I’m A Guy And A Virgin, But I’m At The Hospital Right Now And Doctors Are Telling Me I’m Pregnant
5/28/2015
They told me I had a hernia at first. From the descriptions of the pain, to the physical manifestation in my abdomen, I believed they were right. But no matter how many physicians I talked to, none could explain why the mass was moving so much.
“When you move, any large appendage will obviously sway or jiggle with you,” Dr. Thompson said, over his little round glasses. He let his white hair grow long, down to his shoulders. “Like when a fat man waddles away, and his belly waddles with him.” He smiled about that.
But I didn’t feel like smiling. I wasn’t fat, but I had been getting my share of jabs in class. Even my Biology professor cast me a sly kind of grin as one of the students asked him if men could get pregnant too, looking from me to him. Was I really getting that big?
Then, come May, they dropped the news. I had indeed become a freakish anomaly, the first known case in history. I had testicles, a penis, a beard…and a baby growing inside of me. Dr. Thompson wasn’t smiling anymore when the technician brought him the results of my ultrasound. I couldn’t tell what he was feeling by the look on his face. Was he confused? Disconcerted…disgusted?
I knew I was. I wouldn’t blame him if his thin mouth was grimacing in disgust as he flipped through the printouts, knitting his brow tighter with every page. I was extremely disgusted.
“I’m still a virgin,” I blathered, without thinking. I felt at that moment like he needed to know this bit of information, though I was sure it would only confuse him even more. He looked back up at me with that blank stare. “I’ve never had sex,” I said.
“Mr. Peterson,” he said, softening his voice as if he was suddenly speaking to a 10-year-old. “I can assure you that in the present circumstances, whether or not you’ve had sexual intercourse is not even a blip on the radar of the absurdity of what is happening here. You are man, yes?”
“Yes.”
“When you masturbate, sperm comes out the end, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, although a little hesitant this time.
“You do not have a tiny little vagina hiding somewhere between your testicles and your anus, yes?”
“Yes…I mean, no. I don’t…I don’t have a…vagina.”
That was fucking awkward. I was almost tempted to reach my fingers down to my scrotum to feel just to be sure, but I resisted the urge. Suddenly I was reminded of all of those vicious teenagers on League of Legends, assuring me that I must have a vagina by the way I play Carry on the bottom lane:
Soraka: Get more harass, you pussy. I can starfall harder than you can thrust.
“The good news is that he’s developing normally,” the doctor couldn’t help but giggle to himself about this. Without realizing it, I had taken to stroking my belly the way I had seen pregnant women. “The bad news is that, by law,” he emphasized this, as if spitting on it, “it’s too far along to abort it.”
“What the fuck?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “I’m a man. How am I supposed to give birth?”
As flustered as I was, it felt absurd to be saying those words aloud. Not in a thousand years could I have imagined that I would someday be saying that. But the thought of people slapping legality on this was absolutely insane.
“You should know there are protesters outside right now,” he said. “Some people think this heralds the second coming of Christ. Not only born from a virgin, but a man.”
That really hit home. Others knew what was happening? I didn’t have to ask about the news. If a group of protesters outside knew what was happening, then surely the news would be broadcasting my face and my protruding belly on all of their channels. But the second coming of Jesus? If there is a God, he must fucking hate me.
“There’s just one thing you should know,” he said. “There is something very strange about this child in your abdomen. Obviously you do not have a uterus or any type of device for distributing nutrients to the growing fetus. What this means to us, is that this thing that seems so human must be exhibiting…parasitic qualities.”
I felt the blood run from my face. He must have known what kind of effect that word would evoke. He had to know.
“So we need to keep you hospitalized, so we can monitor how much it is absorbing of your body. And we need to make sure its growth doesn’t cause too much more impact on your internal organs as it has already done. You should actually be thankful that you were a… hefty boy to begin with. It cleared out those fat pockets like a little nursery for itself.
“Needless to say,” here he stopped again. The whole time he had been creeping around what he truly wanted to say, choosing his words as wisely as he could. I couldn’t blame him. This whole thing was like a nightmare. “Needless to say, a host of other physicians and myself will be putting our heads together to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible.”
“Great,” I said, unable to keep the contempt out of my voice. “That makes me feel so warm and fuzzy.”
5/29/2015
They taped oven mitts on his hands because he couldn’t stop scratching. Even now, he can’t stop trying. He says all the time that his belly itches to nine levels of hell. Before they put the mitts on, Evan scratched so hard that his stomach started bleeding all over the place. They pulled pieces of skin out from under his fingernails. But he said he didn’t feel a thing. Not anymore.
At this point I should tell you that this is his friend typing for him. My name is Edward, and I’ve known Evan since we were kids. I could tell he was reluctant to call me, but he said the people of The Internets needed to know what was happening here. So I agreed to come be his ghostwriter.
Now, the ghostwriting part is starting to not be applicable. Now I’m feeling more like a documentarian, because Evan is becoming increasingly incapacitated. At first he was dictating to me, but now I am observing and writing. For some reason they started a morphine drip into his IV, and he’s started lapsing in and out of consciousness. I don’t know enough about pregnancy to say if this is weird…but then again the whole fucking thing is insane.
Turns out the only reason I was able to come be by his side was because his adopted parents don’t want anything to do with him or the publicity surrounding everything. I had to get a letter from them stating that Evan has no family anymore, and to let me assume the kindred responsibilities of being by his side because if not me, then no one else would be there.
But I haven’t told him that. Not yet.
Several hours ago I slipped out of his room to get something to eat from the cafeteria. When I was just past the nurses’ station, I could hear some doctors talking with them about the patient in Room 9. That was Evan’s room, so I leaned in to hear as much as I could.
“… exhibiting profound reactions to the intravenous nutrients,” came a woman’s voice. “The fetus is literally absorbing all of it, leaving trace amounts for the host…“ she cleared her throat. “I mean for the parent.”
“We might as well call it what it is,” a masculine voice responded. “We know the thing is exhibiting parasitic qualities. Why are we even treating this is if it is a human child? It needs to be removed. Even the host knows. Don’t flinch, the boy is a host, Sandra. He is a host to a freakishly giant parasite and even he knows it needs to be removed, or else he wouldn’t have been clawing his stomach to shreds.”
The silence was thick as ice. Without seeing their faces, I knew the woman doctor was probably reeling.
“It looks like a child though,” she said at last, a little defensively. “You’ve seen the ultrasounds and the CT printouts. If it is exhibiting parasitic qualities, then why does it look so much like a human fetus?”
“Only way to know is to cut it out and see.”
“You can’t…”
“No, but with the Hospital Administration’s support, I can.”
Suddenly the male doctor was walking briskly out from behind the walls. He gave me a quick, suspect look before turning on his heels and capering down the hallway. My stomach growled, but I remained rooted to the spot for a little longer. The slight against the woman was too obvious, too reproachful. Finally, she spoke again:
“Did you hear that, Michael?” she was whispering. Even I could barely hear her. I leaned in closer and held my breath. “We don’t have much more time.”
There was a crackling sound, like a radio transmitter buzzing with static. The static broke with a beep, and a voice replied, simply: “I heard. We’ll up the Amino Acid injections.”
As hungry as I was, I knew I couldn’t leave Evan now. I turned back from the corridor, to walk back to Room 9, but before I reached it, I heard someone scream from his room. It was one of the nurses, calling for a doctor. She threw the curtain aside, revealing a bloody mess in the bed where I had left Evan. In her hand was a scalpel, dripping red from the blade.
The nurse left the door open and ran for a doctor, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have let me in. I’ve never been able to handle much gore. The whole incident with Evan clawing at his stomach was enough to leave me adequately unhinged, but I knew that he would want me to see what has happening. He wants “The Internets” to know.
As soon as I stepped into the room, a wave of nausea hit me. It smelled like he had shit all over himself, but if he had, he made no attempt to tell me, or apologize. He was just sitting there, smiling at me while flailing his arms around wildly. Blood was trailing from his fingertips, spattering across the white walls and the white of his bed sheets.
“I won’t tell them you gave it to me,” he said in a wicked kind of voice that sounded nothing like him. “I’ll tell them I found the scalpel.” He giggled.
“Scalpel? What are you talking about?”
But before he could respond, his head fell back against the pillow. He must have blacked out again. They said it was a symptom of the growing fetus’ impact on his body, but it was getting more frequent. What really worried me though was the fresh blood creeping out of his belly region, through his gown.
Then, I saw why he was talking about a scalpel. He had dug a hole right into his abdomen with something sharp enough to carve into skin. I remembered him telling me that the fetus was embedded just beneath the skin amongst the fatty tissue, not far at all. He must have tried to cut it out. He had said something about that in his morphine haze, but I never thought he was serious.
Hand strong as iron wrapped around my wrists. Someone was telling me I had to go now. There was a whole army of nurses and doctors, rushing to his side and checking his vitals. But as I was being dragged away, I saw something. I know I saw it. Since that moment I’ve questioned myself a hundred times, but I have to trust what I saw.
A tiny, pink looking finger, coated in a thick layer of blood was reaching up from his abdomen. It was rising from the bleeding hole he had cut into himself, groping like a worm from soil. Then, the door snapped shut.
The last thing I heard before being taken farther away was the shout of the woman doctor I had heard talking before:
“It’s time. Let’s get him into O.R.”
For a second, I almost thought she sounded giddy as she said that.
5/31/2015
Once word went round, I thought the protestors would have hauled off their signs and gone home. But the news of the child’s birth only sent them capering around and cheering. I wasn’t sure what was more horrifying: the fact that Evan passed away during his “child-birth,” or that the pro-life supporters only give a shit about the child and not the host. Host. Yes, that’s what he was. That’s all he was supposed to be.
Doctor Thompson came to me in the waiting room, where the second-hand on the clock had been ticking away eternities one after another. My nails are bitten down to stubs now, a couple fingers bleeding where I bit too far. Somehow I knew this was what was coming. That pink, bloody little finger protruding from the cavity Evan carved out of his own stomach was never far from my thoughts.
“You are Evan’s friend, yes?” he asked over his oval glasses.
“Yes.”
Evan had told me about this doctor long before he became a part of a group of physicians, supposedly better suited to see him through the operation. He said he trusted Dr. Thompson, and only him. I wished he would have been coherent enough for me to tell him about the other doctor from yesterday, the one who sought the administration’s support to abort the abomination nestled above his intestines. But what good would it have done? He would still be dead, all the same.
“Come with me,” the doctor said, turning to leave before giving me the chance to reply.
He took me past the E.R. rooms where Evan and I had waited a couple days prior. We swept down a few more halls until he stopped before a set of double-doors with a keycard access. He swiped his badge and the doors opened up to a flight of stairs that only led down.
“Where are we going?” I asked, still too mentally fatigued to really care.
In response, he merely closed the doors behind us and came up close to me. His breath stank of vodka and cherries. Only then did I realize just how intoxicated he must have been, steadying himself by laying a hand on my shoulder.
“That bitch did this,” he whispered. “Tell me, did Evan come to E.R. before this started happening, for any reason at all?”
He had. I knew that because I was the reason why. We were pledging for a fraternity and I pushed him to drink way more than he ought to have. He always said he was sick of being a virgin, so I thought the alcohol would bring him to brave it out better. But all it gave him was a hefty dose of alcohol poisoning. He had to go have his stomach pumped, and, yes… it occurred to me.
“Yes,” I said. “He told me they took a blood-test to confirm that he wasn’t mixing any other drugs as well.”
“Your friend has… or rather, had a rare blood type. Any other physician would have recognized it as O+, but this woman has been waiting for someone with the subtle variation that he had. The type of variation that could support a parasitic being.”
All I could do was laugh.
“You’re drunk,” I said. “You’re living some kind of drunken, sci-fi fantasy plot in your head.”
He only shook his head and stared at me in silence. Now caught, he boldly lifted a flask from his inner pocket and took another sip before offering it to me. I refused, and he stood there for moments longer before an idea illuminated his eyes.
“Down the staircase three levels,” he said, pointing to the stairs. “Take a right, pass two doors leading left and then take the first one to open up on the right.”
“What?”
“You won’t believe me, yes? See for yourself. And do what must be done.”
“What do you mean, do what must be done?”
“Do what I could not.”
Before I could raise another appeal, he disappeared behind the doors in a brisk pace. The words registered several more times in my head, with no more meaning than the first. Still, there was a feeling bubbling in the pit of my stomach; a kind of subterranean knowledge. Do what must be done. So I took the stairs leading down.
I followed his directions as instructed. Once three flights down, I felt as though I was in a different complex entirely. The walls were bare concrete, and the floor was spotted with puddles. Even those I could barely see because the only lighting was a single trail of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, spaced out at least ten yards apart. Beyond the feeble yellow circles, all else was black as pitch.
I passed the first door without looking in. Was I going to find his body here? I couldn’t imagine why it would not be above ground where the rest of the rooms and physicians were. Once I reached the second door, I was pulled in like an insect to a filament.
I looked through the square window and saw a man with a belly almost as large as Evan’s was. But he wasn’t moving. He was laid upon a bare mattress which was the only piece of furniture in the room. Beneath him something green and black was pooling into the fabric. And below that, the liquid spilled out onto the concrete floor, amassing in a tar-like puddle.
Reluctantly, I pried away to continue down the hall. After 10 more light-bulb markers, the first door on the right stood wide open, an arc of yellow spilling out into the corridor. This room was different. Very different. The floor was carpeted in baby-blue colors that mixed well with the navy colored walls. On the walls were painted white balloons and teddy bears, floating around the walls.
I stepped in farther to find an oversized crib, painted as white as the wall décor. Four aspen pillars twisted up like candy-canes, all joined together with ornate wood strips linking them together. Closer I stepped, to find what remained of Evan’s body.
I apologize if I sound heartless as I write this. When I found him, I was mortified, but more than anything, I was confused beyond expression. I felt as though I had walked into an alternate dimension. Now, as I write this, enough time has passed that I do not feel the wounds so fresh anymore.
I found his bleeding corpse in the crib.
I stepped in closer yet, because I thought I saw something small making a crunching sound beside him. But as I got closer, the door behind me snapped shut so fast that I dropped my tablet on the carpet. I ran back to the window and tried to tug it open, but nothing happened. Looking through the window, I saw two faces: one sneering and one ashamed.
Dr. Thompson spoke first, “You have to forgive me. I… I have no choice.”
His voice was muffled as it came through the door. So too was the woman’s voice muffled, but even so, I recognized it as belonging to the female doctor I had overheard at the nurse’s station two days ago.
“He had a choice,” she said, still sneering. “Just like you did. You could have chosen to walk away, but I’m glad you didn’t. Dr. Thompson here would have made a horrible feeder for the child. He’s all bone and grizzle and alcohol.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
“Someone will find me,” I said. I still couldn’t completely understand what was happening to me, but I knew I should be scared for my life. “All of the other nurses. The doctors, everyone knows I have been here.”
“They all belong to me,” she smiled, in that same sick kind of way. “We have been waiting a long time to find the right host for this… experiment. And now, our day will finally come.”
I beat on the door until my knuckles grew bloody, and I screamed as loud as I could until I lost my voice entirely. The two of them merely stepped away, and I saw no one else since.
Again, I heard the crunching sound coming from the crib. Cautiously, I came in closer, and I found the source of the noise. There beside Evan was the small baby boy. No, not small for a baby. It looked like it was already the size of a toddler, almost as though it was growing right before my eyes. But it paid no attention to me. It merely continued crunching away on Evan’s rib bones, licking the marrow as its sharp teeth cracked them open.
Then I knew what I was. I was the second course for this fast growing… thing. If it could grow this fast, I would certainly feed it into young adulthood. And then what?
I didn’t have long to ask myself that question before I approached the crib and reached down to strangle it. But before my hands could reach its neck, it looked up at me. Its vertical, slit pupils dilated as it looked upon my face. For a moment, it looked demonic, but then the moment was gone. And it smiled.
“Daddy,” he said, smiling. “Hi, daddy.”
I can’t explain it. Even now, as I sit here with my tablet burning the last 20% of its battery, typing to you people. I don’t know why, but I do not want you to come look for me. I do not want to be found by anyone. Suddenly, I feel more fulfilled than I’ve ever known.
Who knows, maybe he won’t devour me. Maybe I am supposed to be this being’s Father. When I look into his eyes, he gives me this feeling like maybe this is my purpose in life. Maybe Evan served his purpose too.
