Nine Months to Bear By Nicole Fox - 9

9

The walls are moving again. This time, they’re not just closing in on me—they’re threatening to collapse under the weight of judgment.

I watch Ms. Chopard’s perfectly manicured nails drumming against the armrest of her chair. It’s my judgment bringing down the walls, God’s judgment—and Ms. Chopard’s, too, probably, once she finally starts reading faster than two words per minute.

Just when I think she must be done reading, her nails go back to tapping. The sound matches the staccato of my pulse.

Tap, tap, tap . A countdown to professional suicide.

I try to smooth my hair back into its bun and flatten the wrinkles from my blouse, but nothing can hide the bags under my eyes after three consecutive all-nighters. That’s what it took to get this contract to a place where I could hand it to Ms. Chopard without immediately wanting to hurl myself into traffic.

Each second she reads feels like an eternity. My fingers twitch with the urge to snatch the contract back, to laugh it off as a terrible joke.

Just kidding, Ms. Chopard! Of course I wouldn’t suggest your daughter become a surrogate to cover her tuition and my outstanding balances. What kind of monster do you think I am?

Don’t worry—I hate me, too.

Outside, rain streaks the windows, turning the world beyond into a blurry watercolor of gray. All that’s missing is a dramatic score and crackles of foreboding lightning.

Ms. Chopard eyes finally, finally , flick up—and they are red with rage.

“You want me to rent my daughter’s womb like some kind of… of… broodmare?!”

“That’s not—” But it is, isn’t it? Bile rises in my throat. I swallow hard. “The surrogacy program is completely ethical, with full medical support⁠—”

“‘Ethical’?” She spits the word in utter contempt. “You think there’s anything ethical about suggesting my twenty-two-year-old daughter carry someone else’s child for money?”

“Many young women find the experience rewarding.” The line I spent hours rehearsing in the mirror sounds every bit as flimsy as it is. “It’s a chance to help another family while providing financial⁠—”

“It’s blackmail.” Ms. Chopard lurches to her feet, her Hermès bag swinging on her elbow. “First, you jack up your rates, and I held my tongue. But now, you’re suggesting I sell out my own child to cover the difference?” She barks out a laugh. “Rebecca Walsh was right about you, Dr. Aster. You’re morally bankrupt.”

“Dr. Walsh doesn’t—” I clear my throat, desperate to hide the sob lodged in the base of it. “Dr. Walsh is entitled to her opinion of me, but I have my own of her. She runs a baby factory. She doesn’t give a damn about individualized care. She puts everyone on an assembly line and treats women like⁠—”

“She treats women like paying customers.” Ms. Chopard’s lip curls. “Unlike you, who treats them like cheap commodities to be traded as you see fit.”

My chest tightens. “Ms. Chopard, please try to understand. The financial situation⁠—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly.” She slams her hand on my desk, rattling my framed degrees. “Rebecca has been calling me for months. Did you know that? Offering discounts, VIP treatment, access to their new genetic screening program.”

I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to go to sleep for a very long time.

“But I stayed loyal to you,” Ms. Chopard continues, her voice rising to a keening wail. “When she told me your clinic was failing, I defended you. When she said your methods were outdated, I argued that personal attention trumps fancy machines any day of the week. Didn’t I? Didn’t I say those things?”

Guilt coils in my stomach. I feel like I’m going to be sick. “I appreciate your loyalty⁠—”

She laughs as soon as the word passes my lips. “Loyalty—that’s a small word for trusting you with my family’s future. With my hopes of giving Lila a sibling. And this is how you repay that trust? That ‘loyalty’? By suggesting my daughter sell her body?”

“It’s not selling—” I start, but the words die in my throat.

It is, though, and there’s no point in denying it. I’m suggesting a financial transaction involving a woman’s reproductive capacity. It’s everything I stand against, but I’ve just wrapped it in clinical terminology to make it palatable. A spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

I hate everything that’s brought me here.

I hate myself most of all.

“My daughter is studying neuroscience at MIT,” Ms. Chopard hisses. “She has dreams, ambitions. She is not a solution to your business problems.”

I rise from my chair, wishing I could take it all back, even though I know it’s far too late for that. “The arrangement would be temporary. Nine months, with full compensation and healthcare. We could expedite your treatment once⁠—”

“Once what? Once you’ve pimped out my daughter? Or once you’ve finished using my family’s bodies to keep your failing business afloat?” She shakes her head in disgust. “I expected better from you, Dr. Aster. I thought you were different. Joke is on me, I suppose.”

That hurts worst of all—because I thought I was different, too.

Now, I’m no better than Walsh. Just less successful at the game.

“I never meant to offend you,” I say quietly. “I was trying to find a solution that worked for everyone.”

Ms. Chopard’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t buy my bullshit for one second, and I can’t blame her. “My lawyer will be in touch about transferring my files to Dr. Walsh’s clinic. She may be a shark, but at least she’s honest about her teeth.”

The door slams hard enough to rattle my framed medical license. I sink into my chair, nausea and shame warring in my gut.

When did I become this person? This desperate, grasping, cloying, wheedling person who would use others for my own gain?

I drop my forehead to my desk with a loud thwack. It hurts, but I deserve it.

Camille winces from where she’s peeking through the doorway. “That bad?”

I don’t bother looking up at her. “Worse. Chopard is going to Walsh.”

Camille steps fully into the office, closing the door behind her. Her lab coat is as pristine as always, smooth and sharp over her polka dot dress. She’s a stark contrast to my disheveled state. Even in crisis, Camille maintains her composure—one of the many reasons I hired her straight out of her fellowship.

“I heard most of it,” she admits. She perches on the edge of the chair Ms. Chopard just vacated, but she doesn’t sit down fully, like she’s scared she might get scorched by the woman’s leftover rage. “But listen, we still have options. There are always people emailing us, making offers to be surrogates, to deliver their samples—” Camille shivers, and I know she’s thinking about the man who carried in his own sperm sample in a Tupperware container a few weeks ago, expecting cold, hard cash in exchange. “Maybe we could approach one of them with a discount if they⁠—”

“No.” I peel myself off the desk and fix her with a firm stare. “I’m not having another conversation like that one. Ever. Never, ever, ever.”

Camille’s worry lines soften. “It wasn’t that bad an idea, Liv. Just… hastily executed. Ms. Chopard wasn’t game, but there are women who genuinely want to be surrogates. We could set up a proper program, connect families like the Chopards with willing candidates.”

“With what infrastructure? What legal team?” I gesture around the office. “Walsh has a whole division dedicated to surrogacy contracts. We can barely keep the lights on.”

“We have time before payroll, before rent is due,” Camille insists. “Maybe we could⁠—”

“Sell the ultrasound machines? Pawn the frozen embryos?” I instantly regret my tone when Camille flinches. “Sorry. It’s just… I’ll figure something out.”

But the truth curdles in my throat: There is nothing left to figure out.

She knows it. I know it. We’re both just biding our time until there’s no more denying it.

Camille shifts, twisting her necklace around her finger—a nervous habit she’s developed since joining my sinking ship of a clinic. “Maybe go back to Safonov, see if there’s something else he’d be willing to try? He could invest in us the way people invest in Walsh. Maybe he’d give us the money first, and then we’d give him the baby.”

The memory of Stefan Safonov’s blue eyes sends an unwelcome shiver down my spine. “I already bent the knee once. I won’t do it again.”

“At this point, does it matter? Money is money.”

I look at Cami—really look at her—and see the dark circles under her eyes, the tension in her shoulders. She has a mortgage. Medical school bills. Dreams that don’t include going down with my boat that’s rapidly taking on water.

“Go home, Camille,” I say softly. “Have a glass of wine. I’ll handle this.”

“But—”

“Please.” I force a smile. “I just need to think.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Camille nods and stands. “For what it’s worth, Liv, I think you’re ten times the doctor Walsh is. And a hundred times the human being.”

The compliment stings worse than Ms. Chopard’s insults.

At least those were deserved.

When Camille closes the door, I pull up our financial spreadsheets again. The numbers haven’t changed in the last two hours, unfortunately for me. It’s mostly masochism that has me looking at them again. God knows there aren’t any easy solutions to be found.

I close the spreadsheets and rest my forehead on the cool surface of my desk once again.

“Think, Olivia,” I whisper to myself. “Think.”

But my mind is a wasteland of bad options and worse alternatives. I could declare bankruptcy, close the clinic, and try to salvage what’s left of my reputation. I could sell to a medical conglomerate that would strip out everything that makes us special. I could crawl back to my old mentor and beg for a research position.

Or I could pick up the phone and call Stefan Safonov.

The thought arrives unbidden, unwelcome, but once it takes root, it refuses to go away.

I try anyway. I spend hours poring over spreadsheets, willing the numbers to change and make my problems disappear, when the bell above the clinic’s entrance jingles. I don’t even look up, too ashamed to look whoever it is—Camille, my mother, Ms. Chopard back for round two—in the eyes.

“We’re closed,” I mumble.

“Good,” a man growls in reply. “Fewer witnesses for what’s about to happen.”