Monitored (The White Coat Series Book 3)

THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN like this. No, no, no, no, no. I was supposed to be on the dean’s list, I was supposed to be worried about research papers, final exams, a drunken night here and there. I wasn’t supposed to be sitting on my cold, white tiles that lined my bathroom floor, the flickering lightbulb going in and out as I sat there, head in my hands, tears starting to find their way out and over my cheeks. In my hand was the one test that changed everything.

I was pregnant.

Let me set the scene before judgements are made. My brother, Jason, he’s shot and in a coma, clinging to life by a hair. Thankfully, he makes it out alive, smiling, his eyes finding a new life. I visit him in the hospital, my twin brother Connor standing by my side. Seeing him alive allowed me to finally breathe again, but then I see his finger pushing the button, the one at this side administering the pain medications, and my breath gets stolen from me all over again. I know what road he’s about to go down, and I’m scared that his addiction problem is going to spiral out of control, the same way it did when I was younger. It was excruciatingly hard, growing up and having to see your parents fight almost every night over their firstborn son, the one who was off in a warehouse getting high. Seeing Jason awake made me more scared than I had been before.

I walk out of the room, devastated, terrified as to which Jason I was getting when he was discharged, the drug-addled one who cared only about hot girls and vodka or the loving one who was a doctor and perfect big brother. I’m not myself when I turn the corner and bump into Dr. Blake Evans the celebrity plastic surgeon that everyone knows by sight alone. He’s been on Oprah for Christ’s sake. He lays it on thick, I could tell that he clearly wanted to get it in with a young college co-ed, it was his M.O., his conquest of the day. I see the glint of silver on his left ring finger. How can I not notice when the wedding band looks like it must have cost more than my car? I feel guilty for a moment, but then think about Jason, think about how unfair the world was, and decide that today was going to be the day I temporarily threw my morals out of the window.

He compliments me first, asking if I’ve been in any television shows lately. He tells me that he knows an agent, someone who can get me into a film. I’m too beautiful to be a student, he says.

Now, normally, I would have laughed at him and walked the other way. But today was not a normal day, today I wanted to act out, I needed to break out of this protective shell that I had been forced into my whole life. So, unlike something I would ever actually do, I play along. I twirl my recently done brown hair, a shiny lock sliding through my fingers as I throw it over my shoulder. I look up, my hazel green eyes meeting his, they seem almost golden under the hallway light. I notice his Brad Pitt good looks, the kind that comes with an unlimited amount of spending money, earned from giving numerous boob jobs to vapid LA actresses clinging to whatever semblance of youth they could find. It afforded him to always keep a perfect haircut which framed that strong, squared off jaw, jutting out from a thick, powerful, slightly scruffy neck. I watch as he speaks to me, noticing all the little movements, the ones that tell me Blake wants something more, something physical.

From the side of my eye I see a twitch in the front of his scrubs, the dark navy blue fabric jumping out and drawing my attention to the bulge that Blake seemed to be displaying almost proudly. I want to be bad, want to lose control for once.

Just like Jason had.

So I go with Blake. I go with him into the bathroom and I have one of the biggest, most ground-shattering orgasms of my whole life, there pinned against the beige stall, the sounds of our flesh slamming together driving me over the edge. And even with my rebelliousness and blinding horny fervor, I still made him wear a condom.

Who would have thought that it would have ripped? That I would have been that cautionary tale for years to come, the one that gets told to some high school kids, “don’t have sex, not even once! Look at Sky, she just wanted a fling. Well, the safest sex is no sex! Sex bad! Sex no! Sex is death!”

I never thought I would be that girl, the one that was the warning post for all the girls before me, holding up my hands and yelling for them to go back and turn around. “Don’t let your life get ruined by a small strip you had to pee on with a plus sign on it, the one that was confirmation of alien life growing inside of you,” would be what the warning poster says. So I sat on my bathroom floor and I cried, my small hands falling loose and letting the test slide under my cabinets. The bulb above the mirror kept flickering, casting odd shadows around me, which was only made worse by the blurring effect my tears had as they began to flow freely now.

I had no idea as to what the hell I was going to do.

My back rested on the closed, white door. I slid down even further, my knees coming up so that I could bury my head right between them. It was a scene pulled straight out of whatever film Dr. Evan’s was thinking up when he was flirting with me, the scene that comes after the incredible sex. It was the scene that reminded everyone in the audience that actions have consequences.

I spent an hour on my bathroom floor, in quite a few different variations of the fetal position. I even tried getting inside of my tub and cradling myself in there but soon found it was too hard on my back and figured I wanted to at least be comfortable in my misery. I dragged myself over to the couch and looked out my window, out into the Los Angeles night. Kester, my overweight tabby cat with a peculiar stripe that looked more like a star, jumped up onto my lap and purred furiously, nudging my hand over his light brown head so that I could pet him like a needy baby crying out for milk. I let my limp hand run over Kester, his fur feeling soft under my touch, his claws kneading into the expensive pillows my mom had got me to decorate the place.

I couldn’t even care enough to stop him.

I knew I had to tell someone, I needed to talk to someone about it. My first instinct was to call my twin, but I knew he was going through enough of his own stuff. No, I needed someone older, someone who could help shed some light on the whole situation.

I pulled out my iPhone, it’s unprotected gold back feeling smooth in my grip, and dialed the one person I knew would be able to help.

****

Jason was over my apartment in about fifteen minutes, his big, brotherly arms taking me in and giving me a literal shoulder to cry on. He was worried at first, I could tell in his eyes, but his worry seemed to have shifted into what almost seemed like excitement. Sure, he could be excited all he wants, but he just gets a cute little nephew. I get a crying baby that’s going to make college much harder than it was already going to be.

It did have a sort of soothing effect though. I was scared that he would flip out, especially when he found out that it was Dr. Evans that was the father. Surprisingly, he seemed ok though, only looking slightly shocked that Blake was the father of my child, hiding the rest of his shock for later, I was sure.

“How do you think mom and dad are going to react?” I asked, taking the pillow again and hugging it tight.

“Listen. If they can take me back in after I burned through seven thousand dollars of their own money for my drug addiction, then I think they’ll be just fine with your news.” His advice made sense. Our parents were nothing but supportive throughout our whole lives, even during Jason’s drug addiction, they still had an open door policy. They couldn’t force us, but they always wanted us to know that their home was a safe haven, a spot to run to when things were looking grim. It’s what Jason did when he got clean, and it looked like something I had to consider if I needed help raising the baby.

I couldn’t do it by myself, not if I wanted to continue studying. I looked around at my apartment, the dark furniture, the trendy, patterned gray walls, the flat-screen television hitched above a marble display stand where a Xbox sat, untouched for months. It was a beautiful apartment, something I had to thank my parents for. They had bought it for me when I told them I had reservations about living in a dorm room, not because I couldn’t handle some of the third-world conditions, but because I was scared of getting too distracted by the roommates. My parents, hearing that I was fearful of falling behind on my classes, warmed up to the idea of me living on my own pretty quickly.

I was sure if it were Connor, they might have put in more of a fight, that’s why Con had to smudge the truth a little bit to get his one-bedroom place. But my parents knew I was the responsible one, the one that had her head on straight with a page long to-do list resting on her bedside stand, ready to take on a new day.

And now that girl, the one that so valued being prepared, was pregnant.

“Well, that’s true. You really did shit the bed on that one,” I said, allowing myself to giggle at the pure scale of it all.

“Besides, the-” and just then, a rock crashed through my window, sending shards of glittering glass flying everywhere as it landed on the glass table. My hands shot up and covered my head as I shrieked in surprise, not understanding what had just happened. Jason ran off to the window and tried to see who it was, but my attention was drawn to the rock, a small, white piece of paper stuck to the top of it.

“Jason, you better come see this,” I said, crouching down over the rock.

He hurried over and ripped the letter off, the tape sticking behind to the rock and keeping a piece of paper with it.

“So you rat me out and now you’re ratting my sister out? What kind of game are you fucking playing? Well, you and your pretty blonde bitch are in it now, Jace.”

I got back up and sat on the couch’s armrest, noticing glass pieces now resting on the cushion. “What... the fuck?” I was so confused that I couldn’t think of a more eloquently phrased question, my mouth hanging wide open now.

“It’s Marco, an old… eh, friend of mine who thinks me and Courtney reported his sister for stealing drugs.” Jason looked at me, his features growing worried as he began to think about Courtney. I didn’t know who Marco was, but I knew that my brother had strayed down a very dark path during his earlier years, so I had no doubt that Marco was some sleazebag crawling back from his past.

“Shit! Jason, this guy is crazy!” I said, gesturing out to the broken table that was now just an elegant, black frame holding up nothing but air.

“I need to go be with Courtney,” Jason said, grabbing his stuff and walking towards the door. “Can you stay at Connor’s tonight?”

I nodded, “Yeah I’ll head out, give me a second.”

I knew how Jason was beginning to feel about Courtney, I saw the glint in his eyes when he was around her, I saw it the day I visited Jason in the hospital.

I packed up my stuff and said bye to a worried Jason.

I didn’t know what else to expect anymore.

CHAPTER TWO

THE RADIO PLAYED THE SAME Rihanna song over and over again as I drove to Connor’s apartment, my heart still racing at what had just happened. The rock was so unexpected, another shock to add to the list, and now my older brother was being hunted by his ex-roommate who was also most likely a drug dealer.

When the actual fuck did our lives get so complicated?

I pulled up next to my brother’s black BMW and put my own car into park. I grabbed my overnight bag and slid out into the breezy LA night, stars trying to glitter their way through the light pollution. Connor lived in The Valley, a little bit of a drive up north from my homey spot in Westwood. It was a nice, residential neighborhood that was always five degrees hotter than the rest of the city and had quaint one-story homes intermixed with huge, twelve bedroom mansions holding their own concert halls.

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