My office was a warzone.
They kept coming in herds; the interview requests, emails concerning wedding bookings, bouquets of congratulatory flowers, and worst of all, constant calls from my stepmother.
"Killian? Are you still there?" She inquired from three thousand miles away in Ireland and I pinched the bridge of my nose, regretting why I canceled my lunch meeting just to hear her blab about things that concerned my supposed wedding.
"Yes, mother," I answered groggily, still a bit woozy from waking up with a raging hangover.
"You need to bring her home, your father wants the wedding here, you know how traditional he can be."
"Mother." I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down. "For the tenth time, I have heard all you said and will discuss this with my fiancee. Rest assured, you will hear from us soon."
"How soon, I need to meet this girlfriend of yours and see if she's well suited for you."
"Soon mother, soon." Irritation pricked at me. "I have to go now, I am busy, my regards to Father."
With that, I hung up the phone and leaned into my chair, just about when Cleo sashayed her hips into my office with the drink I had requested for an hour ago. "Here is your clean cleanse vanilla shake blended with frozen Ontario blueberries as requested, sir."
She placed it on her desk and stepped out.
"Thank you," I croaked out, taking a quick sip.
"Your two o'clock meeting with the president of the distribution department; Rodney Shaw will begin in a few minutes." She reminded me, staring down at her schedule clipboard. "You'll also be having brunch with Clayton pharmaceuticals regarding the launching of their new product under our sponsorship."
I sighed, feeling sick as the dull throb in my temple grew to monstrous proportions. "Anything else?"
"One more thing." She informed. "Clinton news called, they are hoping to get an exclusive interview with you concerning your alleged wedding."
"Decline. Tell them that I am unavoidably detained and will get back to them later."
She nodded. "Anything else you would like me to do for you, sir?"
"Not at the moment, you may leave."
She nodded and walked out.
The next couple of hours that passed was the most excruciating I'd ever experienced in my entire life.
Who would believe that I—Killian Fobster, a.k.a The asshole who never got riled up—was now teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown?
And it wasn't helping that every time I logged onto the internet to do some new circulation survey, I found myself involuntarily searching about babies and pregnancy.
It was surprising the creepy things you could find from Google when doing research.
Did you know that a baby pees in the womb and then drinks the pee over and over again?
You probably did, but I didn't. Up until today, I didn't know and I wished I didn't know because staring at Hope's belly and thinking 'oh it's probably drinking pee right now.' did not sit right with me.
God, this was all so fucked up. But that was the easy one. Try researching meconium.
Fair advice; do not, I repeat, do you even think of doing a Google image search for it because unless you're a parent, you won't be prepared for what you see. I wasn't and that explained why I had a barf bag filled with my vomit.
Bottom line, after my call with my stepmother and living through the torture of what I saw, I realized I had a lot to put in place. I needed to contact Hope since not being involved in my kid's life wasn't an option.
I wasn't the best father figure and I might never get a Father of the Year award, but I wasn't a deadbeat. I took care of my responsibilities no matter what, and right now, the baby was my responsibility. And Hope too; for now at least.
Without thinking, I pressed hard on the intercom device and rang a beep to Cleo.
"Yes, sir?"
"Clear my schedule," I said and cut the line before she put up a protest which I knew she would.
Logging out of my computer, I got up and padded into my mini changing room for a change of outfit. When done, I finger-combed my hair, grabbed my phone, and exited the building.
The valet drove my car to the entrance for me and I tossed a tip at him before hopping in and driving away to her location.