Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Jade - Chapter 21 - Now

The room Blue led me to is no bigger than his dorm, albeit a creamy white gloss like icy lipstick. Clinical. By the examination bed, Belinda's arms are crossed beneath her post partum bosom. Dr Jenkins is a smaller woman by comparison, with low court shoes and a skirt she keeps brushing her palms across as she enters the room. Blue presses the door closed behind her, sealing the four of us in.

We're not shackled and Dr Jenkins doesn't appear to be martial arts trained; not by the way her eyes follow the suspended ceiling tiles in a careful avoidance of eye contact. Perhaps her conscience is not quite ready to admit such a huge act of inhumanity on her part.

'I want you to know it's not your fault that you're here,' Dr Jenkins says, eventually. Glancing at Blue by the door, then at the wallboards behind, her eyes finally find me. 'You both share something quite unique. You both have the ability to bear a child naturally, and in this day and age that has made you something of a target.'

She fumbles with some papers in her hands—our medical notes, I presume—although they might as well be passages of the Holy Bible for all the difference it makes.

'You don't need me to tell you that those women and men out there would quite literally kill for a child of their own. Though most are long past the parenting threshold now. It's such an oversubscribed course.'

'Everyone's entitled to a baby,' Belinda says. 'They should have applied earlier. You ring up The Clinic, you go on a list. Even I know that.' Her eyes are narrowed at the doctor.

'But did you?' Dr Jenkins replies. Their stares meet in a barrage of hostility.

Dr Jenkins' tone reminds me of a lesson at school, in which most of my attention had revolved around doodling Adrian's name with hearts around it. Philosophy was my fourth A-level; the one I planned to drop at the end of the year. But then I'd met Adrian and things had changed. After Blue's sudden disappearance, I hadn't planned for, or even imagined being worthy of love again.

'Why is infertility not classed as a pandemic in the same way as Ebola?' Mr Cairnes had asked, turning to the whiteboard to build a mind map in red and blue markers. He wrote the word 'fear' by the first line.

'It's not a pandemic because people aren't dying,' Judy suggested, beside me.

'No death,' Mr Cairnes wrote on the board beside the next arrow. 'So if you can't conceive because the relevant strain of IVF doesn't work, you can't have a child. Is that not a death of sorts?'

'No,' Judy added. 'If you've not got something, how can you lose it?'

I wonder if Blue's going to speak up but he doesn't. Somewhere in the distance there's a roaring din, like cheering at a football match, diluted through layers of plasterboard and brick. After a moment, the noises diminish until it's just us again. Dr Jenkins perches against the desk and crosses her legs, Belinda chews her lip, and every part of the small examination room reeks of tension.

'Why are we here?' I say, looking at Blue. 'Why do you think we care about those people outside?'

He glances to Dr Jenkins. When I think I can take the silence no more, Dr Jenkins coughs and shifts uncomfortably.

'You're trying to justify their actions, right?' I continue. 'You're trying to make us sympathetic to their cause. Well don't bother. They're lunatics. This is kidnapping. And you're going to jail for this.'

Blue flinches and tucks one leg behind the other. Perhaps the bruising wasn't just on his torso. Although he's trying not to look vulnerable, I saw the bruises across his chest; we could probably outrun them in his state. Belinda would probably give a sharp kick in the nuts to anyone who tried to get in her way.

'I was denied a baby,' Dr Jenkins says. 'Not because I wasn't married, nor was I out of the threshold age range. I paid a small fortune in application fees/ I passed every exam without dropping a point and I gave them every detail of data they could possibly have asked of me, but they denied my application all the same. You want to know why?'

I can't imagine any reason other than her being foreign. Either that or her husband wasn't deemed suitable, but I'm not about to voice that.

'I have congenital talipes equinovarus,' she says. 'You might have heard of it as club foot.'

They look fine to me in her neat black court shoes and flesh-coloured tights. I'm not sure what club foot even is. Genetic or any other physical disorders like this are pretty uncommon. We learnt about a few basics in science at school and intensively about spina bifida, cleft palate and Down syndrome in GCSE biology. The teachers said these occurred before they realised that repeated Fertility treatment was unstable. Before they brought in the one application rule. Yet here she is, standing before me, looking perfect, with a deformity.

'Your feet don't look any different to mine,' I say.

'I've had corrective surgery,' she replies, sourly. 'But even so, genes like that can be carried, thus weakening the next generation. So they said no. Do you know what that does to a marriage? Do you think he would have stayed with me knowing he had only one card in this life and he could never play it?'

The papers in her hands tremble. She doesn't look at Blue even once. I hope he's judging her like I am because no amount of sympathy can excuse or justify her role here.

'You look out there at those people, the ones you no doubt met on your way in. They probably frighten you, but they have been dropped by this society we live in. Outcasts. They are the frightened ones. Petrified they're going to see this life out with their hands tied, never fulfilling their true ambitions and goals because society said no. This is no pandemic. This is Prosper playing God with us.'

'What do you want from us, Dr Jenkins?'

'I want your eggs.'

Thanks for reading Chapter Twenty-One of Sever where we find out why Jade and Belinda have been kidnapped. Find out what happens next as Blue's story resumes. The next chapter is now LIVE!

Don't forget to like, vote, follow or comment on this chapter. I've already made so many changes thanks to awesome feedback for you lovely people.

Shout out to designers out there.. if anyone fancies having a go at designing them, please pm me. I'd love to showcase your work. I'm also looking for chapter headings. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

CAST LIST 

Jade Lively - Lilly Collins (the protagonist)

Blue - Liam Hemsworth (the protagonist / anti-hero and Jade's ex-boyfriend)

Terrence Ridley - Mackenzie Crook (one of the pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean)

Belinda - Lindsay Lohan (fellow kidnappee)

Adrian Lively - Alex Pettyfer (Jade's husband)

Marcus Lively - William Fichtner aka Alex from Prison Break (Adrian's father)

Mikey Drosner - Jack Black (Blue's lawyer)

Detective Pike - Viola Davis (Blue's prosecutor)

Prime Minister Christopher Seaford - Gary Oldman