Surrogate Pregnancy

Chapter Four Part 5

Shortly before Christmas, Leon's parents went to Adelaide visiting old friends and looking at horses for the stud. They were planning to be home before Christmas, Mimi was preparing everything for Christmas. She cooked turkey with cranberry sauce, baked pumpkin and potatoes, rice pudding with black cherries and cakes with fruit and nuts galore. Leon was working in the stable with a new foal, when he was called in to the house. There was a phone call from the hospital in Katherine.

The shock came out of the blue, the doctor at casualty told him his father was dead, and his mother seriously injured. Their plane had crashed just outside Katherine. Could he come as quickly as possible? Leon did not bother changing clothes; he shouted a few orders to his foreman, Ben, as he ran for his Land Rover. Gravel flew around him, as he drove up to his hanger, flight checks over, he was in the air in minutes.

Arriving at the hospitals landing area, he quickly parked his plane and stormed into emergency. His mother was hooked up to a heart monitor, oxygen tubes in her nose and blood everywhere. She was nearly unrecognisable; his heart went out to her.

"Mum," he said softly.

She opened her eyes. "Leon my son," she whispered hoarsely. "I have to talk to you, it is very important."

She coughed violently and Leon leaned over the bed and said,

"Mum it can wait till later."

His mum suddenly became very agitated; her heart monitor started beeping loudly, and the doctor said,

"Do not upset your mother, please come back a little later." As Leon was straightening up, his mother took hold of his sleeve, and held on to him.

"Listen to me, I do not know how long," She coughed again, and then seemed to pull herself together.

"Son... in the top drawer... my dresser...contract," she wheezed, "would ... told you." She coughed a large amount of blood up, and her heart monitor began to beep, one long beep. He was pushed aside, while they tried to resuscitate her.

It was over in a few minutes, she was pronounced dead. Leon was devastated. A nurse helped him to a small sitting room, and gave him a cup of coffee. Collapsing on the sofa, Leon drank his coffee slowly, his thoughts wandering back to his childhood. Remembering his mother, all the times she had seen to his cuts and scrapes. Bandaged, and kissed it better. No more. He was alone...All alone. ....

He booked into a motel near the hospital, staggered inside, dropped on the sofa, and fell into a deep dreamless sleep. The next few days were spent with procedures, he wanted his parents brought back to Binna Burra; they were to be buried in the family plot.

He had been home for several days, walking around in a daze, only eating because Mimi had insisted, and made all his childhood favourites for him. Suddenly he remembered his mother's last words..... What was it, she had said?? The dresser? He went into the master bedroom and found her dresser. What could be so important, she would use her last words? He wondered. First he found her passport and some papers about station equipment, then bundles of letters from his dad to his mum. He rummaged some more, and then he saw it... a large yellow envelope at the bottom of the drawer. He gingerly picked it up, and went back to the lounge room.

He went directly to the liquor cabinet. A large scotch in one hand and the yellow envelope in the other, he sat down and tried to pull himself together. He realised he had unconsciously tried not to think about his mother's words. He worried it was something he wouldn't want to know. He even thought about not opening it. Throwing it into the rubbish, but of course that would not do. He owed it to his mother, to honour her last request. He ripped the envelope open, and stared at a legal contract he had known nothing about. A legal contract set up between his mother and a woman called Louise Blake. His eyes started to blur, it was a contract, where his mother hired this Louise person...To have his baby ........he read it again, it was a money transaction. Someone was having his baby... His fingers were trembling and he nearly dropped the paper. His mother had bought him a child, because she knew he was losing his fertility.

He swilled the drink in one go, tears in his eyes. Some money grabbing bitch was having his baby...He read it again, the father.... He would have all rights to the baby. What kind of woman could do something like that, for money? He stood up, he needed to find her so he could keep an eye on her. Horrified his child was to be born to a woman, so cold and calculating. His anger gradually becoming scalding rage, he yelled, "She has MY CHILD, I have to find her." He took a deep breath, this needed research; he sat down at his computer and googled the solicitor. Wrote the address and phone number down, and found the nearest airport, where he could land his Cessna.

When he finally got through to the solicitor on the phone, he was very short on patience. He explained about his mother's death and finding the contract. The solicitor said he believed Leon was well aware of the whole transaction.

Leon nearly lost it.... "You can think what you want, but I need to know where my future child is."

The solicitor was hesitant, but told him the only address he could find at this point in time, was her sisters.

"We have had a burglary and a small fire; we are still in the process of recovering the files, give me a couple of days maybe a week and I will find her address."

Leon was now shaking, "Never mind a sister will do."

The next morning in the pink light of sunrise, his Cessna took off for Melbourne. Leon loved flying, the little fluffy clouds, and the ever changing sky. The flight from Binna Burra to Melbourne was down through The Red Centre and Alice Springs, with several aboriginal settlements dotted around it. The red desert, turning purple and pink, or yellow and rose at irregular intervals, depending on rain, and what wildflowers were out at the time. He turned left at Broken Hill, a little mining town, now famous for its landscape painters, and kept going till he hit Melbourne. The red and ochre landscape below was crisscrossed by rivers, and squinting he saw a large flock of pelicans, who were surfing the higher currents above him. It used to lift his spirit, but this time he noticed nothing, and his face was grim.