“I won’t be given an anesthetic if I opt for a natural delivery, though,” she said somewhat worriedly. “I can’t take pain well.”
“Once the cervix widens, the process takes no more than two hours.”
“No more than two hours?” The other’s response left her gobsmacked. “From what I heard, it lasted a whole night for some pregnant women, and they even ended up delivering via C-section.”
“That’s because those people didn’t take their doctor’s advice and insisted on having a natural birth. Everyone’s body constitution is different, after all; some are suited for giving birth, while others may have to undergo a cesarean section procedure. The doctor will warn you about the risks clearly in advance.”
As her cop friend picked a few apples, tomatoes, and bananas, she could not resist asking, “Chu He, I’m actually curious about your identity. Seeing how good you are at fighting, my guess is that you’re a cop back then, too.”
“I don’t know. I don’t have the slightest inkling.”
She chuckled. “Baby Chu’s father must be a hunk; even though the boy’s got a pretty face like you do, his eyes are different from yours. I can imagine that his father must be a handsome and exceptional man to be paired with someone as pretty and outstanding as you.”
“Feeling gossipy, huh?” The policewoman frowned. “What about you? The father of your child must be a hunk, too.”
Her countenance stiffened a little before she nodded in response. “Mhm.”
“Was I wrong to mention him?”
“That’s not it!” She laughed. “I almost forgot about him if not for your mention.”
“You’re not suffering from amnesia like me, are you?” The other woman put a leg over the motorbike and handed her a helmet as she joked. “Let’s be real here; you merely sealed your memories of him at the back of your mind and forced yourself not to think of him.”
“…”
She put on the helmet in a daze, carefully climbed onto the back seat of the motorbike, and held the other’s shoulders, only to hear the ladycop ask, “Why did you leave him?”
“Uh…”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking this. We’ve spent some time together, so there are certain things that I want to ask you about but am afraid of rubbing salt onto your wound. You oughta know that it’s not a good thing per se to evade issues at times.”
She kept mum for a good while before she finally sighed. “Things are impossible between us in the first place. I can only blame myself for acting on my accord and naïvely thinking that I can overcome anything with love. Some men are just born philanderers; for all I know, he may even view my feelings as a joke.”
“Oh? You sound as if you’re disillusioned with the society and that you know the male species very well!” Chu He turned on the engine as she chuckled. “You know him so well? How do you know for sure that he doesn’t take your feelings seriously?”
The expectant mother fell silent once more, only to laugh a moment later. “To be honest, I got together with him in a moment of folly. He’s so dazzling with his extraordinary background and dashing looks, and back then, I was just a newly debuted model.”
“A model?” She was somewhat surprised to hear this. “You used to be a model?”
“Yes.”
On second thought, however, she could see why. “Oh, that explains your superb figure and good looks.”
The woman continued with a melancholic smile. “I came from a poor family, where my parents hardly cared about me and just simply left me to my devices. I was also bad at studying, so I stopped schooling at an early age.”
