Chapter 32
EPOV
For the next two weeks things moved at a break neck pace.
Without divulging why, Sookie talked to Selah about recommending an OB/GYN in
Shreveport and after pulling some strings she was able to get Sookie an appointment with the group she goes to almost right away.
I never doubted Sookie was pregnant, hell I saw the box full of positive tests, but having the doctor confirm the existence of a future Northman really drove home the reality of it to me.
I was going to be a father…no, better than that…I was going to be somebody’s daddy.
I met with my attorney and accountant right away and made changes to my will and had trust funds and various accounts set up for Sookie and the baby. If nothing else I had learned recently that no one was guaranteed tomorrow and God forbid if anything happened to me before I could get her to marry me I wanted to make sure she and my baby were taken care of.
My baby.
God I loved the way that sounded.
My baby.
I couldn’t have been happier. I was walking so tall I thought I might have to have the hem of my pants let down.
I reluctantly agreed to keep this our secret at least until she could tell our friends and family when they came up for the weekend. So instead, without being able to offer an explanation, I just looked like a buffoon walking around with a shit eating grin on my face every day.
“Stop it Eric!” Sookie groaned for the third time pushing my hands away.
She was half sitting and half lying on the exam table while we waited for the doctor to come in for her appointment. She had seen the doctor two weeks ago basically just for a quickie to confirm the pregnancy but this was to be the first full consultation. Whatever the hell that meant. All I knew was that we were having the first ultrasound today and I was jacked up that I was going to be able to see my baby.
My baby. Did I mention how much I liked the sound of that?
“I can’t help it Love, I can’t seem to keep my hands off of you.” I offered in response.
It was true, since finding out Sookie was pregnant I felt like I had to be touching her all the time, it didn’t seem to bother her since apparently pregnancy does something fucktastic to the woman’s libido. Hell, we were going at it like bunnies before the pregnancy, now it was the stuff pornos were made from.
“Well, if you keep that up you’re going to make me wet and I have to have an exam in few minutes.” She scolded.
“Sookie, she’s a gynecologist, she understands natural body reactions.” I said still nuzzling her neck.
Suddenly Sookie reached out and grabbed my junk giving it a firm squeeze and a couple of quick strokes.
“So you don’t mind sporting a boner when you met my doctor for the first time…after all…it is a natural body reaction?”
Touché
“Okay…okay…I’ll be good.” I conceded and she released her grip and gave me a smirk.
Seconds later Dr. Brigant entered the room.
“It’s good to see you again, Sookie.” She said as she entered the room still looking at the chart in her hand. “Oh, I see we have company for this visit.” She added after she looked up and saw me standing by Sookie’s side.
“Eric Northman.” I said as I offered my hand to her.
“Nice to meet you Mr. Northman…and are you the proud papa?” She asked as she washed her hands and reached for a pair of exam gloves.
“Please call me Eric…and yes and I couldn’t be prouder.”
I knew my shit eatin’ grin was back, but Dr. Brigant had been the first person I had openly been able to admit that to and I was going to enjoy every second of it.
For the next few minutes the doctor went through her exam and took down all the vital information she required then called her assistant to prepare for the ultrasound.
“Now Sookie, while they’re getting everything set up for your ultrasound, do you have any questions for me?”
Sookie had been rather quiet up until this point and I was curious as to just what was going on in her head.
“Actually doctor, I do have one question…how?”
I jerked my head to look at Sookie’s face which offered no insight as to what she was thinking. Meanwhile Dr. Brigant was enjoying a good chuckle.
“Well Sookie, I would hope a woman of your age and education would know by now how this happens; but I assume you are questioning how you got pregnant while on birth
control. Am I correct?”
Sookie nodded her head. “I know I’m not perfect, but I was damn near close when it came to those pills.”
I zoned out during the first part of Dr. Brigant’s response, less concerned with the answer than the reason for the question. Was she asking this for my benefit? Was she still worried that I thought she got pregnant on purpose?
“…while some studies show the pills failure rate to be as high as 2 in 100. Even taken perfectly the pill is still not 100% effective. You my dear, probably just got taken by the odds.” She said with a reassuring smile.
“Now, why don’t we move to the other room so we can take a look at this little treasure?” Dr. Brigant said and we made our way down the small hallway.
After a little adjusting of the equipment and getting Sookie situated on the table we were ready to start.
“OK Sookie, I’m going to squirt a little gel on here and we’ll take a look.”
She moved the paddle like wand over Sookie’s glistening belly trying to locate the exact angle to get the view she required. She “umed” and “hmmed” several times looking over the various images which closely resembled a distorted image from a black and white tv from back the 60’s to me.
And then suddenly the picture came in to focus.
There on the screen was what appeared to be a tiny jelly bean and faintly…just faintly, you could see the tiny thump…thump…thump of a heart beat. I quickly looked up at the doctor hoping for confirmation of what I was seeing.
“Well, there we are. I was afraid you were going to hide from us today, little one.” Dr. Brigant spoke to my baby on the screen.
My baby.
I felt like my heart was going to come out of my chest. The visible evidence of the heart beat of my child was just about to do me in. I couldn’t stop the tears that were falling down my face and when I felt Sookie squeeze my hand, I looked over and saw the same tears flowing down her cheeks.
“Sookie, everything looks great. I’m just going to take a few pictures for your chart and then we’ll be all done here. By the way, I’ll have copies of these pictures at the front desk waiting for you when you check out in case you want to share your news.”
“Thank you doctor.” We said at the same time, neither one of us taking our eyes off the images on the monitor.
We left the doctor’s office and headed to our favorite little bistro uptown for lunch in comfortable introspective quiet. Finally after we placed our orders and received our drinks I broke the silence.
“Sookie, I realize this is not candlelight and roses…and I’ll give you those things…you know I will, but.” I took a deep breath and continued. “Marry me, please?”
I don’t know what I was thinking. This was not how or when I planned to propose to her but I couldn’t help it. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, but I would be damned if I was taking them back. It may not have been how and when, but I meant it and I was not about to back down now.
I stared at Sookie’s face having a hard time keeping up with the expressions. Her initial look of shock was quickly replaced by one of fear and then…sadness?
“Eric, I need to make something clear to you and I hope you’ll understand that I mean this from the bottom of my heart.”
Shit, nothing good ever follows a sentence like that. I could feel fear building up inside of me as I waited for her to take a sip of her drink before she reached out and took my hand and continued.
“Now that I know how much this baby means to you, I would never do anything to keep him or her from you. You will be a part of this baby’s life for as long as you want to be. You don’t have to marry me to make that happen. This baby is just as much yours as it is mine, nothing will ever change that.” She gave a reassuring squeeze to my hand.
“Sookie, me wanting to marry you has nothing to do with the baby. It may have sped up my timing a little bit, but I assure you, I’ve wanted to marry you since the day I came home from the hospital. I love you, I knew it that day and my love for you has done nothing but grow since then. And now…you having my baby…well, I just want the three of us to be a family.”
God, even I could hear the desperation in my words but I had never wanted something so badly in my life. To have a family again, to be connected by blood to another living being again, I couldn’t even put in to words what that meant to me.
I knew she was being sincere when she said she would never keep the baby from me, it just wasn’t in her to do something like that. But being the baby’s father wasn’t enough, I wanted…no needed… to be her husband. As much as I wanted my baby, I wanted her just as much if not more. Greedy bastard!
The silence was deafening. She wouldn’t even raise her head to look at me and without seeing her eyes; I was at a loss as to what she was thinking.
“Eric, I don’t know.” Her eyes never left the napkin she was playing with on the table. “Everyone is going to think I tried to trap you into marrying me.”
I was wondering when this would rear its ugly head.
“Do you think that is what your friends and family will believe?” I kept my voice calm hiding the frustration behind my words.
“No! Of course not. They know I would never do anything like that.” At least that got her to look up at me.
“Then who the hell cares what anyone else thinks? Look, if you don’t want to marry me because it’s not what you want or it’s not what you want right now, then fine. I’ll accept that. But if you don’t want to marry me because you are worried about what some small minded nobodies might think, then I’m sorry but that is unacceptable.”
“Eric, you don’t understand…” I cut her off before she could make her point.
“I understand that you’re more worried about what some may say or think about us than you are about what would make us happy.”
OK, I didn’t mean for it to come out as harsh as it did and I may have gone a little overboard with my argument.
“That’s just it Eric, they won’t be saying these things about you! They’ll be saying them about me!” I could see the tears forming in her eyes. “Oh yeah, you might get a “poor sucker” every once in a while, but I’ll be the one that gets the “white trash hustler “or “gold digging whore”. Just how happy do you think we’ll be hearing all that?”
I got up out of my seat and went over to her side of the booth, slid in and pulled her to me. I didn’t mean to hurt her with my words and I certainly never looked at things from her perspective before. My life had afforded me the luxury of being removed from petty public opinions, as long as I did nothing that would harm my holdings, then individual opinions had never mattered a damn to me. But considering things from her viewpoint brought up aspects I had not considered.
“I’m so sorry Love, I didn’t mean to make you cry.” I said as I pulled her close and kissed her head as she laid her head on my shoulder. “Look at me Sookie.” I asked, and she raised her head to face me.
“We are always going to have haters, no matter what we do. I don’t care if you were a rich virgin that I dated for two years prior to proposal, somebody somewhere would find something negative to say about the union. And I’ll admit, my lifestyle has created a cocoon of sorts and I’ve been oblivious to those comments, but do you really want to allow the murmuring of a few to keep us from what would make us happy? Doesn’t that give them entirely too much power?”
“Eric, I just don’t want you to ever be embarrassed by being involved with me.”
“Sookie, exactly what about you do you think would embarrass me. Would it be the fact that you’re beautiful? Or maybe your hard working tenacity to do a job and do it well? Or how about your loyal loving heart? No…I know…it’s the forgiveness you extend to virtual strangers whose past actions have caused you pain.
Love, there is nothing about you that could remotely be embarrassing to me. In my eyes you are as perfect as it gets and I love you.” I put my finger under her chin and lifted her face to me and kissed her gently on the lips.
I could tell her resolve was wavering so I kept pushing.
“So, what do you say? Will you marry me?” She paused for a few seconds before responding.
“On one condition.”
I smiled. My girl was negotiating.
“What’s that?” I’m sure I was beaming by now.
“We get a pre-nup.”
My smile was gone.
“Absolutely not!”
“Eric, I don’t want to go into this without being able to prove that I’m not after your money!” She wasn’t yelling but her voice had picked up an edge.
“Sookie, I don’t know how else to tell you, I don’t think you are after my money!”
We were still speaking at publicly acceptable volumes, but I was grateful the restaurant was almost empty by this time.
“I know you don’t, but everyone else will.” OK, we still weren’t past public opinion like I thought we were.
“OK Sookie, exactly how do you think a pre-nuptial agreement will help?” I asked.
“It will tell everyone that I’m not after your money.”
“And just how will it do that?” Yes, I was baiting her, but I knew that though her heart was in the right place, she hadn’t really thought this through.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly how do you think signing a pre-nup is going to ‘tell everyone that you are not after my money’? Are you going to go to all these people and tell them that we signed a one? Or are we going to take an ad out in the paper announcing it? Just how will they know that we signed one?”
Once her face registered recognition of what I was saying, I continued.
“Sookie, to you a pre-nuptial agreement says to the world “see, I’m not after his money” but to me it says “I don’t trust that the woman I love loves me and not my money” or worse yet, “my money means more to me than my wife and child.
Besides, all this is a moot point because I have already met with my attorney and accountant and have had you added to all my accounts, trust funds have been set up for the baby and my will has been amended to make you and the baby sole beneficiaries. So a pre-nup would really accomplish nothing.”
Once again I was going about things all wrong. This was not how I intended to tell her about the accounts, but I needed her to know that whatever I had was hers as well. And I did realize that if I handled my business discussions the way I handled discussions in my personal life, I would be one broke ass man!
“You did what?”
“Sookie, what did you expect? I needed the peace of mind that comes from knowing you and the baby will be taken care of if something were to happen to me.” I knew as soon as the words left my mouth I was in trouble.
“And just who do you think took care of me before you came along?!” I told you I was in trouble.
“Damn it Sookie that’s not what I meant. I know you can take care of yourself and even the baby if you had to. But even if you don’t want me taking care of you don’t you think I’m entitled at least having part in taking care of my baby?” I asked.
We finished the rest of our meal in silence. I didn’t feel like we were at a standoff yet but more like each one was considering the position of the other. We ordered dessert, more so because we were holding the table hostage rather than either one of us really wanting it. The waitress topped off our drinks and after placing our desserts on the table, Sookie looked up.
“I’m sorry, I know I sound ungrateful.”
“Sookie, I don’t want your gratitude, all I want is your love and happiness. I had just hoped that being married to me would make you as happy as it would me.”
She turned to me and took my hand that was now fiddling with my unused spoon.
“Nothing would make me happier.” She smiled and for the first time since we left the doctor’s office, it was a true genuine smile.
“Really?” She nodded. “Does this mean you’ll marry me?”
“Yes Eric, I’ll marry you.”
Instantly my lips were on hers.
TBC
