Getting Her Back

“What are you going to do now?” Ellen asks.

“Honestly, I have no idea. I’m not sure I can actually stomach the idea of sleeping with a stranger now.”

“Yeah…” she says. “Maybe take some time to think about it?”

I sigh. “It’s what I’ll have to do.”

“If you can’t pregnant,” she says, “you could always foster. Or adopt.”

“I know,” I say. “I have thought about it. I’m not opposed, I’ve just always wanted to be pregnant. I want to experience what that is like.”

Ellen hugs me around the shoulders. She knows. It’s not like I haven’t been talking about it forever. Everyone in my life knows I have baby fever. I’ve never been apologetic or ashamed of it. But I feel defeated right now. All I want to do is sleep.

“You should go outside,” Ellen says. “Go for a walk, get some fresh air. If you still want to curl up and take a nap after that, then I think that seems fine.”

“What, are you my doctor now?”

She laughs. “Something like that. I just know that if you stay in the house much more you’re going to melt into the floor.”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll go for a fucking walk.”

That only makes her laugh harder, but she pushes me off the couch and I put on some comfy clothes. “Are you going on this walk too?”

“Sure.”

We go down to Astoria Park. It’s a bit of a trek, but the day is nice, and the park is always beautiful. Damn Ellen for being right. This does make me feel better. I suppose the adage ‘sunshine is the best disinfectant’ can be used figuratively and literally.

“How do you feel?” Ellen asks.

“What are you expecting? That I’m gonna go for a walk and suddenly I’m going to get over Christian?” I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I wish it were true, but that’s not going to happen.”

“I know,” she says. “I meant more like do you feel like you’re a part of the living humans again. When you answered the door you looked like you stepped out of The Walking Dead.”

“I did not.”

“Did too,” she says. “But seriously, how do you feel?”

“I’m going to take it one day at a time,” I say. “That’s all I can really do.”

“That sounds like a good strategy,” she says.

We go down to the water and sit there for a while until Ellen needs to leave. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Probably not,” I say. “But I’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Okay,” she says standing. “I’ll text you later. Please actually answer me this time?”

I laugh, though it’s not very funny. “I will,” I say. “I promise.”

I don’t leave the park for a while, enjoying the late summer sunset, and eventually I feel my phone buzz. I check it, thinking it’s Ellen checking in, but it’s not. I’m frozen, because it’s a text from Christian.

Where are you?

I glance at the time. It’s more than an hour past when I would have met him at the apartment. Did he think I would be there after what happened? That I would just go back after he left again? Another text.

Are you all right?

I don’t answer. In fact, I put my phone back in my pocket. The sunset is nice, and I don’t need the distraction. There’s a few more text buzzes, and then the long, insistent vibration of a phone call. But I ignore it. If he won’t answer my questions, then I won’t answer his. Eventually he’ll give up, and we’ll go back to the old normal. Where neither of us were a part of each other’s lives.

Another buzz.

I sigh.

* * *

Monday comes and goes, and even though Christian keeps texting me, I don’t respond. Even when I’m in art class and the echoes of drawing him are everywhere, and my sketch of him is hanging on the wall and all I want to do is go back in time three days, I don’t respond.

He calls too, and leaves voicemails. I listen to one, and he talks about how he’s still willing to get me pregnant—all I have to do is show up at the apartment. I’m not anymore willing to do that than I am to listen to anymore messages, respond to his texts, or answer his phone calls.

On Tuesday, I get a call from a number I don’t recognize. Given how many times Christian has been calling me, I am wary that he might’ve found a different number to use, but I answered all the same. “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Audrey Robinson?” I don’t recognize the voice.

“Yes, speaking.”

“Hello Audrey,” the female voice says. “I’m Dr. Lang at the Bridgeport Fertility Clinic. I’m calling in response to an application you sent in for a clinical trial a few months ago. I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.”

Shock runs through me. It’d been so long that I’d given up hope about that trial. I never thought they’d call me, I thought their admission period was over. “Uh, hi. I honestly wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”