The Last Option

The alarm clock rang and he reached out to turn it off; he had been awake for a long time but did not want to get up until it rang, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, thinking. Beside him, his wife woke up too and turned to him, putting her arm across his chest and stroking the sparse hair he had.

“Don't you want to get up?” she asked him, seeing that he made no move to stand up. “Today is your first day at your new job and you shouldn't be late.”

“Yes, I know,” he replied, caressing her hand in turn. “According to Thomas, I have to take him and his wife to a doctor's appointment today, around nine in the morning.”

“You must thank Thomas for recommending you for this job, he appreciates you very much.”

“Yes, officially today goes into retirement, the poor old man can no longer drive, although he didn’t want to admit it. Mr. Hicks was very insistent, and he finally agreed.”

“We have to make him and Laura a thank you dinner.”

“I hope the pay is good, we have many debts, especially the rent, we already owe three months. The landlord has been very considerate in giving us more time.”

“You’ll see that it’s good, you will work for one of the richest and most powerful men in New York, and perhaps in the country.”

“That's what scares me, you know? I don’t know if I will be able to function in that world of rich and uptight people.”

She giggled.

“What's funny? Are you making fun of me?”

“No, my love, you are thinking that you will be with these people all the time; you’re just chauffeuring Mr. Hicks, I don’t think you’ll rub shoulders with them a lot.”

“Well, I’m still a little nervous. I hope I do everything right, and Mr. Hicks will like me.”

That said, he got up and went to the bathroom to take a shower, while his wife snuggled against his pillow, taking advantage of sleeping a little more until he came out of the bathroom.

Bernard Sullivan and his wife Margaret had a happy and stable marriage; he was thirty-four and she was thirty, with three married years. Despite the difficulties, they had managed to consolidate their love and move on together, maintaining a bit of optimism and hope for a better future. The first difficulty they faced was being alone in a huge, ruthless and fierce city like New York, since they both came from a small town in northern Arkansas and after getting married, they decided to seek better opportunities for development and economic growth, choosing to the big apple as the city where they would find them.

That was their first year there, and the best opportunities, they believed, had not yet presented themselves, trying to survive with small jobs that contributed very little to the family economy. She, dedicated to being a half-day waitress in a small cafe, and he a security officer in a pawn shop thanks to his height and corpulence acquired as a Navy Seal during his time in the Navy.

They had rented the little house where they lived with the little savings they had, and they got their daily sustenance with the little pay that their jobs brought them. Fortunately, they had the support of many of their neighbors, including the elderly couple who lived next to them, Thomas and Laura Peterson, who saw them as the children they never had. Old Thomas was the chauffeur for a prominent businessman, working for him for thirty years and earning his affection to the point of offering him a carefree and dignified retirement. Seeing himself now retired, the old man proposed Bernard to take his place with Mr. Hicks, his employer, and the latter readily accepted, offering to start immediately.

And there he was, in his new job, and leading him to what would be his boss from now on, somewhat nervous and restless, since he had not worked as a driver before.

Nathan Hicks was not what Bernard expected, his friend Thomas never described him to him and for some strange reason he thought he was also an old man. But to her surprise, Nathan Hicks was a young man, forty-two, energetic-looking and well-groomed, typical of a wealthy businessman. At first he thought that he would find a despot and implacable billionaire, used to mistreating anyone who was not at his level and who got everything he wanted. But Nathan Hicks was not even remotely that, rather he was attentive and cordial with everyone, and especially loving with his wife, which Bernard realized when he took them to medical consultation.

Nathan Hicks' fortune came from the mining business, specifically gold and diamonds, and from an extensive chain of jewelry stores across the country, with its headquarters and operations center in New York. His company, Southern Hilltop Gold, was among the top ten mining companies based in the USA, with a long and interesting history in the area since the beginning of the 20th century, and which was traditionally managed by the Hicks and Randall families, which owned sixty-five percent of the shares of the same, and whose head were Nathan Hicks, his sister Rebeca and their cousin, Louis Randall, a ruthless man for business and with a despicable and self-centered personality, capable of taking ahead whoever crosses his path.

Nathan’s sister, Rebeca, was constantly out of the country, enjoying life and her fortune in travels and exotic pleasures, with no other concern than changing her lover from time to time, once the one on duty was no longer her useful to satisfy her whims and eccentricities in bed. She was the carefree of the family, with no time or desire to dedicate herself to the family business, which Nathan successfully led.

They had reached the doctor’s office, located on Fifth Avenue. Bernard saw the name: New York Fertility Center, and immediately realized that Nathan and his wife were having trouble having children. Seeing his surprised expression as he opened the Bentley's door for them, Nathan patted his shoulder after exiting the vehicle.

“Yes, Bernard,” he said. “Now you know it too, but I’m going to tell you something: it’s a secret. I’ll talk to you later.”

With that said, Nathan and his wife entered the fertility center, while Bernard prepared to wait for his new employers.

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.”