The Last Option

Dr. Ernest Holloway removed the ultrasound transducer from Norma Hicks' belly and began to clean up the gel that had just been applied to her just moments before. When he finished he looked at the woman with a resigned face, and then at her husband, Nathan Hicks.

"As I guessed," he said, as he cleaned the transducer and placed it in its holder next to the ultrasound, "the bleeding she had was due to the detachment of the ovum. Your body definitely doesn't accept or retain fertilized eggs for long." Nathan clutched his wife's hand, who let a furtive tear escape upon hearing the news.

"We can try again," Nathan told her almost in a whisper, "we won't give up."

"I'm afraid that will no longer be possible, Mr. Hicks," Dr. Holloway said, turning back to them. "It's the third time that we treat at your request, usually when the uterus rejects the implanted eggs twice it is enough to know that it will no longer retain or develop them. Don't keep investing money in something that won't happen."

"That's all," Norma said, wiping her tears with her hands. The doctor handed her a tissue. "We'll have to forget about being parents. If you can't, you can't."

"We're not giving up," Nathan said, "there must be some way to get you pregnant, I don't know, a new procedure, a treatment, something."

"Unfortunately your wife cannot and won't be pregnant, Mr. Hicks," said the doctor. "It's final. However, there is still a possibility that you are parents."

"Which?" Nathan asked quickly. "Adopt? That would be our last option, and of course it wouldn't be the same."

The doctor sat behind his desk, while Nathan helped Norma to get off the gurney, to then also sit in the chairs in front of him, facing him and waiting for what he was going to say to them.

"Rent a belly," he finally told them. "Find a healthy young woman who is willing to have your child; we implanted an egg from Mrs. Hicks fertilized with his sperm and that's it! You have a baby at nine months. It's a procedure that is very fashionable today and that helps couples like you to be parents."

"Yes!" Nathan looked excited about the proposal. "Many couples have done that and become parents. What do you say, my love? We try?"

Norma looked contrite, but despite everything she was trying to compose herself and smile with great difficulty.

"What if my eggs are the ones that have problems? If they don't want to cling to any uterus?"

"Well, we'll only know that when we try," Holloway replied. "So far I have successfully fertilized them, perhaps in another womb they will develop without problems."

"I don't know. If that woman later decides not to deliver the baby? It may happen that in the end she regrets it."

"Don't worry about that, Mrs. Hicks, your husband is a businessman and I'm sure there will be a contract in between so that doesn't happen. In addition, the baby won't be biologically the son of that woman, even if she has carried him in her womb for nine months. He will be yours because he will have the DNA of both. Nor will it be legally because there will be a contract that specifies it. You just have to make the conditions very clear."

"If so, then I have no problem trying, as long as you stay in charge of the entire procedure, doctor."

"Don't worry, Mrs. Hicks, if you bring me a good candidate, I'll take care of everything."

"Okay, doctor, we'll try," Nathan said. "You will hear from us in the next few days."

As they got into the Bentley, Bernard realized that there was no good news for his bosses, preferring to remain silent the entire way. From time to time he would hear the couple say something or other in a low voice, and in the rearview mirror he would see Mrs. Hicks wiping the occasional tear from time to time.

"We will leave my wife at the house, Bernard, and then we will go to my office."

"As you say, Mr. Hicks."

Bernard drove to the Hicks' residence, located in the exclusive Hudson Square area of Manhattan, and as ordered, he dropped Norma Hicks there and then continued on to his bosses' company. During the journey he did not exchange a word with Nathan, and he thought it would always be like that, which he liked in part since he was not very given to start conversations with people just to talk.

"Don't tell anyone about that place you took me to, Bernard," Nathan told him after a while and when they were about to arrive at his company, "my wife and I try to keep this whole matter in the strictest confidence."

"I don't have to talk to anyone about it, Mr. Hicks, your private life is none of my business. You hired me to be your chauffeur, not to meddle with your business, much less gossip."

"Very good, Bernard, I like the way you think. It was just to make sure I had hired the right man."

"Don't worry about me, Mr. Hicks, I know what my job is, and I'll try to do it right. However, if you have something to say to me so that I don't encounter any unpleasant surprises or situations, please tell me now." "What are you talking about? I don't understand."

"It's simple, Mr. Hicks, if you keep something like that under absolute reserve, it's for something, and since I'm going to be close to you, your family and the rest of your workers, I would like to know what to expect with all of them, so that I don't take me by surprise or think that I am manipulable in some way to release confidential and private information."

"It seems fair to me. First of all, my wife and I cannot have children; that's something that we are already convinced of today, and we are going to consider other options to be parents. Secondly, my family is conflictive even though it may not seem like it, you have no idea of the battles I have had to fight so my sister and my cousin don't destroy each other for control of the company, and between the two don't destroy me, although lately my sister has been a little away from all this, trying not to get involved in the management of the company so as not to ruin everything that my parents and I have done for her all these years, and of course because I threatened to take away some of her 'benefits' and luxuries she has counted on since she can squander them. My wife and I think if they found out that we'll have a son to whom we'll inherit our entire fortune, they would redouble their efforts to ensure this doesn't happen, and hence we decided to keep this whole matter a secret. Anyway, they will find out in due course, but when that happens, I will have already modified my will and they won't be able to do anything."

"Are they that bad?"

"You can't imagine how much, that's why you should get away from them and the people who are close to them, because they will always have someone looking for information for them by all possible means."

"I understand. You can count on my discretion and confidence, Mr. Hicks. Thanks for the warning."

"Don't think I'm putting you in a snake's nest, Bernard." Nathan smiled slightly as he said that. "They're not all emissaries of evil in the company."