The CEO’s Quadruplets

Chapter 4

Isabella paused to pop a quick pill in her mouth as an alarm went off on her phone. It had been a couple months that Isabella had been taking the hormonal pills. She had consulted with Lizzie the week after her birthday, assessing that her body would need a bit of encouragement. It did not actually surprise her when she got the news. In the world of motherhood and pregnancy, she was what had been rudely labeled once upon a time as “geriatric.” Even with more women pushing back the start of date of having a family, it did not mean that have a child in one’s thirties for the first time was any easier.

Isabella knew her body was in its prime when she was passed out over medical textbooks. It was too late to change that, but modern medicine was there to help Bella out.

Every afternoon since the consultation, she had taken a hormonal pill to encourage her ovulation. At the same time, Isabella had stopped using her contraception patches, meaning all her s*xual encounters were unprotected. The idea both thrilled and terrified her at first after being so careful for so long, but now s*x had a true biological purpose. The idea of romance became pushed to the side as intent drifted to a new place, moving away from the usual sole intent of pleasure and/or intimacy. The driving force of having children made each night with Amory have a different kind of expectation, and it had become a trick to make the s*x to remain… sexy.

Today, however, Isabella was setting up her office at the university. She had her pink and green sorority alumni decor scattered along the one shelf left by the last owner of the tiny corner office. She had plastic bins ready to be filled with paperwork on the lower levels of the tall wooden structure. Isabella felt happy to adopt this one bookcase, and knew it was lucky that she didn’t actually have to move it into the space herself. Thinking it over as she unloaded more boxes, that may have been the same reason it was left behind.

A picture frame of her family, a picture from her wedding, and her degrees filled the white space on the wall next to some watercolors she found at a flea market just for this new office. Adjusting the cactus she also bought in the window, Isabella poured a bit of her water from her bottle into the soil around it. Looking out, she could see stray students and tour groups across the student center lawn. It was a nice view that Bella could already appreciate.

However, her head had been sore all day. Isabella never had issues with headaches quite like this one, and it had her confused as she had been mulling over the other symptoms. After having breakfast, she had also had to stop by the coffee shop to get a muffin. Plus, her bre*sts had been a bit tender when she wrestled them into her bra while getting dressed earlier in the day. Sitting down in the floral settee she brought from the house, Isabella stared out at the grass, and thought about what could be making her feel so cloudy. Was it the new medication?

“Hi, Dr. Torres,” the grad student working the front office for the summer said as he knocked on the door frame before shoving his hands back into his jean pockets. “I just wanted to get your calendar for your summer course. I was printing up the other syllabi, and I thought you might like me to do yours.”

“Um, yes, thank you, Steve.” She fished through her bag and pulled out the master copy of the syllabus she had typed up the week before. “Could you use pink or green paper? Whatever you have a larger quantity is fine.”

“Sure thing, Dr. Torres.”

“And Steve?”

“Yes?”

“You can just call me Isabella, or Dr. Bella or whatever if that makes you feel better.”

“Of course… Dr. B.”

Bella smiled, saying, “I like it.”

The boy disappeared, and Isabella was left standing there thinking over a few words from the conversation. The calendar, the pink paper, or just thinking of the student as a boy… all these sang out in her head as Isabella looked at the clock. She was technically on lunch break, but she had to find a pharmacy. Grabbing her purse, she made a break for the exit door.

***

            She was not sure if someone could feel more idiotic than she did as she sat there on the toilet within the confines of the stall around her. Why had it taken her so long to put all the pieces together? These symptoms had been building for the last week, but it was only now as she waited for an informal answer from a plastic stick. It was only going to be a minute more before the results became clear. Isabella’s conclusion for her obliviousness was that pregnancy had to be making her ditsy. She had known for other friends to lose their minds while pregnant, and it had seemed as such an oddity until it now began happening to her already. Such an oversight was entirely out of character for her otherwise, but Isabella knew that she had been no exception.

            The sound of someone else using the bathroom on the nursing department’s floor echoed around the tiled bathroom for a moment before the room was quiet again. Isabella never expected for such a momentous occasion of her life to take place in a public bathroom. She had no time to find a more private location to do this, and she certainly did not want to christen her new little office by messing with her own urine at her university-provided desk.

            The idea of it made her shudder.

            Isabella sat there on the toilet somewhat afraid to move. She stared at the little bars on the stick. It seemed insane that something so small could be so significant. The nausea and the sore bre*sts finally made sense, and the extra little pooch in her stomach was not just bloating from all the carbohydrates she had been consuming.

Isabella was actually pregnant. After all the expectations and s*x, the day had finally come.