She leads me to a nook in the corridor where she sits me down to draw some blood from my arm. Then I’m ushered back out to the waiting room.
The receptionist smiles at me. “It will be just a few minutes. Then they will call you back again,” she says cheerily, as if I’m not going to sit here in complete and total agony for the next few minutes.
I grab a magazine off the square coffee table in the center of the room, then I take a seat in the corner and flip through the pages. It’s a Spanish travel magazine and I find it funny that they would have this in a clinic in the Canary Islands. One thing you’ll find after living in a city for a while is that the appeal of vacationing there diminishes quickly. For instance, I never understood why Los Angeles was such a popular tourist destination. To me, L.A. is a place tourists should avoid. If you want to have fun in California and you want to avoid most of the crime, go to Disneyland or the zoo. But stay the heck away from L.A. and Hollywood.
Not that I’ve ever been to Disneyland or the zoo. Or Hollywood, for that matter.
Because I was kept in a basement most of my life. According to Daimon, this is because my parents kidnapped me as a child from the Princess of Monaco. I chuckle softly and a woman a few seats away jerks her head toward me, probably thinking I’m a crazy American. She’s right. I’m crazy and I may be pregnant with the child of a man who’s even crazier.
But is it really so outlandish to believe that my parents kept me hidden for their own benefit, and not mine, as they had me believe? No, it’s not. Which is why it was so difficult for me to call my mother two weeks ago to confirm my father’s death. I expected her to blame it on me and call me an ungrateful monster. But she didn’t have much to say to me. I should have expected that.
“Your father has been dead for three weeks. I can’t… talk about it. Goodbye.”
That was all she said. Luckily, the coroner’s office was a bit more forthcoming. My father was drugged and, after a brief struggle, shot in the head.
Since the masquerade ball nearly two weeks ago, I’ve tried to imagine whether I’d feel any less angry about my father’s murder if he indeed had kidnapped me as a child. Would I feel less betrayed by Daimon and more betrayed by my father? I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is that I had about two minutes to contemplate this quandary after Daimon blurted out his accusations at the ball. Two minutes to decide between avenging my father and backing out on my entire plan. I chose to avenge my father, but my desire to back out grew with each passing second that I pressed my foot down on his throat.
It takes four to five minutes of asphyxiation to kill most human beings. A trained assassin like Daimon could probably hold his breath anywhere from four to eight minutes. I blocked off his airway for three minutes because I couldn’t stand there for another second. I backed out. Not because I don’t love my father. But because I don’t know if he ever loved me.
“Aleesa Kendreeck.”
I look up to see the girl in the pink scrubs calling my fake name from across the room. I follow her back into the corridor then into another room. She motions for me to have a seat on the examination table and leaves.
Hopping up onto the table, I’m not surprised to find the walls covered with cross-section posters of pregnant women and men with prostate cancer. The room is too cold and the fluorescent lighting is too bright. I find myself wishing I’d worn my jeans and hoodie when my skin begins to prickle with goosebumps. Finally, the door handle turns and a man in a white lab coat and tweed slacks enters.
He stares down at the chart in his hands for a moment, then he looks up, smile beaming as he extends his hand to me. “Good morning, Mrs. Kendrick. I’m Dr. Hernandez.”
I shake his hand and return the greeting without correcting him. If he wants to think I’m a “Mrs.” that’s fine with me. It’s just one more layer of disguise.
He closes the door behind him and lays the chart down on a counter as he continues to leaf through it. “I have your blood work and your urinalysis and I’m pleased to report that you are… a woman.” I look at him like he’s crazy and he chuckles. “But you already knew that.”
“Yes, sir. Can you please just tell me if I’m pregnant?”
He turns back to the chart and scratches his jaw as he flips to the third page. “Yes. You are pregnant.”
He looks up again to see my reaction and I can’t help but suck in a sharp breath at this news. I hold my breath and let it out slowly, trying to maintain my composure, but I can already feel the tears stinging my eyes.
“I suggest you begin prenatal care as soon as possible. It appears you are approximately three weeks pregnant. Which puts your estimated due date at 2 February.”
“February 2nd?” I whisper. “I can’t have a baby on February 2nd.”
Dr. Hernandez’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I’m not sure I understand. But if you need to make arrangements for other… services, we can help you with that.”
Other services? Is he asking me if I want to get an abortion?
I have to get out of here.
I thank the doctor and quickly pay the receptionist. Once I’m outside the clinic, I dial the cab company to send another taxi for me.
“Forty minutes!” I yell into the phone, trying not to hyperventilate. “I’m not going to wait forty minutes.”
“Miss, you can walk a few blocks south to the hotel Sol La Palma and they have a taxi stand. That is the best I can do.”
I hang up and immediately begin walking south toward the beach, breathing in large gulps of briny air to try to calm myself. What am I going to do? I can’t have a baby on February 2nd or any other day.
If my mother drove me crazy, my child will have no hope with a fugitive for a mother. And even if Daimon did survive and I’m not actually a wanted criminal in America, I did kill two men on this island. I’ll never be able to go back to the U.S. where I can be extradited. I’ll be a single mother on the run for the rest of my life. Even I know that’s a terrible way to raise a child.
The streets become more crowded the closer I get to the beach and the tourist locations. I pass a small apartment building on my left and I can see the huge Sol La Palma hotel up ahead. Just another block and a half and I can get a ride home.
Maybe I can get Nick to run away with me. Maybe I can even convince him that he’s the father of my child. And we can raise the baby together in a villa in South America.
No, I can’t expect him to give up his sunglasses company and his family for an American girl he’s known for about a week. Though he did say he loves me. Do I really have it in me to ask him to prove it? Do I even want to spend the rest of my life hiding out with a man I hardly know? As tempting as the idea sounds, I’m positive I’m not in love with Nick. And I don’t know if I could pretend to be.
I place my hand on my abdomen. Whether or not I admit it to myself or to anyone else, I’m still in love with Daimon. Just the idea of carrying his child fills me with a strange glee. A nervous giddiness that permeates every cell of my body. How sick is that?
I can’t even stop myself from imagining he’ll be a great father. Teaching our child to be smarter and stronger than everyone else. Like my father taught me.
The horn blares in my left ear, sending a painful shock through my nerves. I’m frozen in the middle of the intersection. Watching in slow motion as the minivan hurtles toward me.
Chapter Nine
I brace myself for the impact of the car. In a split second, I imagine the van crashing into the left side of my body, crushing all the bones in my left leg and probably my hip. And my pelvis. Along with every vital organ and microscopic human being held within.