mindset for this one. It was going to be different since I will have to bare this one, bring it into the world and... I just wasn't ready, or worthy.

No!

I already had my mind made up on getting rid of the apregnancy. I knew I could never be able to give another child, him or her what I would want them to have; or what they would deserve.

I Looked at myself, I was already a living disaster. I could barely hold me together. How could I bring forth another. I had no love to give, no care to give and no time to live. I was practically a living corpse. Death might have missed me this time but there could be a next time.

"What are you thinking about Mara?" Issa's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, "You can tell me my little Maralita,".

It had been forever since someone had called me that. Only my big sister did. It resurged a melancholic feeling from within. With that other incomprehensible feelings. I never wanted to hear it again. Never!

"Please don't call me that Issa; and I have no intentions of keeping this baby. I'm getting rid of it." The wind seemed to have carried my words with them yo the wrong ears.

"What?" I heard a voice came in from the door. I turned to see who it was.

There he stood!

The man.

It was him.

I knew it was him and this time I knew too it wasn't an illusion or my imagination. I was certain he was there, real, in the flesh and blood. Not just because I was glued to a bed and couldn't run away or get run over by a truck.

Maybe a meteorite will fall on the hospital building and the illusion would disappear: again.

"You want to abort it? Why would you want to abort a child?" he asked in an almost whisper tone. He dropped a basket of fruits at the door. Adrenaline pumped through my veins at the sight of him. He really was here, and talking to me.

Before, I had been at lost for words, I couldn't control my emotions,  I ran away, but now, I could feel them; one of them at least. I was angry.

My mind had been set on this goal already and I had no remorse, whatsoever. He on the other hand had no right whatsoever to tell me what to do.

"What are you still doing here?" I asked. I tried to ignore his eyes that seemed to be stabbing my soul and digging my grave. He fell into exasperation; panting up and down, messing up his hair, pulling loose his neck tie as if the shirt he wore was chocking him. He only slightly released the tie on his neck. I could see right through him too.

He was angry. And trying impossibly hard to keep that anger under control.

"Issa could you excuse us please!" he said. His accent thickly british. One could tell he was of prominent background: rich, well educated and all.

Issa sent me a sympathetic look, rubbing the back of my hand, "Please don't be so stubborn," she whispered before exiting.

The air became so tensed with just him and I in the room. I could feel the strain in my breathing. It was harder for me to breath in his presence than it had been when I attempted to get out of the hospital bed.

"Why?" I suddenly asked to break down the silence, to relieve my lungs from the extreme tightness of trying to keep it all in. He stopped and turned to look at me.

"Why what?" he asked in a husky tone.

"Why do you care if I get rid of this thing or not. You don't had to worry about a nuisance or anything that will delay your perfect life so why not let me do what I gotta do?" the words tasted bitter in my mouth. Calling my own child thing? But I needed him to know I couldn't care less.

"Thing? Well, because is my child too." he said in a pleading tone. "You think I don't remember you? Well I do. I haven't been able to forget what happened since that night. It was wrong! What happened was very wrong but nonetheless,  I want my child to live. That child is mine too and I want to see him, I want to be with my child, I want to be its father; the best I possibly could and- I can not permit you to murder him."

I threw him a dirty glance that read 'Do I look like I care',

"Permit! What are you talking about permit? This isn't school or anything of the sorts. I don't need your fucking permission to do whatever I deem right for me. How sure can you even be that this pregnancy is yours, huh? You fucker a whore in a strip club, do you even know how many other people did?"

"Oh please Maraïda! Isabel already told me all I needed to know to be sure that the child you're carrying is mine! And like I said before, you can not abort it."

"You want to give permissions? Fine! If you can carry it for seven more months, then good, you can take it, keep it, do whatever the fuck you want with it; but as long as I am the one to carry it, you don't get to say shit in what I want to do with it."

"But I am the father and-" he dropped on the bed side and grabbed my hands into his gently, "I am sorry for raising my voice at you," he said in a lower tone, not apologetic or whatever, just lower than before when he was practically screaming at me,

"I am now begging you not to do this. Please do not think of such fate for our baby. I only might have this chance at f..." he  was going to say something touching but was interrupted by the nurse who popped in.

"Mr. Shenko, Dr. Seuss would like to see you please."

Shenko? I knew that name from somewhere.

His head dropped to the floor.

Immediately the nurse left, he turned to me again, his eyes stared pleadingly, like a lost puppy,

"I am desperate for this right now,  so please, think it through. I'll be right back." he followed the nurse, his blue eyes were dark but looking hopeful.

While in my familiar solitary state, I couldn't get my mind off that name. His name. It was too unique to be something you hear every day. It was distinct; held a sense of power to it.

Of course! Jared Shenko!

I was very certain I had heard about it somewhere. He was only one of the wealthiest business gurus in history. He had been written down as being a young boy who had striven so hard from being a nobody to being CEO of a multimillion distribution company. He had also engaged himself in different businesses, making uncountable profits, till he became the wealthiest business tycoon in the city and the entire state. I only knew all this because I wrote a fucking paper about people like him when I was still in school. I even had the opportunity to interview him and some others for like five minutes during a bussiness summit or an event like that. Then, I felt like I was an Anastasia in a Fifty Shades fantasy land; excerpt my Christian was very married and about ten years or more older than I was. I had idolized him. His growth from being an underdog to being a multimillionaire had inspired me daily; I mean when I still had dreams. Now, I was just a miserable salmonella in despair.

And then he showed up in my life again, intercepted it course and got me pregnant.

Talk about Fifty Shades Gone Wrong!!!