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“Mr. Jaeger, you’re definitely pregnant.”
I stare at the doctor, holding her chart with a contemplative look on her face. My heart is pounding in my chest and I don’t even know what to think.
“You have a couple options,” she says. “Since this is such a rare occurrence, we cannot give you a guarantee that you or the baby would make it out if you wanted to try and carry to term. That said, there are enough success stories that I would be comfortable if you wanted to do that. Other than that, you can abort, which is what most men in your position end up doing.”
I stare at my lap, my hand absently moving to touch my stomach, I can barely feel a swollen bump there. It blows my mind that there’s something growing in there right now.
I swallow the sudden lump in my throat. “Can I go home and think about it?” I ask quietly.
She smiles softly at me. “I was going to suggest that even if you gave me an answer right now, sweetie.”
Sleeping with Levi had been a mistake.
Now, staring into a toilet bowl full of the watery mess that had once been my breakfast, it is more than before.
I can’t believe this. Men aren’t supposed to get pregnant. This isn’t supposed to be a problem for me. I’m almost done college, I just got an internship at the Trost Tribune.
I can’t take care of a baby.
I’m showing almost all of the early signs though (at least based on the list I looked up two days ago). I was shorter of break than usual after then walk up then four flights of stairs to mine and Levi’s shared apartment, my chest was suddenly sore all the time, I’ve been way more tired than usual, I’ve had to pee way more than usual, I’ve had headaches, backaches, and this weird on and off ache in the bottom of my stomach, I haven’t wanted to eat Doritos at all (they’re my favorite food ever), I’ve been more emotional than usual, and I’ve been getting dizzy randomly.
The vomiting is new and the clincher on my decision to call a doctor. The question is what kind. Usually women go to gynecologists for this right? I sigh and flush the toilet, glad I don’t have class today or tomorrow. I go and lay on the couch with my laptop and my cell phone, searching for someone who can check me out.
“FUCK YOU TOO!” Levi shouts after his (now) ex-boyfriend.
He slams the door and throws himself onto the couch beside me, growling and writhing angrily.
I’ve been living with Levi for about a year now, and this is the third time he’s thrown a guy out of our apartment. However, I know for a fact those three times are not the only times this has happened. We’ve been friends since middle school and he’s been doing this to guys at least since then.
“Is my taste really that shitty?” he asks.
I shrug. “You do usually go after hot guys before you make sure they aren’t assholes.”
He sighs. “Tell me we have alcohol or cake.”
“I think there’s some whiskey. Or Jean left a full bottle of vodka after our last party that I’ve been meaning to give back,” I tell him.
“The vodka.”
I stand. “Do you want me to bring like orange juice or something to cut it with?”
“If you don’t mind,” he replies. After I get to the kitchen he asks, “Can I put on a shitty movie and we can turn it into a drinking game?”
“If you want,” I reply.
One viewing of Final Destination 3 and entirely too many drinks later, we’re both giggling and Levi’s straddling my lap.
Suddenly we’re making out.
Suddenly Levi’s whispering in my ear.
Suddenly we’re taking our clothes off.
Suddenly we’re waking up in his bed, dazed and confused.
“Eren are you alright?”
Levi finds me face down on the couch. It’s two days after my visit to the doctor and I’ve been killing myself trying to decide if I should tell him I’m pregnant or not.
“No,” I reply.
I can tell his sigh is only half serious and I can practically see the playful smirk he always throws at me when he thinks I’m being melodramatic. He kneels beside the couch where I’m lying. “C’mon, wassa’ matter. Tell Papa Levi all about it.”
The irony dripping from the word ‘Papa’ almost makes me smack him. “I have something very important to tell you,” I say, turning my head so I can look at him.
I think he can tell how serious I am by my expression because he shifts his legs so they’re crossed and his smile disappears. “What’s the matter?”
I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m pregnant.”
I think he stop breathing as he continues to stare at me. “You’re what?”
“You know how we got drunk after you kicked that guy out of here? We banged so now fetus, in… something in my lower body because the doctor said it not exactly a uterus like a woman has.”
“You’re… Jesus Christ.” He drops his head into his hands. “What… what do you want to do?”
“The doctor said most men like me abort because it could be dangerous to try to carry to term.”
“Do you want to try and carry it?”
I stare at him, debating the just giving him the honest truth I’ve been carrying since I found out. “I want to, but it’s just not a reasonable idea. Even if I decided to give it up to a foster home or adoption I don’t know why kind of health risks I’ll be taking. I can’t afford long term hospital bills if it breaks my back or something, which the doctor said did happen to one man because his pelvis wouldn’t stretch enough.”
“So you’re going to abort it?”
I can’t look at him as I bite my lip and nod.
I can’t help the sudden, tight feeling in my throat or the hot tears that start escaping my eyes.
“Oh Eren,” Levi says, stroking my hair. “It’s gonna be alright.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what to do,” I sob. “I can’t take care of a baby by myself, plus school and the Tribune, I can’t –“
“You would not be alone,” Levi says. “Even if it wasn’t mine I’m still your roommate and your best friend, I wouldn’t make you do it alone.”
I sit up and Levi holds me until the crying stops.
The whole experience is crazy surreal.
The sucking sound from the machine make me nauseous but the Valium they gave me is keeping me weirdly calm. The nurse beside me is watching the doctor while holding my hand and talking quietly to me. She tells me what the doctor is doing.
She tells me I’m not being selfish.
I can’t make myself believe her.
I cry the entire time.
The drive to the clinic is mostly quiet, and I can take my hands off my stomach.
This tiny bump won’t be here anymore tonight.
Levi keeps looking at me. I can tell he wants to touch it (you can't even tell it's there just by looking), to feel the feel the life we created but I’m deciding to squash (or rather suck) back out of existence. I’d rather he didn’t, this is real enough for me. He doesn’t need to feel this loss too.
I do hold his hand though, the entire drive, until he has to put the car into park again.
I cry one last time before we get out of the car.
I let him touch my stomach.
I feel like a zombie back in our apartment that night. I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to watch TV, I don’t want to do anything.
That baby can’t do anything now.
I just lay in my bed, hugging my pillow and trying to ignore the leftover ache in my lower stomach. It’s no longer swollen and I frown at the loss.
There’s nothing left.
I hear Levi get up from his place on the couch, where he’s been laying in silence since we got home. “Eren?” he calls quietly from the doorway.
I look up at him and I want to start crying all over again, he definitely has been. “Come in,” I mutter, my voice annoyingly coarse.
He lays beside me and we hold each other, taking turns crying, and soothing, and sleeping until morning.
Neither of us really want to tell anyone what I did.
“What’s up Eren?” Sasha asks me at the office one day, she got the same internship I did so we usually sort mail together in the mornings. “You haven’t been as chipper as usual.”
I shrug. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Coming from the guy who used to pick actual fights with the copy machine on a daily basis? Not buyin’ it.”
“I’ve just had a lot going on recently,” I say. “I’ll get over it eventually.”
“Boy trouble?” she asks.
“Of a sort, I suppose.” I hope the baby would’ve been a girl though, so I could’ve named her after my mom.
Sasha smiles at me and for a moment it’s really encouraging. “That can be rough,” she says. “I’ve found cake icing to be good for healing up the tiny wounds though.”
I can’t help but smile back at her. “Thanks, Sasha.”
I don’t know when Levi and I started dating, but between coddling each other we just sort of ended up that way.
Suddenly old courtesies became new staples; telling each other when we were going out and when we’d be back or buying one another dinner sometimes.
“Hey Levi?” I ask one night.
We’ve been sharing beds lately, and at the moment, his face is buried in the back of my neck with his arms around me. “Yeah?”
“Are we dating now?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond right away, and I worry I’ve said something wrong. “Yeah,” he replies.
I can’t ignore the way my heart beats a little faster and my cheeks burn at that.
A week after the… incident I find myself looking at ID bracelets at a local jewelry store.
“Find anything you like?” the, rather cheerful, sales associate asks me.
“Uh, yeah, I think. I can get a custom engraving on these, right?”
She nods. “All of our ID bracelets come with complementary engravings.”
“I want that one then, the white gold one.”
She take out a clipboard and writes it down. “And what do you want on it?”
I give her the date of the… incident.
“Anything else?” she asks after she writes that down.
“Can I put an engraving on the inside too? I know no one’s actually going to see it, but still.”
“Sure, what do you want?”
“Repose en paix.”
Mikasa and Armin know something’s wrong immediately when they come to visit me over spring break.
“What happened?” Mikasa asks over dinner that night.
Levi is out with Hanji for the night so I have to explain alone. I stare at my new bracelet as I say, “I was pregnant.”
They both stare at me, neither of them laugh, they barely react at all. “Whose baby was it?” Armin asks.
“Levi’s,” I reply.
“I’ll kill him,” Mikasa says, getting up from our table in a very crowded Applebee’s.
Armin and I both pull her back to her seat. “No need,” I reply. “Everything’s sorted out, we sorta started dating.”
“So, how are you?” Armin asks.
I shrug. “I’ve been better,” I reply, looking at my bracelet again.
“Can I see your bracelet?” Mikasa asks.
If it were anyone besides her or Armin there’s no way I’d have taken it off. “Repose en paix?” Armin asks.
“It’s French for rest in peace,” Mikasa says quietly.
He gives me a look that’s somewhere between pity and genuine sadness. “Why French?” he asks.
“Levi was raised in France,” I reply. “I would’ve gotten it in English but that felt cheesy for some reason.”
I put my bracelet back on the second Mikasa hands it back.
It’s probably unhealthy to cling to the child like this, but it seems wrong to just forget.
Life moves on.
“Hey Eren?” Levi asks one night when we’re cuddling on the couch binging Supernatural.
“Hm?”
“Do you wanna go somewhere?”
My eyebrows furrow and I look at him. “Where did you have in mind?”
He shrugs. “Anywhere,” he replies. “We could start saving to go to, like, Japan or Amsterdam or Brazil or something.”
He’s been saying things like this a lot lately. I think he, somehow, subconsciously, wants to make up for the life we should have let come to us. “Okay,” I say. “Before or after we get our scuba licenses?”
“I was thinking after we go sky diving.”
He’s completely serious. We both are. We’ve started a list on a small dry erase board in the kitchen. We even have one of those giant water jugs to collect money in. Marriage is on the list, somewhere, but neither of us are entirely read to talk about that yet.
Neither of us are as carefree as we used to be, but at the very least we’re happy to have each other.