“Very. He wanted a baby, and I told him I couldn’t get pregnant at my age, and I thought it was true,” she said ruefully. “He’s involved with someone else now, so if I do this, I’d be on my own.”
“I had a fifty-one-year-old woman in here last week who thought she couldn’t get pregnant either. Nature surprises us sometimes. You have to do what’s best for you. Particularly if you’re doing it alone.”
“What’s she doing about it?” Blaise asked about the fifty-one-year-old woman.
“She’s having the baby. But she’s married, and her husband is thrilled. They’d even considered adopting, so this works for them. What about you? Have you told the father?”
“No, and I’m not going to. We’re not in contact. I think it’s best that way. I’ll tell him if I have it. But I want to make the decision on my own, because if I have it, he won’t be around to help me. I don’t know why I’m even thinking about it. I was sure I was going to have an abortion, and I probably am. But I keep wondering if it’s some kind of gift. At my age, maybe it is.” The doctor smiled, looking noncommittal. She didn’t want to interfere.
“You have about two weeks if you want an abortion,” she said simply, just to let Blaise know the time frame. “And if you decide to keep the pregnancy, you should have a CVS next week, to check for genetic anomalies. It wouldn’t be recommended after that, and in that case you could have amniocentesis. But I think CVS would be a good idea. So you should try to make the decision this week.” She was two and a half months pregnant. And the sonogram the doctor did after that showed a strong heartbeat, and Blaise could see the baby on the screen. She tried not to think about it after she left the doctor’s office. This was not about the baby and what had caused it, her love for Simon. It was about her life, and what she thought she could handle or not. Her responsibility for Salima was huge, and Harry was no help. She did it all alone. And she would this time too. She was sad again that Simon had gone back to Megan, but he had. Now she had to figure out what to do about this baby—abort it or have it on her own. She lay on her bed when she got home, and all she could think of was having a baby in her arms again. Simon’s baby. Even though she kept telling herself that he would never be part of her life again and he belonged to someone else, she knew that the baby was his, and the result of their love. And even if they had only been together for a brief time, and weren’t meant to be together forever, they had loved each other deeply. And the baby that had happened as a result was undeniably a gift.
“You’re so quiet, Mom,” Salima said on Sunday morning when she walked into the kitchen, and Blaise was sitting there, staring into space.
“I was just thinking.”
“What about?” She thought her mother sounded in better spirits lately, and that she had had a hard time at first when Simon left, but recently she seemed more like herself.
“I don’t know … I was thinking about work … the show I did in Morocco, nothing special,” she lied to her. She had to make the decision by the next day. Salima was sure she was thinking about Simon but didn’t want to ask. Salima had already had two text messages from him that morning. He had remained faithful in their correspondence for the past two months. But he never mentioned Blaise. He wanted to keep his relationship with Salima pure and untainted. He wondered about her and missed her but didn’t want to use Salima for information or to pass messages to Blaise. If he’d had something to say to her, he would have said it himself.
Blaise went back to her room after breakfast and spent the day in her office at home doing work, while Salima and Becky went out. And by the end of the day, when they met for dinner, Blaise looked exhausted. She was torturing herself about the decision and hadn’t made it yet. And as she lay in bed and looked at the moon that night, she was still undecided, torn either way. And she lay there thinking about when Simon had been in that bed with her, and the wonderful time they’d shared.
She felt peaceful when she fell asleep that night, hoping she’d wake up in the morning, knowing what to do.
And then for no reason, she woke in the middle of the night. The moon was still shining brightly, and she had two more hours to sleep before the alarm went off. And as though someone had spoken the words clearly, she heard a voice in her head. “It’s a gift.” The voice said it so loudly she almost heard it in the room as well. It’s a gift, she said to herself, as she went back to sleep, remembering Simon in her bed. The decision had been made.
Chapter 16