Hold her hand while she delivered another man's child? Cut the umbilical cord that connected someone else's kid to my wife's body? Yeah, that was going to be a hard pass for me. The phone kept ringing.
Melissa was probably calling from the ambulance or the hospital, desperate for someone, anyone, to be there for her during what should have been one of the most important moments of her life. But she'd made her choice about who mattered to her, and it wasn't me. Around 3:00 p.m., my desk phone rang. The hospital.
"Mr. Walker, this is St. Mary's Hospital. Your wife Melissa asked us to call you. She's given birth to a healthy baby boy, and she's asking if you can come." "I'm not the father," I said, cutting off whatever guilt trip they were about to lay on me.
"Call Charles Whitmore. He's the father. This has nothing to do with me." There was a pause.
The kind of silence that happens when someone realizes they've stepped into a situation way more complicated than they bargained for. "Sir, I... Mrs. Walker is very upset. She's asking for you specifically." "And I'm specifically not coming," I said.
"Like I told you, call Charles Whitmore. It's his baby, his responsibility." I gave them Charles's office number and hung up. Then I spent the rest of the day trying to focus on work while ignoring the growing knot in my stomach.
Not guilt. I was way past guilt. But something else. Maybe relief that it was finally over.
That the pregnancy that had been hanging over our lives like a storm cloud had finally ended. Maybe anticipation for what came next now that there was an actual baby involved instead of just the abstract idea of one. That evening, I picked up our kids from after-school care like it was any other day. Jake was excited because he'd gotten an A on his science project about volcanoes.
Emma was grumpy because some kid had stolen her favorite pencil eraser. And Sophie wanted to know if we could have pancakes for dinner. Normal kid problems. Beautiful, normal kid problems that had nothing to do with surrogacy or bosses or babies that belonged to other people.