Beating For Two

Chapter 2

Monday, November 22nd

Ten weeks

“Well, Mr. Tomlinson, it appears that you're pregnant.”

It went completely still in the room for a second, I was suddenly hyper-aware of everything around, and I couldn't do anything but to stare at him. Then my mouth fell open and I uttered a stuttering: “I'm sorry, what?”

“I understand that it must sound completely impossible, but-”

“It is completely impossible!” I said loudly, not caring about the fact that I was being rude when I shoved the doctor's hand aside and sat up properly, glaring at him. “It's biologically impossible, doc! I may not be the most masculine bloke around, but I am a guy, I'm very much male and I can assure you that I don't have any female genitals! I can drop my pants and you can check if you'd like.”

“That's not necessary,” he said with a smile, “I don't doubt that you're male, but Mr. Tomlinson-”

“Louis!”

“Sorry. Look, Louis, I don't doubt that you're male, but what was on that little screen before you pushed my hand away and broke the sonic pulses? That was a baby. And those sounds you heard? Those were the heartbeat of that baby.”

I shook my head in disbelief. This guy was crazy! How the heck could I be pregnant? Biology had never been my favourite class in school, but I was fairly certain that both semen and an egg-cell were required to make a baby; I had the semen, but definitely not the egg cell. Not to mention the uterus and all that mumbo jumbo.

“You can't expect me to believe this,” I said as calmly as I could.

“I'm having a hard time believing it myself actually,” he said, “but in all honesty, it makes sense if you take away the fact that you're not female.”

“Yeah, but I'm really not female,” I said intensely, “And if I'm not mistaken, being a female is kind of a necessary factor when it comes to carrying a baby in your stomach.”

“I am aware of the necessities of a pregnancy, but all the evidences here do point to you being exactly that,” he said patiently.

I groaned; he wasn't gonna let this one rest, was he? I shook my head in disbelief, but decided to just play along. “How so?”

“For starters, the picture on the screen and the sound of a heart beat,” he said, “Then there's the morning sickness, and you also said that you've been having a strange feeling in your stomach, correct?”

I nodded.

“Morning sickness occurs with eight out of ten pregnant women, and some also experience a strange feeling in their stomachs a few weeks into their pregnancy. Now, you said that you've been feeling sick in the morning for about four weeks.”

I nodded again.

“I'm not an obstetrician, but from judging by the frequency of the baby's heartbeat, I'd say you're about nine to ten weeks along. That indicates that your morning sickness would have started when you were five or six weeks along, which is usually when pregnant women start feeling sick.”

“Nine to ten weeks? I suck at maths, so when would that indicate that I... conceived?” I said the last word with a grimace. As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, everything the crazy doctor said was starting to make sense.

That is if it hadn't been for the fact that I wasn't a bloody woman!

“Well, roughly estimated, I'd say sometime in the middle of September.”