Page 10 of The Devil Gets His Due

“Only if they haven’t fallen out.”

I blink at her. “Without me evennoticing?”

She hitches a shoulder. “Well, it’s out, and you didn’t notice, right? It’s rare, but it happens.”

Only me. This could only happen to me.

She hands me a paper towel. “You didn’t have any nausea? Fatigue?”

I assumed it was cancer so I ignored it.Yes, I just spent three months studying metastatic melanoma, while perhaps ignoring something just as bad inside myself. Sometimes even I am shocked by the insanity of my thought processes.

I wipe off my stomach while she puts the transducer back. “I was busy. I just thought it was stress.”

“Is the father in the picture?”

“I don’t know,” I reply, which comes across better than“not if I have anything to say about it.” God, why of all people did it have to be Graham?

She meets my gaze and her shoulders sag. I know exactly what she’s about to ask.

“Do you know what you want to do?” She says it as if she already knows the answer and she probably does. Our residencies overlapped and I’ve never exactly hidden my priorities. Only professionalism is keeping her from saying,“you can’t bring a baby to Burning Man, FYI. You can’t bring a baby on a surfboard.”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “The timing of this…could not be worse.”

I’m starting a new job Monday, and I have no savings, nor any family who’ll help out. I also decided long ago that a child wasn’t in the picture.

When I leave the appointment, I wander listlessly around Brentwood. A child doesn’t fit in with my life plans. Hell, it doesn’t even fit in with my plans for the next year, which include surfing in Costa Rica this December, Carnival next February, and trying a jetpack once I find a place that will allow me to do so.

I’m all for people not being pregnant if they don’t want to be pregnant. The problem is…I’m not sure I’m one of those people.

Yes, I wrote it off, but right now I’m remembering who I once was: the little girl who used to pretend her Barbies were pregnant, who’d already chosen her future children’s names and occupations. Of course, I also thought I’d be married to JC from NSYNC when it happened, but even so…it was mostly about having kids.

For a full decade, I spent every lonely Christmas—half the day alone with my mom, half the day with my dad—dreaming of the big family I’d have as an adult. I’m not sure how I managed to forget all this until now.

Except I guess I didn’t forget. I just put it all out of my head because I knew, even as a fifteen-year-old, that it would be a selfish thing to do. I’m about to turn thirty, only a few years younger than my mom when she died, andshewas doing everything right. I don’t have any siblings, my father is old, and Graham is awful. So what happens if I have this kid and the O’Keefe curse strikes again?

I go into Malia Mills and think about how many bikinis I could buy for the cost of a crib. I go into Goop and try to convince myself I’d rather have a Mara Hoffman dress than a stroller.

And then I walk outside and some little kid with a British accent is saying,“very clever, Mummy”as he swings his mother’s hand, and my eyes fill with tears. Maybe it’s simply because I didn’t get knocked up by a Brit and my kid will never have a cool accent. But it’s mostly because Iwantthat. I want a kid placing his little hand in mine, his trust absolute. I want to care for someone other than myself, and I want it so much more than any purse or shoes or trip I’ve ever lusted after.

I want this baby, and even as I tell myself how selfish that is, I’ve got that soaring feeling in my chest—the one I always get before making the worst possible decision.

In the end, all I end up buying are prenatal vitamins.

I’m going to be a mom.

7

KEELEY

“You’re perfect for us,” Kathleen Fox said when she hired me, and I was under no illusions about what she actually meant. It was above all about my ability to work long hours without complaint, but it was alsome. She approved of my looks, my Hermes belt, my Balenciaga purse. Everything about Beverly Hills Skin is aspirational, and the staff is no exception; employees are unblemished and lovely. Though mostly it’s just good genes, theylooklike women who have a secret or two, things their patients hope they’ll share.

But now I legitimatelydohave a secret: everything they hired me for is about to change. I’m about to have commitments, and any day now I will no longer be a designer size two or fit into a Hervé Léger bandage dress.

And how am I supposed to tell them that? It’s not like they’ll believe I, a grown woman and doctor, didn’t know this when I interviewed a month ago. I guess it’ll be clear soon enough, but I definitely don’t plan to make it clear today.

I’m shown the facilities by Trinny, who works at the front desk and could easily pass for Zendaya, but with better skin. They’re in a hurry to get me up to speed because I’m replacing Dr. Lee, who left three weeks before, and Dr. Fryer, who left in February.

The modern glam décor is just as it was when I interviewed: white fur throws in the patient rooms, black lacquered floors, a glass-front fridge stocked with Voss in the waiting room. After the chaos of working at the hospital, all I wanted was a quiet, air-conditioned office where inoffensive music would play through speakers and the air would smell like potpourri. That and a big fat paycheck I could blow on Louboutins at the month’s end, all without Arjun Patel pulling me forward to diagnose a rare skin disease associated with malaria in front of everyone.

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