Chapter 62
“Helen! Hellen!!”
She heard Darin yelling her name from their private living room a few weeks later. She had just returned from work and was in her bathroom taking a shower.
Her hands stilled. She wondered why he could be shouting like that: he had never done such before. And again, it was earlier than when he was supposed to return from work.
“Helen!” He burst into the bathroom. “Why are you taking this?” In his hand were strips of Helen’s contraceptive pills.
“Oh my God!” she muttered under her breath. She had forgotten to pack the pills away after taking it in the morning. She hadn’t even remembered until now.
“Helen, why are you taking contraceptives without my knowledge?” He asked again.
Heart pounding in her chest, she turned off the tap. She was trying to decide how best to react to the situation at hand.
Darin returned home at noon to retrieve a file he needed for a meeting later in the day. After retrieving the said file from his study, he had gone to his bedroom to use the bathroom when he found the pills on her dressing table with a bottle of water beside it. He picked one satchel out of curiosity to check the type of drug it was because he had never seen her taking any drug in recent times.
To say he was stunned was an understatement. It blindsided him! He couldn’t believe his eyes when he realized what type of drug it was. He went light-headed and had to hold on to her dressing table to steady himself.
He thought of asking his driver to take him straight to her school to confront her there and then. But he decided against it, so he packed all the pills and went to dump them in his study for later.
Darin couldn’t even hold any meaningful meeting with his executives with the file he went back to pick. He had to stop the meeting halfway and postponed it. He just wasn’t himself; he couldn’t concentrate at all. Darin couldn’t believe Helen could deceive him by taking pills all this while and making him believe they were trying to make a baby.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” He shouted in anger.
“What?” she shouted back at him. “I don’t have to take permission from you to do anything!” She climbed out of the bathtub and picked a towel to dry her body before she wrapped it around herself and walked past him into her bedroom.
“What is going on here, Helen?” He asked, his eyes blazing with anger, and stormed after her. “Why, in God’s name, are you taking contraceptives when we are supposed to be trying for a baby?”
It’s you that wants a baby,” she shot back at him. “Not me.”
He stared at her in astonishment, “are you kidding me? Repeat what you just said!”NôvelDrama.Org owns this text.
“You heard me!” Helen shrieked. “I meant what I said!”
“Are you serious, Helen?” He moved closer to where she was standing by her dressing table. “So you are taking contraceptives and you make me believe all this while we are on the same page?”
“What do you expect me to say?” She glared at him. “Did you ever ask me if I’m ready to have kids?”
“I see.” He ran his hands through his hair. “No wonder you never wanted to see the doctor.” His shoulders slumped, and he sat at the foot of her bed.
“I can do whatever I like with my body,” she sat on the stool in front of her dressing table. “It’s my body. Just leave me alone.”
She snapped back at him and started applying cream to her body. To cover up and show Darin that his outburst did not affect her.
“How dare you think that way!” Anger surged through him at her lackadaisical attitude. “It’s not your body alone. We are in this marriage together and you alone cannot decide for both of us without consulting me.”
“Please leave me alone!” She turned to look at his face. “I don’t want any baby… not now!” She yelled back at him.
“You don’t know what you are talking about, and I will not take this lightly with you, Helen.”
“What do you want to do now?” She planted herself in front of him. “Are you going to flog me until I accept what you want?”
Darin was so surprised at the way she was turning the argument around.
“I can’t flog you.” He stood up and swallowed hard, the way he usually did when frustrated, and walked out of the room.
Helen finished moisturizing her body and put on a casual dress shirt. She walked out to her bedroom veranda and sat down on the artificial grass there. She didn’t go downstairs for dinner.
She started taking contraceptives two weeks before their wedding. It was to make sure no pregnancy occurred until she was ready for it. No one knew about it; not even Jane, her friend.
Abstaining from sex on her fertile days while she was still in school and telling Darin God’s time is the best whenever he voiced out his worry about their state of ‘childlessness’ were all clever ruses to cover up.
She stood up after a long time and went to bed, without changing into a nightgown. She picked a copy of the Weekly Flavors: a lifestyle magazine she bought a day before from her nightstand, just to occupy her mind until she sleeps off.
Darin returned to the room not long after she got into bed. He went to the closet to change out of his work clothes, which he was still wearing. He brushed his teeth and got under the covers.
He wanted to talk, but cautioned himself not to. He was afraid of saying anything out of anger that he might regret later. Helen had really hurt him. He just turned his back to her.
When Helen was ready to sleep, she put the light off and turned her back on him, too.