Page 12 of Jasper
I stare at the name. Jasper. Like the voice I heard on the phone—gritty, sharp, and dangerous in all the ways that don’t particularly scare me.
“Do you want to give consent to release your information?” the director asks quietly. “Or would you prefer we hold off?”
I close my fingers around the card.
“Not yet,” I say. “I need… time.”
He nods once. “Understandable. I want to apologize again for putting you in this position.”
“Mistakes happen,” I tell him.
“You don’t need his permission to terminate, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what the Whitmores want, to get rid of this fetus to make room for their own.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know exactly but I know what I don’t want, and that’s to terminate this life growing inside me,” I say as I rise to my feet.
“Don’t let anyone pressure you. Regardless of what you’ve signed to become a surrogate, no one can take away your bodily autonomy.”
“Thank you, Dr. Langford.”
He comes to his feet and walks me to the door. I’ll admit, my legs shaky but they get stronger with each step.
“One thing I should mention,” he says before we open the door. “Mr. Jackson seemed pretty intent on pursuing parental rights. If he files for a court order, we’ll be legally required to disclose your identity.”
“I understand.”
He opens the door for me, giving me one piece of parting advice. “I would consider contacting him. It can’t hurt to talk this out before he resorts to legal action. His genetic material was not a donation. He stored it for his own use. I don’t know what, if any legal rights that gives him. I strongly advise you to seek legal representation if the two of you can’t come to an agreement.”
“You mean, if I continue the pregnancy he might be able to sue for parental rights,” I say grimly.
He gives me one very distinct nod.
“I understand, Dr. Langford. Thank you for taking the time to explain.”
“I’m sorry this surrogacy wasn’t everything you hoped it would be.”
I don’t tell him that that’s the story of my life.
Chapter 5
Jasper
It’s been two weeks since I got the call from the Medical Director at New Horizons Fertility Clinic over in Vacaville. It’s the nearest big city to Cedar Falls, and apparently where my frozen sperm was sent five years ago.
Memories rise in my mind of my time in the Marines as I ride to the outskirts of Vacaville. I was part of a Marine squad sent to destroy a lab the enemy was using to develop bioweapons during the Afghan war. They warned us that toxins were being used that could render us infertile.
The men in my squad got a little freaked out about the possibility of never being able to father children. I have to admit that at the time, it worried me as well. Someone came up with the idea of freezing our sperm, in case the worst happened. We pooled our money and hired a private lab to accept, cryogenically freeze, and store it.
I remember getting an email that the storage facility was closing a couple of years back. They asked if I wanted my samples to be sent to a local lab. I checked off yes on their form, since we had all paid for a twenty-year storage program in advance. After that, I forgot all about it. Since it turned out the enemy bioweapon lab was false intel, it seemed like a moot issue.
That strange mix-up at the fertility clinic turned out to be the luckiest day of my life. And I have no intention of letting this opportunity to have a child of my own slip from my grasp. That’swhy I met with our club attorney and with our club’s IT specialist to find out who was carrying my kid.
It took Striker two weeks to figure out how to hack into the New Horizons system and pull up the surrogate’s information without tripping their security protocols. Her name is Tessa Grant. We verified that the embryo had been created with my sperm by mistake and she’s now about three months pregnant with my child. That’s assuming she didn’t terminate the pregnancy. I hope and pray she didn’t so something quite that fuckin’ stupid, after I made it clear to Dr. Langford that I wanted a chance to work something out with her.
That’s why I’m rushing to pay her a visit right now. This is not something you text about or talk about over the phone. It’s a matter of life and death for my kid, so a face-to-face conversation is a must.
