I Got a Vasectomy, She Got Pregnant

It was the seven year of our marriage. I found my wife's prenatal test report. She was three months pregnant. After seven childless years, I should have been overjoyed. Except I'd had a vasectomy. I confronted her with the report in hand. She barely reacted. "Is that all the grace you have? This child is innocent. If you choose me, you accept him too. Can't you even make room for one child? No wonder you'll never make anything of yourself." I saw the contempt in her eyes. And just like that, I gave up on her completely. Seven years of marriage, seven years of deferring to her in everything, and all I got in return was betrayal. Chapter 1 The day I found out Brie Kerry was pregnant was our seventh wedding anniversary. I'd left work early to surprise her, planning to set everything up before she got home. But while I was hiding her gift in the cabinet, I found a prenatal test report tucked inside with her name on it. The words "12+ weeks pregnant" burned into my eyes like a hot iron. How could this be? Seven years ago, when we got married, Brie had cried and said she was afraid of the pain of childbirth, and more afraid of how hard it would be to raise a child. "Can't it just be the two of us, for the rest of our lives?" she'd asked. It broke my heart to see her like that, so I booked a vasectomy the very next day. The doctor said the odds of conception afterward were next to zero. So there was no way Brie could be pregnant. Just then, I heard a key turning in the front door. I looked up. It was Brie, the woman I'd lived with for seven years, and loved for twenty. She looked at me, her smile sweet as ever. "Happy anniversary, honey!" She threw herself into my arms, her hair brushing against my chin. I looked into her eyes, so full of love, and felt myself go a little numb. Five years earlier, when a truck had come barreling toward me, Brie had thrown herself in front of it on pure instinct. She'd needed more than twenty stitches that day. She'd nearly died. But when she woke up, she hadn't even seemed to notice the pain, too busy comforting me instead. "See, I'm perfectly fine. Keep crying like that, and you'll make me mad," she'd said. Later, she'd traced the scar on her body and joked about it. "Look, this is my medal of honor. Proof that I love you." Now, that same love still shone just as real in her eyes, and it made everything inside me feel like it had been dropped in ice water. My throat tightened. I looked down at her stomach. A life was growing in there. A life that shared no blood with me at all. It felt like a fist had closed around my heart and was squeezing. I could barely breathe. "What are you thinking about?" Brie gave my arm a shake. I took a deep breath and set the prenatal test report down gently on the coffee table. The moment she saw what it said, almost instantly, the smile froze on her face. She stared down at the report, her expression shifting completely, as if the gentle, doting woman from a second ago had never existed. "You went through my things?" "I found it in the bedroom," I said, my voice hoarse. "Brie, what is this? Aren't you going to explain?" "Explain what?" She crossed her arms and took a step back, putting distance between us. "So now going through my private things gives you the right to interrogate me?" "I had a vasectomy seven years ago!" I finally couldn't hold back, my voice rising, my chest heaving. "Whose child is this?" She frowned, clearly annoyed. "Why are you yelling? Can't a vasectomy fail and lead to an accidental pregnancy?" "A vasectomy that somehow got you pregnant?" I stared straight into her eyes. "Look at me, Brie." She looked away instead. "I don't feel like talking about this." Just then, her phone rang. Charles Newman's name lit up across the screen. My heart sank instantly. "Hello?" The moment Brie answered, her voice turned soft. But as she listened to whatever was being said on the other end, a barely noticeable edge of worry crept into her tone. "What's wrong? Are you not feeling well? ... I'll come right now. Just hold on." She hung up, grabbed her bag off the couch, and headed for the door without so much as glancing at me. "Brie!" I called after her. Her steps faltered. When she turned back, her face was nothing but pure annoyance. "Stop bothering me." Chapter 2 The door slammed shut. I sank onto the couch and, almost without meaning to, picked up my phone and opened Charles's social media page. Brie had hired him as her assistant six months earlier. A recent college graduate and much younger than her. His most recent post had gone up ten minutes ago. [Running a fever. My head's killing me.] Below it was a selfie of him slumped listlessly against his headboard. The most recent comment was from Brie. [Hang tight, I'll bring you some medicine. I'll take care of you.] I stared at that comment until my fingers went cold. Honestly, when Charles first showed up in our lives, I hadn't thought much of it. Brie and I had twenty years of history behind us. What could one man possibly do to a marriage that solid? But little by little, I started noticing things weren't right. Brie brought him up more and more, and always with more praise each time. She said he was young and full of energy, that he told her about all the latest things online, and that he'd bring her coffee whenever she worked late. Then, on Brie's birthday, I made a reservation and waited for her at the restaurant. She stood me up. She didn't answer her phone. She didn't reply to a single message. She didn't come home until the middle of the night, and when I asked where she'd been, she said Charles had just gone through a breakup and she'd stayed to have a few drinks with him. That annoyed me. Didn't a young man like Charles have any other friends? Did he really need his boss to come console him? That incident put me on guard. So I went to Brie and tried to talk it through with her. "Aren't you and Charles getting a little too close?" She'd just laughed at me for being petty back then. "What are you even thinking? He's basically a kid. I think of him like a little brother." "A little brother who keeps you out drinking until the middle of the night?" "He's out here on his own trying to make it in this city. Is it so wrong of me to look out for him a little?" She frowned. "Martin, we've known each other for twenty years. Do you really not know me by now?" I chose to believe her. It wasn't until later that I realized just how foolish I'd been. Brie started coming home later and later. Her phone was always on silent, and the two of us had less and less to say to each other. Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and find her out on the balcony on the phone, her voice pitched low. The moment she saw I was awake, she'd hang up in a hurry. I told myself it was the seven-year itch, that life had just gotten too flat and routine, which was exactly why I'd gone out of my way to plan something special for our anniversary. I'd booked a trip. Plane tickets, a hotel, all of it. Looking back now, it had all just been wishful thinking on my part. The living room light stayed on all night. I sat on the couch and watched the sky outside go from pitch black to gray to full daylight. The whole time, Brie didn't send a single message back, the same as always, and she never picked up when I called. At seven in the morning, the door finally opened. She was home. When Brie saw me sitting on the couch, her steps faltered for a second, then she walked straight past me toward the bedroom as if she hadn't seen me at all. "Where were you?" I said, my voice rough. She didn't even turn around. "Changing for work." "Let's get this out in the open." I stood up, my legs so numb I nearly stumbled. She finally stopped and turned to face me, exhaustion and irritation written all over her face, plain for anyone to see. "What is there to talk about?" "That baby is Charles's, isn't it?" I stared straight at her. "When did it start between you two?" She went quiet for a few seconds, then clicked her tongue. "Martin, can't we just keep living like this, a little confused about things? Why do you have to dig everything up?" "You," I started, but she cut me off before I could finish. "Fine, I'll tell you. The baby is Charles's. "That time you were away on a business trip, there was this huge storm, thunder and everything, and I was scared, so I called him. He came over to keep me company." Brie paused, her eyes sliding away from mine. "We'd both had too much to drink. It just happened. We couldn't help it." "You couldn't help it?" I was shaking with anger. "Brie, we're married. You call that not being able to help it?" Chapter 3 "Martin," Brie suddenly raised her voice. "We've been married seven years. We've known each other for twenty. Doesn't that bore you to death? Every day it's the same grind, the same few things over and over. I'm sick of it!" Hearing that, my chest ached. "Charles is different," she went on, her tone softening. "He's young, he's full of energy, he knows how to make me happy. When I'm with him, I actually feel alive. He takes me to the movies… takes me out to watch the sunrise. And you?" I stared at her, unable to believe what I was hearing. "There's nothing on that list I haven't done for you. You're the one who always said you had no time." Brie brushed her hair back, her eyes full of scorn. "Now that I have him, why would I need you?" The living room went dead silent. I looked at this woman in front of me, so familiar and yet somehow a total stranger, and felt suddenly exhausted. Every sweet memory we'd shared felt like a joke now. I took a deep breath, swallowed the lump in my throat, and tried to hold on, my voice low and rough. "Get rid of the baby. Please. I'm begging you." She froze. "We can act like none of this ever happened," I said, my voice shaking. "We can go back to how we were, can't we? Brie, all these years we've had together..." "Are you out of your mind?" She shot up like a cat with its tail stepped on, her face turning livid. "Martin, are you even a man? This child is innocent!" "Innocent?" I let out a bitter laugh. "A child that's destroying someone else's family, and you're calling that innocent?" "Destroying what family?" She let out a cold laugh, her eyes full of contempt. "I stopped loving you a long time ago! Martin, is that the size of your heart, and you still think you'll amount to something? You can't even make room for one child. No wonder you're stuck drawing a dead-end salary for the rest of your life. No wonder you'll never make anything of yourself!" I stood there, frozen for a moment. I looked at her face, twisted with fury, and felt myself go strangely calm. The Brie who'd thrown herself in front of a truck to protect me, who'd stayed by my bedside when I was sick, maybe she'd been gone a long time already. "You're choosing him. Is that it?" I asked, my voice steady enough that it even surprised me. She turned her face away, her tone hardening. "I'm carrying his child. I don't have a choice." With that, she walked into the bedroom and slammed the door shut behind her. After that day, Brie stopped coming home entirely. But I saw her every single day on Charles's social media page. He used to be considerate of me, at least keeping what he posted vague. Now he flaunted his relationship with Brie openly, without a shred of restraint. They traveled together, took couple's photos together, even had wedding photos taken. Watching it all, something inside me kept dying a little more each day. Three days later, I got a message from Brie out of nowhere. She said her company was holding its year-end gala that night and asked me to come. I hesitated for a long time, but in the end, I went. Maybe I was still clinging to some last shred of hope. Or maybe I just wanted a reason to finally let go of her for good. The ballroom was lit up, glittering and bright. The moment I reached the entrance, I caught a bit of whispering nearby. "That's President Kerry's husband?" "He looks so plain. Nowhere near a match for her assistant, Charles." "I heard he basically married into her family. Even the house is hers." "No wonder Ms. Kerry prefers Charles. Young, handsome, and a graduate from a top university. Look, there they are!" I followed their eyes, and my heart clenched instantly. In the corner, Brie was up on her toes, kissing Charles. Charles had his arms wrapped around her waist, leaning down to kiss her back. The two of them acted like no one else was in the room, wrapped up in each other like a couple deep in the throes of new love. When Charles spotted me, instead of pulling back, he only held her tighter, his eyes challenging, as if he were staking a claim right in front of me. In that moment, I suddenly found the whole thing almost funny. I turned and walked out of the ballroom. The cold air outside hit my face and cleared my head a little. Seven years of marriage, twenty years of history together, none of it could stand up against the thrill of something new. Chapter 4 I went to a bar and drank myself numb with a friend. He wasn't doing much better than me these days. His girlfriend of several years was about to marry someone else. By the time the neon lights around us blurred together, my head had started to spin. I wanted to make it home while I still had some sense left. The moment we stepped outside, I spotted Brie and Charles walking arm in arm not far away. The alcohol burned off almost instantly. My friend saw them too and had no idea what to say to comfort me. Then, out of nowhere, an idea came to me. "Call Brie for me. Tell her I'm drunk and ask her to come pick me up." My friend hesitated for a moment, then made the call anyway. 'If she comes for me right away,' I told myself, 'I'll forgive everything. Even the baby.' One second, two seconds, three... until the call cut off. Their figures had already disappeared from view, but I kept staring in that direction anyway. That was the moment the obsession took root. My friend looked at me and said nothing. "Call again." He dialed once more. It went straight to a hang-up again. I couldn't let it go. I kept making him try. Finally, the call connected. "Hey, Martin, what's up? I was in the middle of something, and my phone was on silent, so I missed your calls. "Why are you calling so many times? Is something wrong?" My friend waited for her to finish, glanced at me, and spoke up. "I'm Martin's friend. He's had too much to drink. Can you come pick him up?" There was a pause on the other end before she responded, "I can't really get away right now. Can you just take him home for me?" With that, she hung up. Everything went quiet around us, nothing but the dead tone of a disconnected call. After a long moment, I laughed at myself, bitterly. I sent my friend home. I wanted to be alone for a while. It was late, and the streets were mostly empty. I just kept walking, my mind replaying Brie and me, over and over. She'd been like the sun breaking through a life that had always been shadowed. She'd pulled me out of the mud and given me real hope, real happiness. I believed she loved me. Maybe she always had, in her own way. Before I knew it, I'd wandered somewhere unfamiliar. Then, suddenly, I heard Brie's voice nearby. I ducked into the shadows. Two shapes passed by, close enough to brush past me. "You need to be careful with your body right now. Don't be running all over the place. Don't worry about anything at the office for now; I'll handle it all for you." It was Charles's voice. Brie laughed. "All right, all right, I know. Since when did you get so naggy?" Their voices faded into the distance. I watched Brie and Charles walk into a house together. Warm light spilled out from inside, lighting up my own misery. I stood there watching that light, on, then off. Finally, morning came. Brie and Charles walked out together. I couldn't stop myself from following. I pulled out my phone and called Brie. She picked up quickly this time. "Martin? Are you sober now?" "Yeah. I'm sober." "Don't drink so much next time. It's bad for your health, okay?" Her concern sounded just as tender as ever. "Where are you right now? Can you come home and be with me for a while?" But the moment the words left my mouth, I realized I didn't really expect anything from them anymore. "I'm still at the office right now, and I have to go to the hospital in a bit. Just rest up at home, and I'll come be with you tonight." Because I already knew what her answer would be, I wasn't that disappointed. I'd been let down so many times it barely even registered anymore. "Okay. I'll wait for you." I stopped walking and didn't follow any further. I turned and headed the other way. Chapter 5 Back home, I spent the whole day in a fog, staring at nothing. I sat in the bedroom and pondered. I'd gone back and forth on it a few times, but I'd finally made up my mind. Once I had made up my mind, I suddenly felt hungry. I got up and went to the kitchen to fry some eggs. The eggs sizzled in the pan, and the smell drifted through the apartment. Before I knew it, I'd zoned out again, staring at the eggs, until Brie's voice cut through the silence. "That smells so good. Are you frying eggs?" I turned, a little startled, to find Brie standing in the doorway. "I happen to be hungry too." I almost couldn't believe it. For a second, I thought I was seeing things. Then Brie wrapped her arms around me. "I'm sorry. I haven't been around much lately." I hugged her back. "It's fine." "Can you make me your cheese omelet again? I've been craving it." Brie's eyes crinkled the way they had the very first time we met. "Sure." I watched her walk away, but my heart kept stinging, over and over. How had things gotten to this point... This time, I ate slowly, so slowly I couldn't even bring myself to look up at her. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hold back my tears. Brie noticed something was off and leaned in, concerned. "What's wrong, Martin? Why are you crying?" I'll never forget the look of tenderness on her face in that moment. She clearly still cared about me. So why did she keep hurting me like this? I looked at her and asked, very calmly, "Would you get rid of this baby for me?" She frowned. "And if I say no?" "If you get rid of this baby, I can forgive everything. I'll never bring it up again." The gentleness on her face vanished, replaced by something cold. "Fine, then let me ask you something. Between me and this baby, who do you choose?" I didn't say anything. I just looked at her for a long time. That was how our dinner and our conversation ended, both of us unhappy. By the time morning came, Brie was already gone. I let out a quiet sigh and got up to pack. I never realized how little I actually owned. It all fit into one small suitcase. I took one last look around every corner of that room, then set the divorce papers I'd already prepared down on Brie's pillow. I was leaving. 'Brie, before I'd even had the chance to choose, you'd already made your choice. Between me and that baby, you chose the baby in the end. 'And as for the question you asked me, I had my answer too. I don't want you anymore. Not you, not the baby. Neither one.' Furious over what I'd done, Brie didn't come home for several days straight, and she never once reached out to me either. In the past, whenever she was upset, I'd always been the one to coax her, to give in, to back down first. So she was waiting, waiting for me to accept everything and come crawling back to her on my own. But this time she waited for nothing, because I'd already left the city. It took Brie a full week to realize I was gone. She called while I was sitting in a small courtyard out in the countryside, soaking up the sun. "Hello?" I didn't check the name on the screen before picking up, and whoever it was stayed silent at first. I thought that was strange, so I glanced at the screen, and that was when I realized it was Brie. She didn't say a word, as if she were waiting for me to explain myself. "Ah, Ms. Kerry. What can I do for you?" My polite, formal tone caught her off guard. "What do you mean by that, Martin?" Brie's anger was obvious, even through the phone. "Are you talking about the divorce papers? It's simple. I want a divorce. What, can't you read?"