Page 18 of Doctor Daddies

“Please tell me you’re being sarcastic…”

“Of course I am.” She laughs. “Now, put that curtain back, and let’s get this implantation done.”

I do as I’m told, stepping away and heading back to the computer to look over her files. As I do so, Marianne, the implantation specialist, comes bustling into the room, pulling back the curtain and snapping on some gloves as she introduces herself to her new patient.

“Millie!” she greets. “So good to meet you. Now, I’m just going to run you through everything that’s going to happen today, so if you have any questions, you just stop me and let me know, alright?”

As Marianne talks, my mind drifts once more to the enormity of everything that is happening today. This is the day it happens—the day it officially begins, just a month or so after we signed the contracts to put all this into motion. In a few minutes, the embryos created with our genetic material will be implanted in Millie’s womb, and, if they take, she will fall pregnant with our children.

Each of us are donating a few embryos apiece, so we don’t exactly know who the father would be on a genetic level. Not that it matters. We’ve already agreed that we’re in this, that we’re not going to let anything stand in the way of providing for these children, and we mean it.

Most of the practical matter of preparing the embryos and prepping Millie for the procedure has been taken care of by the clinic, at her request. We could have overseen the whole thing from top to bottom ourselves, but she insisted that she wanted at least some privacy.

“I’m going to be carrying your children inside of me,” she joked. “I think I can at least keep a few things to myself, right?”

The others had agreed, so once we established that she was entirely healthy and in a good state to carry a pregnancy, we went ahead with the process.

It’s almost surreal, being on the other side of things like this. Normally, I’m the one helping people go through it from the other side, but here I am, preparing to bring my own children into the world.

Children.That word keeps running through my mind, over and over again as I try to make sense of the enormity of its meaning. I’m going to be a father. It’s something I have wanted for a long time, and sure, this might not be how I imagined eventually making it happen, but I trust James and Ross with my life. And I know that I would do anything for my children, and feel the same about theirs. I think, when it comes to family, there’s little more that can matter than that.

And doing this with Millie feels…right. Not just because of what happened six years ago, but because of how comfortably she seems to have slotted in between the three of us once more.

She has an easy confidence about her, never afraid to crack a joke or say something silly, and she knows how to break a tense moment. Even now, I can hear her joking on the other side of the curtain with the woman who’s performing the implantation. I step aside to give them a little privacy, busying myself with Millie’s relevant medical records.

I easily could have left this to the specialist, but I wanted to be here for this momentous occasion. Call me old-fashioned, but there’s a part of me that loves the idea of the moment an embryo gets implanted, the moment that the possibility of life begins to take shape. Ross and James agreed that I should be the one hereto witness it, suggesting that she wouldn’t want all of us hanging around, and I’m glad I pulled the longest straw on that one.

My gaze flicks back and forth over her information—her name, her address, date of birth. Her family, of course, is Matt, who is her emergency contact. I know what happened to their parents, shortly after that night we spent with Millie, and it makes me a little sad to think of her with so little family other than her brother. As decent a guy as Matt is, she deserves more than that…

I brush the thought of Matt aside at once. We all agreed that the best way to go about this would be to wait till after the implantation before we told him. He’s not going to take it well, no doubt about it, and we don’t need him trying to talk us out of it before it’s happened. At the end of the day, it’s between us and her, and if all of us are on board, then it has nothing to do with him.

But I doubt that’s how he’s going to see it, and honestly, I don’t know if I can blame him.

I scroll down a little further, and something catches my attention—something that I hadn’t noticed before. My brow furrows as I hover over her medical history. Specifically, the pregnancy section.

That can’t be right. Because it says here—it says here that Millie was pregnant before. And there’s no way something like that could have slipped past my notice, right? It would have come up. Not that it would have had a huge impact on how viable she was or wasn’t for the pregnancy, which is really all we’ve been paying attention to.

Suddenly, something creeps up the back of my neck, telling me to look into it further, and I click on that part of the report to read through it as the implantation takes place behind the curtain just a few feet away from me.

As I look over the information, it starts to sink in. At first, I thought it might have been an abortion or a miscarriage, something like that. But no—this report covers a full pregnancy that came to term. A pregnancy that would have begun…

About six years ago.

I plant my hand on the desk to keep my body from being entirely overcome by the shock. What the fuck is going on? Am I reading this wrong? I must be, right? Because there’s no way, no way in fucking hell, that she would have fallen pregnant six years ago and not mentioned it to us.

I click around hurriedly, trying to get a feel for the dates. So, we hooked up in September, and then…

Oh, fuck.

I count back the days from the birth, and there is no doubt about it. This child she had, it must have come as a result of that night.

I squeeze my eyes shut, my mind trying to throw up any other possibility to make sense of this. Could she have been with someone else right around that same time? It’s possible, but it seems unlikely that it had nothing to do with us. At least, she couldn’t be sure unless she had run it by any of us, and I know James and Ross would have mentioned such a thing to me if they’d had any idea about it.

I close out of the file and stand there, staring at the blank computer screen, as the implantation finishes up behind me. Too late to turn back now.

And if I had known what I know now…would I have done things differently?

I need to talk to her. Alone. There must be some kind of explanation for this. Yeah, it must be that this is on her file by mistake, and she’s going to look at me like I’m downright crazy when I bring it up to her. Tell me that I need to get my head together, that she would never hide something like that, because that just wouldn’t be fair.