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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Bridge” Down in the Dirt, v196 (the 6/22 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Final Frontier the Down in the Dirt May-August 2022 issues collection book		get the 420 page May-August 2022 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Six Months and Counting

Henri Colt

    “I don’t want this baby.” Her thoughts became words that formed on her lips as she shuffled up the winding marble staircase to her apartment. She carried groceries in a brown paper bag in her left hand. With the other, she pounded a clenched fist repeatedly into her distended belly.
    “I don’t want you,” she muttered.
    She paused at the landing to catch her breath. Putting down groceries, she placed one hand on her hip and held onto the wooden banister with the other. She leaned her back into the railing. “I don’t want you,” she repeated, striking herself weakly again. Tears formed in her eyes. Then she let go of the banister and picked up her groceries.
    When she stepped forward, her back foot caught under the fringe of the rug anchored to the landing. She stumbled awkwardly into the first step of the next set of stairs. Her head struck a marble baluster, but she was able to break the fall with her hand. As her body hit the ground, she felt her wrist crack. The bones in her forearm could hardly support the full weight of her body and the extra pounds she had put on since her pregnancy. Her arm buckled. Her groceries spilled onto the stairs. Beer bottles and soup cans clanked against each other chaotically before falling through spaces in the railing to the lobby below.
    She stared at her distorted wrist and grimaced. “Shit.” She felt under her dress with her uninjured hand and looked at her fingers. “No blood,” she muttered. “Fuck, this is nothing like the movies.” She struggled to her knees and rubbed her chin. Her tongue scraped against the jagged edge of a broken incisor.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by an elderly man who stepped out from behind the door to his apartment. He hurried down the stairs to her aid. “Doctor, are you okay? You’re bleeding,” he said.
    She looked down at her arm again. “I broke my wrist.”
    He dabbed her chin lightly with a handkerchief he had drawn from his pocket. “Your chin is bleeding,” he said. His Eastern European accent was noticeable. “I shall drive you to the hospital immediately. My vehicle is parked directly outside. Please, let me assist you.”
    She wiped away more blood with her sleeve before grabbing his outstretched hand to help herself get to her feet. Her legs were wobbly, but she could support herself after draping her arm over the man’s shoulder. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he held the door open for her. She tried to slip into the back seat of his car, but she had gained so much weight it wasn’t easy. She turned her body to the side and plopped down, but the momentum forced her to sprawl backward spread-legged onto the seat. She figured she had bruised her coccyx, and if it hadn’t been so painful, she would have laughed. She lifted her legs and bent her knees while the man pulled her into the car from the opposite side door. He made sure she was comfortable, then plunged in front of the steering wheel and started the engine.
    “Thank you,” she said. “We can go to the hospital where I work. It’s on the next block.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I know it. Are you sure to be fine? Is there no damage?”
    “You mean to the baby?” she said. “No, I don’t think so.”
    He turned his head to look at her. “Ah,” he said, “thank God.”
    At the Emergency Room, she received VIP treatment. She skipped the triage, dismissed the medical students and other trainees, and asked the nurse for a shot of morphine. Being a doctor came with privileges, she thought. The x-rays confirmed a double fracture, which the orthopedist on duty immobilized in a splint. He said that her ankle, which was quite swollen by now, was sprained and that her bruised tailbone was causing the pain shooting through her buttocks. He wheeled her into a private exam room where she lay waiting on a large recliner with her feet raised when her former husband walked in.
    “Go away,” she said.
    She watched him shove his stethoscope into his coat pocket. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. “Are you okay?” he said.
    She ignored the obvious. “How did you know I was here?” she said.
    “They called me. I have an eighty-year-old on the table for a hip replacement, but I scrubbed out for a moment to check up on you. You’ll need stitches on that chin.”
    “My tooth is broken.”
    “Yes, I see that.”
    “I don’t want this baby.”
    “We’ll get married again. All you have to do is say yes.”
    She glared at him, speechless.
    “You should take some time off,” he said. “Stay in bed for a few months, until the delivery. We’ll get married after that.”
    “I told you I don’t want it,” she said again, as if the words themselves could make it happen.
    He turned to shut the door, but she stopped him by holding on to the pocket of his white coat.
    “You can leave now,” she said. “Tell my obstetrician I’m here.”
    “Apparently, the dispatcher called him when you arrived,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I need to get back to the OR.”
    She pushed him toward the doorway with her good hand. “Yes, just go. I’ll be fine.” She watched him swagger out and put her hand onto her belly. “Why the hell did I sleep with him again,” she whispered to no one in particular.
    She’d been working double shifts. It was one of those miserable nights when the staff was frazzled after caring for dozens of trauma victims. They had called him to the emergency room for the third time. She was managing a patient in alcohol withdrawal. Until then, she had avoided him... in fact, she had avoided him for months after the divorce. But that night, they joked. They drank coffee, and they talked. He mirrored her perfectly, but she knew his reputation, and several nurses even told her they had slept with him. It was after midnight. She was on a break, and stupidly, she had followed him to his office where, somewhat to her surprise, she found herself kissing him.
    To hell with romance, she remembered thinking as she stepped into the office. They kissed again, rather methodically. He shut the door and pushed her against the wall. But when she felt his weight on her shoulders, pushing her to her knees, she went willingly. Mysteriously, his surgical scrubs fell to the floor.
    Boxers, not briefs – that’s new, she thought. Looking up, she noticed him watching her. She didn’t touch him with her hands but took him straight into her mouth. Pausing for breath, she looked up again.
    “Fuck me,” she whispered.
    He lifted her to her feet and dropped her scrubs, panties and all before turning her. Entering from behind, he gripped her hair in one hand while trapping her around the hips with the other. Soon he was fully inside her, pushing her head downwards as if she were a jackknife. For a moment, she feared she might lose her balance. She didn’t like it, but hearing him groan, she knew it would be over soon, and when it was, she turned her head and spun away from him. She watched him from across the room, thinking how ridiculously statuesque he looked, standing in front of her with his shorts around his knees and scrubs at his feet, with half an erection neither coming nor going, his penis dangling meekly between his legs. She quickly pulled on her clothes and grabbed a black elastic band from her breast pocket. After gathering her hair into a ponytail, she twisted it counterclockwise and holding it in one hand, wrapped the band around her newly formed bun until it was tight.
    “I should clean up,” she said, reaching for the door.
    He looked surprised.
    “I’ll see you later,” she remembered hearing as she stepped across the threshold into the hallway. “We can have breakfast together.”
    She answered, “yeah, maybe,” but what she was really thinking was, what am I doing?
    After that, she did her best to avoid him almost entirely. Four weeks later, the pregnancy test was positive.
    She was sourly reminiscing when her obstetrician walked into the exam room. He was an older man in his early sixties. He had been one of her teachers when she was in medical school, and she had trained with him for a month before joining the hospital staff the year before.
    “You could have lost the baby,” he told her softly.
    She didn’t care. “I’m all right.” she said.
    He took her hand in his as he stood over her. “I think so, but we should do an ultrasound...and I would like to keep you in the hospital overnight if it’s okay with you.”
    “That’s reasonable,” she said. “Thanks.”
    “Good,” he said. “I’ll make it happen.”
    She thought he was going to leave the room, but he didn’t move. Instead, he pulled up a stool and sat next to her. He took her hand again in his. He delicately laid his other hand on her belly. There was a tenderness in his eyes she hadn’t seen before.
    “It’s not like you...tumbling down stairs,” he said.
    “I don’t want this baby anymore.” She couldn’t believe she had finally told someone. She felt her eyes become puffy as she held back the tears. “I know I’m over the legal limit, but I don’t want it.” She looked out through the window. An ambulance and a few parked cars were in the courtyard between two hospital buildings, and a lone maple tree had lost its leaves since the first frosts of autumn.

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