Page 63 of Act Like You Don't Care

I nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see, then swallowed hard and said, “Yeah. Will, how much do you know about…?”

“Let me do some research,” he said.

“Don’t tell anyone!” Maybe Will was the wrong person to ask.

“Please,” he replied indignantly. “You know me better than that. I’ll have everyone convinced it’s for another actor. Anyone you want me to start rumors about?” he joked.

“No! But yeah, keep the bloodhounds off me if you can. I’d rather this just…went away.”

“Don’t you worry, Will’s got you. For now, business as usual, okay?”

“Yeah.” Except this time when I went to throw up, I didn’t think it was just the morning sickness.

Fuck my life.

Tam

About a week later, Will passed me the address to a clinic down in San Diego. Discreet, used to dealing with Hollywood, they’d fitted me in for ‘treatment’ on the next Friday. Friday was good—I was under no illusion that I’d just get up and go on my merry way after with no side-effects. It was simply a choice of what I wanted to deal with and how long I wanted to deal with it. Friday gave me a weekend to hide in the condo and be sick in case we could do it today.

I drove myself down, ball cap on, sunglasses in place, doing my best to look like I was just off for a weekend carousing. The office was connected to a local shopping mall—I made sure to pick up a couple of new shirts as camouflage before I carefully made my way to the elevator that would take me to the clinic.

There was no waiting room, or at least there wasn’t one right by the door. The young woman at the desk took my name and immediately escorted me down the hall to a small room with a chair and an examining table. I sat in the chair and knotted my fingers together to keep them still while I waited.

It was maybe ten minutes before the door opened again and the doctor came through. “Mr. Laydon? I’m Mark Peregrine. I just need to go through your medical history, we’ll do a quick exam to determine how advanced our problem is, then I can present you with your options.”

Options. And the baby wasn’t a problem. Except it was. In my life, anyway. “Yeah, okay. What do you want to know?”

He flipped open the folder in his hand. “Any history of heart problems? High blood pressure?”

“No.”

“Diabetes, clotting issues, easy bruising?”

“No.”

“Taking any medications? Vitamins, herbs?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Alcohol, I guess.”

The guy nodded and made a note in the folder. “But you’re on birth control, right?”

Oh, yeah. I nodded and looked down at my hands. Couldn’t we just get this over with?

But he kept on going, more and more questions, until I was ready to punch him and leave.

I didn’t dare. I needed him to fix this.

“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll get you to hop up on this table, we’ll do a quick exam and then you can decide on your course of action.” He paused and then patted my shoulder. “You don’t need to be nervous. I do this every day. It’s very safe.”

Nervous? Why would I be nervous? Then I realized I was bouncing my leg up and down like I used to do in school before a performance. Okay, I was nervous.

This would all be better once it was behind me.

I climbed up on the table and lay back, pulling up my t-shirt and undoing my jeans so they could be shoved out of the way. The doctor hummed and pressed on my stomach, then squirted some gel on the area he’d just poked and pulled a machine over by the side of the bed. “Just going to age it, here,” he murmured, as much to himself as to me, I thought.

He didn’t seem to need my input, so I stared at the ceiling and tried to pretend that none of this mattered. It didn’t work any better now than when I’d had to break up with the father of this baby.

More pressure on my belly and a few beeps from the machine, and then the doctor put it all away and handed me some paper towels to clean myself up with.