Page 12 of Unwanted Vows

There was an online portal for applications, but a lot of it didn’t make sense to me. I went to the office in person, hoping to see someone who could answer my questions.

The waiting area was large. People of nearly every sort were gathered there. Some were women with children, some were pregnant. A few were men. All looked sad-eyed and weary.

The room didn’t help. The walls were industrial pale blue, the carpet a worn, threadbare beige. It was clean, in a hopeless sort of way. Say what you will about government spending, very little of it had been focused on decor for this location.

It was a long wait. When I finally got in, a sweet-faced woman with tired eyes asked, “How may I help you?”

“I’m pregnant,” I had said. “My parents are dead, so I don’t have family I can ask for help. I’m a student.”

“Scholarship?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Student loans?” I nodded again.

“I can’t help you,” she said, pushing my application back across the desk. “Unless I miss my guess, you’ve got too much money in the bank to meet our income guidelines. Your best bet is to find the father and start the process to secure child support.”

“But,” I stammered. “I don’t know where he is. I’ve got his phone number, but it says it’s disconnected. He said he was going out of the U.S.. That was about six weeks ago.”

The woman looked at me steadily, as if she’d heard this story about a million times before. “We might be able to help you find him.” She picked up a form, jotted a scribble on it, checked a couple of boxes, and sent me down the hall to another office.

Several offices, and a taxi ride later, I found myself standing in front of a massive mahogany desk. Behind it sat a huge bear of a man. His hair was completely white, and his skin had a pasty, unhealthy pallor. He wore an immaculate shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, revealing tattoos from his knuckles to underneath his sleeves. There seemed to be a lot of chains and flames involved.

“I’m Rodri Andrew Aims. Is there some particular reason you are looking for my grandson?”

I swallowed hard. “If your grandson is named Andrew, and has a flaming crown tattooed on his right forearm, he is the father of my child.”

He looked me up and down. “Unlikely, but possible. You don’t look pregnant. How far along are you?” His voice was gruff. I felt as if each word was sandpapering away at my skin.

“About six weeks,” I almost whispered. Suddenly, I had a feeling that this was not a good place to be. He cleared his throat. I would not have been surprised if he had hawked and spat. But he simply took a lozenge from a container on his desk and sucked on it, looking at me as if I’d crawled out from under a rock or was something he wanted to scrape off his shoe.

“My grandson is dead. I was fond of him. If your child can pass a DNA test for paternity when it is born, I’ll pay all your medical expenses and give you a small stipend, on one condition.”

He paused, waiting for me to ask the question he wanted to hear. “What is that?”

“I’ll adopt the child, and you will disappear from our lives. You’ll be free then to return to your life, and to do as you please.”

“But I don’t want to give up my baby,” I said, starting to panic. “Why would you ask that?”

“Isn’t that what all you girls want? To be free and easy, no responsibilities?” he sneered.

“No!” I said. “I just need help with the medical bills, and maybe childcare. I’m planning to be a doctor. My grades are good. I’ll be able to support both of us, I just need a chance . . .”

My voice trailed off under his withering glare. “The only way you’ll get money from me is if you give me the kid, then take off. Because I’m not giving one red cent to a floozy too stupid to use birth control.”

His words stung more than they should have. I suddenly thought about Andrew saying he didn’t get along with his family. I was starting to see why.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said. I knew this was an offer I would never take, but right then I would have said anything to get out of his office.

“You do that,” he said. “Give me a call when you have an answer.”

By the time I managed to get out of his office and onto the street, I was in a state of blind terror. So I called the most sensible person I knew: Kate Emory, the roommate who kept all the rest of us sorted out and on track.

I dropped out of college and gave up my scholarship. I got a job in the Spindizzy post office, working for Kate’s aunt and uncle.

They encouraged me to go back to school, so I enrolled online. I worked days at the post office, and interned at the local hospital at night. Kate’s aunt took care of Paul while I was at the hospital. He attended the Spindizzy daycare from seven in the morning until five-thirty at night. It wasn’t a good life for him, but I was with him as much as I could manage.

I completed my LPN training, then the RN program. Not long after Charles Emory purchased Spindizzy, I got my license to be a nurse practitioner, and took over the Spindizzy clinic. That first clinic became a chain of clinics. When the branch in Freedom, California opened, it gave me the chance for added responsibility and a substantial increase in income.

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