Stuck
He woke up to the sound
of a car honking its high-pitched horn. He was in his home, lying next to some
woman whose name he didn’t even know. His head was pounding from all of the
alcohol he drank last night. But this was nothing new, it was the same daily
routine that he never seemed to get tired of. He heard the woman next to him
starting to wake up, so he quickly laid back down and pretended to be asleep. He
wasn’t looking for a committed relationship or and strings attached, so he was
hoping if she woke up and saw him sleeping, she would just pack up and leave. That’s
what the women usually do—just try to quietly leave as soon as they wake up. But
this one, this woman, was different.
She woke up and put her clothes on, but she didn’t leave.
He was confused and in a way frustrated, but he kept pretending to sleep to see
what she was going to do. She went to the bathroom to freshen up and clean her
face. When she finished, she went back to the bed and laid next to him. She rubbed
his hair to try and wake him up, and he decided to stop pretending to be
asleep. “Good morning,” she said with a smile on her face. “Hey,” he sighed, “what
are you still doing here?” She had a disgusted look on her face and replied, “Well
I thought we could get to know each other. What are some of your favorite
things?” He was so confused. He didn’t know how to get her out of his house.
“Look… I have a lot of errands to run today. I’m just
going to call a taxi for you.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I have to get to work soon
anyways. I left my number on your dresser, just call me whenever you’d like.”
As she finished her last sentence with a smile on her
face, she walked out the door and shut it quietly. The slip of paper she left
on his dresser had her number on it and her name. He was not planning on
calling her and he was hoping that she wouldn’t come back to his house, so he
threw her number away.
After a couple of weeks, they had no communication at
all. He continued on with his same daily routine of getting drunk and bringing a
different girl that he didn’t know to sleep with in his bed.
One day after coming home, he found an envelope at his
doorstep. He looked around and didn’t see anybody there, so he picked the
envelope up and walked inside his house and shut the door behind him. He immediately
opened the envelope, and he found a pregnancy test that marked positive. He thought
it was some kind of joke. “Who would send this to me? I’m not anybody’s father,”
he thought to himself as he threw the pregnancy test away and washed his hands.
He continued on with his daily routine, however in the
back of his mind he kept wondering who sent him that envelope.
A month later, he came home to find a blue and white baby
rattle at his doorstep. He screamed aloud out to anybody who could hear him, “This
isn’t funny! You need to leave me alone now.” He threw the baby rattle into the
street and furiously walked into his house.
Once every month for the following eight months, he came
home to find a baby toy on his doorstep—each one was different every month. He didn’t
know how to figure out what was going on, so he decided to just ignore it.
The following month, he expected yet another baby toy. But,
that’s not what was on his doorstep. There was a letter attached with it, and
the letter read, “Hey, it’s me. So you never did call me. I don’t know what I did
wrong. But this, this is ours. Last month the doctor diagnosed me with terminally
ill cancer. There’s nothing that they can do. They say I don’t have much time
left…so I decided to just end it before cancer did for me. It’s too late by
now, I am already gone. Take good care of her for me, please. She deserves it.”
He did not know whether to believe what he just read or
not. He did not know what to feel except for sadness and confusion. He begun to
walk inside his home, but before shutting the door, he picked up the letter and
the basket holding the beautiful baby girl inside with him.