A Little Piece of Heaven
Chapter 35: True
I pat my knees impatiently. Toby isn't here yet for my appointment. I'll say that I am at least a little happy and appreciative. It's a Sunday, and the check up is free of charge. Good thing Toby's office is an independent one. On any other day I'd be grumbling in an eerie hospital waiting room awkwardly avoid eye contact with sick people.
"Hiya!" I hear a happy voice and the jingle of a certification clip badge.
"Hey, Toby." I fake smile. Let's get this over with.
I follow the swing of his white cover coat into one of the private practice wings in the business complex of Uptown Metropolis. Other people quietly pass by operating expensive machinery, or guiding other people into different specialized wings. We pass a couple of glowing female androids. They must be nurse's assistants.
"How have you been? Haven't seen you buzzin 'round in a while." Toby uses his keys to unlock the door to his facility. "Dr. Toby Blair: Women's Health" is printed in bold white letters on the upper glass window.
"I'm fine, I guess." I answer scratching my arm.
"Well then, I guess we'll just have to see." He smiles weirdly at me, the same way he usually does then asks me to take a seat. I'd rather stand, but I sit anyway.
"My mother thinks that there is something wrong with me," I cross my arms and wipe sweat from my neck. Summer heat still lingers on my skin. I hand him paper work that I had filled out before he got here. "But I disagree." He takes the paper work and fastens it to a data scan clip board. The information is collected in a bright bar of light from the documents and cataloged into a doctor's data base.
"Maybe Lady Greendown is right?" he hums and clicks the clipboard device off.
PHOEBE F. GREENDOWN...¦ [inquiry?]
reads a glowing screen.
"Anything abnormal you'd like to tell me?" he sits down next to me and takes out a touch tablet pen from his pocket. I sigh. One of his own android assistants whirrs to life and flutters in and out of the office.
"No, not really. Just me eating, and being lazy."
He chuckles. "Figures." He knows how I am. "What do you mean by lazy?"
"I've been a bit tired."
"Fatigue?"
"Sure, fatigue." He scribbles things down that transfer to the data screen. It reminds me of sitting in the lab with...what was his name...Vexen in that other odd, empty world.
"Anything else?"
"Um, my stomach, and I've gained a little weight." I shrug my shoulders.
"Weight gain...and nausea?" He mumbles. "Any vomiting?" He squints at me. What's that look supposed to mean?
"No, and not nausea. Something like a cross between heartburn and digestive irregularity." I wiggle my heeled foot. Can we hurry this up?
"That it?"
"That's it."
"Well follow me. We'll measure your height and weight."
And we do. 4 feet 7 inches. Still the same height of an average fifteen year old girl. 127 pounds. Eww, I'm twenty pounds overweight. That's just stupendous.
"Looks like you've gained quite a bit."
No, duh.
"I knew I remembered you being thinner, Phoebe." Toby comments.
Shut up.
He looks up from his tablet and gives me another odd look. I can tell he's burning to ask me more personal questions. I hope he can pick up the message that I ain't interested.
"I can tell you aren't up for any intrusive health exams, so how does a blood test sound?"
"Alright," I puff my cheeks. I don't like needles either. But I would rather be stuck with a needle than anything else.
"You wouldn't happen to know where I could find Her, Xemnas?"
"Her? That would be?"
"The green heart."
"Ahhh, her. I would have no leading, Maleficent. Now, why would you address me?" Xemnas uncrosses arms. Hard wind flings his hair from his back and neck. He had been hesitating a dissent. The jagged rock cuts under his black boots.
"It's my understanding that you where the last person to acquire her."
"That much is true, but as her whereabouts, it is apparent that she is not in my company. Try looking in more obvious places," he answers curtly then jumps.
Ruffled, Maleficent takes her leave just as soon as she came.
I tap the top of a band aid stuck near the crease of my forearm. In earlier centuries a blood test would have taken days, but the world I grew up in is what you call revolutionary or just pseudo futuristic. Technology allows me to get my results the day my blood is drawn.
"Here we are." All it takes are a few drops for information to be read and transmitted to organized statistics.
"What now?" Come on. I need to leave.
"We check off to see if anything is wrong." He starts his "check-off" scrolling through all of my blood work. This is going to take forever.
"Let's not take a millennium, okay?" I sway impatiently.
He laughs (ugh) and swipes the tablet pen on his clip board moving the screen.
"Nothing wrong here..." he mumbles every now and again. I'm constantly checking the clock. I resort to tugging at the hair of my bangs.
"Hmmm...?" He eventually hums like he's confused.
"What?"
"So when were you going to tell me?" He swivels around, half smiles, and shakes his head.
"Tell you what?"
"That you were expecting."
"Excuse me? Toby quit playing." I snort. "See this is why I don't like you." I expect him to roll his eyes.
He holds that odd confused expression again. He runs a hand through his glossy chestnut brown hair and adjusts his glasses. For a moment he stares at me like I'm crazy. I stare right back.
"I take it you don't know."
"Know what, Toby?"
"Well, your blood contains high levels of hGC."
"And that means? I don't speak doctor, Toby." No.
"That you're pregnant." No.
"I'm serious, Toby." I slump over. Elbows hit my knees and the heels of my palms press against my forehead. No.
"I'm serious, too. Look, based on the level of chorionic gonadotropin in your blood it looks like you've been pregnant for a while." He reads numbers and tries to make me understand.
"How long is a while?" No.
"You have almost completed your first trimester."
"Three months?" The hell? How could I have not known for almost three full months?
"Yes." He twirls his thumbs. "Are you okay, Phoebe?"
"I'm fine," I lie trying to absorb it all. I need to leave.
"I could do a couple of other things, if you'd like." Toby looks just as unsettled as I do. "That is if you plan to continue..." He trails off unsure of my reaction.
I know what he means. "Why wouldn't I continue?" I lower my voice solemnly and imply back.
Thoughts race a mile a minute through her head, and she can barely pay attention to where she's going. Eventually she leaves her world all together. A manila packet is clutched tight in her shaking hands. Escape, if only for an hour or two.
On the other side of a dark corridor a dusky horizon and cooling beach is waiting for her. She sits against the bark of a hanging palm tree littered with little yellow fruit and lets her tired feet sink into the warm sand.
I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant.
A fast pasted beat that added to her stomach ache.
And it's His.
Added to her heart throb.
How was it even possible? She couldn't make complete sense of it. He wasn't human. She thought back hard, and remembered the last of many times she had let him pin her down and make her feel special. Regardless of biological compatibility, there was no other cause that lead to her current dilemma. She pressed her palm hard into her forehead. It was her fault for assuming and not considering other possibilities.
Now, she'd even seen what she looked like on the inside, and there was something there. She wedged the bulky packet of health notes, and documentation under her arm.
"Hey, it's you."
The sudden voice is a casual one. "What's wrong?" It turns into young curious concern.
"Oh! It's nothing, Riku. I'm just a little lost." She jumps. He didn't make any noise when he approached startling her from her deep thought. Sniffing, she takes the time to look at him. Paranoid looks like he's gotten bigger since the last time she saw him.
"But don't you know where you are?"
"I do, but I don't." She shakes the lightness from her head.
"I know that feeling." Riku sits next to her holding pieces of salt water worn drift wood in his lap.
"Do you?" She tilts her head.
"Yeah. Sometimes when I know what I need to do, but I have no idea how to go about it." Riku's hair sways in the lazy summer breeze setting in silvery clumps against his cheeks. "Do you feel like that?"
"That's exactly how I feel." she sighs sets her hands on her stomach, but changes her mind and sets them on the top of her thighs. "I'm afraid, and unsure of what I should do."
"You should do what my mom says." Riku nods his head watching the tide slow to soft tumbles.
"What does your mother say?"
"Do what feels absolutely right." He blinks and nods again in firm confirmation.
"Riku!" The sound of the little brunette boy drifts muffled by breeze across the shore line. "Riiiikuuuuu?"
"I'm coming!" Riku loudly replies with hands funneled around his mouth. "Sorry, I have to go. Hope you feel better, lady."
"I already do." She popped her knuckles and watched Riku scamper off with his arms full of wood and rope.
"Okay...I can do this." Inhale, exhale.
The night and the streets and the people are quiet. She gains little shreds of inner piece with each solid step back to her hotel. She had so much she had to tell, and someone she needed to meet again. But how? She didn't fully know, but one thing was for certain. She was going to do what felt right, even if part of her felt afraid.
She peered at the manila packet in her hands and shook of the urge to fiddle with what was inside. Papers, prescriptions, and something other. She would have to show it to her mother tomorrow.
...
Someone comes from the shadows to stand in her way.
"Oh, my. If it isn't the Greendown daughter. I've been looking for you young lass."