Bear My Babies

Melissa’s heart sank when she walked inside. She knew she should have suspected the worst, but seeing it in real life broke her. Behind Tilly’s desk in big letters was the word UNNATURAL written in red spray paint, the drips making it look as if the words were bleeding. Her desk was completely gutted and files were strewn everywhere. The vase of flowers she kept there had been thrown against the wall. All the magazines in the waiting area were shredded and the furniture had long slash marks in it, making it impossible to salvage. Every piece of her office had been vandalized somehow and this was just the front room. Melissa didn’t want to go any further, afraid to see what she would come across.

“Are those your important files?” Thomas asked.

His voice sounded as if he was talking through water. She kept her research locked up, but now she was terrified someone had gotten to it. With that in mind, she ran back toward her office and threw the door open to find a similar scene. Things were everywhere, her safe was bashed in, but they didn’t appear to have gotten into it. She was thankful she splurged and paid for the best safe when she ordered it for her office. It had been battered, but it put up one hell of a fight and seemed to have won.

The police lights bounced off her walls as she looked around, lots of her personal possessions she had collected over the years were destroyed. Pictures of her patients as they found out they were pregnant. Frames holding the babies she had helped come to term were crushed. The whole thing seemed very personal and she was feeling very violated. It was almost as if she had been attacked physically.

The whole situation was unreal to her. She turned around, her arms limp to her side as she took in everything. Melissa rubbed her eyes, willing herself to wake up from the nightmare, but as much as she rubbed, she knew it was reality. Going back into the front, she saw Tilly was talking to the police on one side and Thomas was talking to Bruce on the other.

It took her mind a second to realize Bruce was just as real as the destruction around her.

“Bruce!” Melissa exclaimed. He abruptly stopped talking to Thomas, who was in the middle of what seemed to be a heated conversation, and walked to hug her tightly. “What the hell happened here? Was it Nathaniel?”

Ugh, she was never going to live down her life with Nathaniel. She had a feeling every time something bad happened, he would be the first person they would connect it with. Wasn’t she allowed to have one mistake in her otherwise pristine existence?

“No, it really wasn’t,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

Her office had been violated. Her personal possessions destroyed. Couldn’t they give her some slack? Thomas walked over and both men looked at each other. She watched as they assessed each other, and wondered if they were going to whip out their di*ks and perform a measuring contest. Seriously, did they not realize it wasn’t the best time to play “I’m the better alpha”? There was a whole lot of tension, and even the police that were wandering around taking pictures kept throwing the two men looks, waiting to see if they were going to have to jump in to split them apart. Melissa knew the reason Bruce was posturing up. He was her friend and trusted colleague, and he didn’t think she should be hurting her body to have Thomas’ baby, especially when they weren’t even a couple. Bruce had seen firsthand what the treatments did to her body as he pushed the plunger down. She knew it upset him that she continued to take the treatments when it was making her physically ill. She wasn’t sure what Thomas’ issue was, and at the moment, she didn’t even care.

She felt like she was an outsider as she turned away from Bruce and Thomas and watched police poke and prod through her office. The police went around looking at everything and she sank down on the tattered couch out front as she waited to be useful. An officer came to talk to her and she had to concentrate really hard to focus on what he was saying. Her brain was begging her to shut down and process everything at another time. She wanted to listen, but knew she couldn’t.

“Any reason someone would want to harm you or your business?” one of the faceless officers asked her.

“I think from what my walls say they don’t like that I do fertility treatments to help women have babies. Some people think it’s unnatural for doctors to interfere in what they feel is God’s work. I don’t know who would go to this extreme though. I’m not sure who would be capable of this. Most don’t even realize this is a fertility clinic. It is one of the reasons I chose this location because it is hidden away for the most part.”

“Do you have any security cameras?” he asked.

“No.” Melissa said, staring at one of the bigger rips in her couch.

“All right. We’re going to go around and ask people if they saw anything. Maybe check if there’s any footage around that we can use. If we get any leads, we’ll give you a call.”

“Okay, thank you, officer,” she said dejectedly.

Melissa knew they weren’t going to find the person who did it. She had seen her share of crime shows on TV and knew how unlikely finding the suspect or suspects in a case like hers was. It didn’t seem like they really could with no leads and not really knowing what time the vandalism occurred. She really wanted them to find the people that tried to destroy her livelihood, but she knew it wasn’t possible. At the moment, she felt powerless to an unknown assailant and she wasn’t sure how she was going to regain any power to make herself feel normal again.