Unicorn Baby

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life.

The auditorium erupted with accolades. Light reflecting over curved lines and raised cheekbones with intermittent pearly whites, diagnosed me with instant photophobia. When my eyes refused to be dazzled down, I rushed off the stage and regurgitated my brain fog into yellow-green globules of the sweetcorn sandwich I had shoved up my face thirty seconds before the most important speech of my career.

“Ya killed it, bestie-saurus!” Miranda wasn’t exactly my best friend, more like a high-school classmate who stole my idea during summer camp and bribed me into co-founding my unicorn under the guise of marketing it under her billionaire father’s brand.

“Uggh! Give..uh.. Dicle..gis, Diclegis,” I said, heaving. “It’s in the outer pocket.”

“It was perfect, babe,” Miranda said as she picked up my handbag and rummaged through the main pocket. “Ya got them sugar daddies. They will be willing to put their money on wherever ya tell them to now.” She hardly held the bag with two fingers as I watched my Aviators and car keys drop on the ground.

“Carefu…,” I snatched my bag from her and downed my stomach saving medicine where it would calm my angry intestines from rejecting any more acid.

“Are you preggers again?” The shock on Miranda’s face was probably what Vincent van Gogh painted about.

“It’s the only thing that helps with my nausea. Guess I’m addicted now.”

“We got six months to get them babies out the door.” Her expression changed. “You know I can’t do this all by myself.”

It was true. The only idea she brought to the table was to lure old, male CEOs of tech giants willing to lay down their money whenever an opportunity presented itself against women’s welfare, especially fertile ones with a vague desire to ever conceive in their lives. In addition to the idea of the product itself, I had the sole responsibility of designing, creating prototypes, and running human trials of those prototypes without any external help, as it would be deemed too risky an exposure considering the uniqueness of the product.

I had been nurturing the babies all by myself, including my three-month-old human infant.

“Aye, she’s up,” I said, running towards the stroller where my baby had been sound asleep with little noise-canceling headphones up until the sound of her mother’s projectile vomit woke her up, possibly scared off a lost meal.

“Hey, where you goin? They are waiting for their one-on-one’s, babe,” Miranda descended from backstage steps, waving her hands frantically.

“I can’t. She is sick. You can do this,” I lied and jogged straight to the car with the stroller’s rusty wheels announcing their departure through the auditorium’s acoustic panels.

It wasn’t a blatant lie, though. One girl was sick. It was me. I needed a break and a long bath.

My skin lapped up the lavender and tea tree oils in the warm bathwater, and I massaged the stress away from my sore clavicles and hips. Soap bubbles trapped under my postpartum bulge popped on release. A cackle filled the bathroom, and my heart soared to cloud nine.

“Is it that funny, haan?” I giggled and created the trap and release.

There it was, again – the most beautiful sound to ever exist in the entire universe. My baby girl, lying tummy down in her playpen, playing with her sensory mat, laughed at her mommy’s silliness. Her eyes lit up every time we made eye contact with the sink between us as her peek-a-boo buddy.

Miranda called as I sat down to nurse.

“I did it. We got the thumbs up. Full production in three months straight. Thirty-five percent advance. Eeekk.”

“Three months? You kidding me? No one is trained for this. So much for your silly secrets.” I didn’t mean the last sentence, but my hormones had been all over the place recently.

“Babe. Look at you, as good as new. Thanks to your own creation. Alejandra will take care of baby. She brought me up, too. Trust me. It will be fine.”

A fire ignited in my belly, and my temples throbbed. Baby girl bit the nipple she was nursing on. I bellowed.

“What would you know, you selfish thief. You don’t have to starve to lose all the weight, but still eat enough to feed the baby. To pee even when you don’t feel the urge just so you can prevent coughing accidents or, or keep feeding the baby through your flesh hanging between their bloody rock-hard gums, and…” I burst out crying, disconnected the call, and flung my phone across the room.

It was a rough night. For both of us. I tossed and turned searching for comfort in all or any form, and my baby rolled restlessly in her crib after drinking angry milk from mommy.

The next morning, I purposely ducked my way into my cabin, sneaking in like a rat dodging mousetraps in its way. The office sounded unusually quiet; not that it was a bustling ground with ten employees to begin with, but I couldn’t even hear the usual incessant sound of our receptionist’s bangles.

The twisted growl of my belly came as a pleasant sonata against the eeriness. I reached for my handbag but realized I had picked up my baby girl’s diaper bag instead.

Miranda barged in with four old men in tow, and I smeared a banana-chia-sweet potato fruit pouch all over my mouth.

“Told ya, she will need more time, folks,” Miranda said, ushering the old men to sit around the decent-sized table with ten chairs, serving as our meeting room, inside my cabin.

“What an excellent speech you gave yesterday, Ms. Shabana.” It was Tom Harding, CEO of FemPharma. I had only ever seen him in video calls with Miranda’s dad. “I’d like to thank Miranda over here for having you speak to such a large crowd. We had to make sure we had Doctors and Pharma companies from around the world to hear about this product firsthand.”

Of course, it had to be her idea to loan an exorbitant amount of money from her father to arrange this exclusive product launch event of an up-and-coming unicorn. She wouldn’t have had it any other way. I wiped my face with a soiled tissue from the diaper bag.

“To be honest, I was reluctant at first, but boy, you had me with your ‘final thoughts’ haha.” Melon Sandalwood, CEO of Trackla, with no business with the end product, chuckled and wiggled his fingers up and down to make his point.

“New mothers will no longer require maternity leave. They will be up and running within two days,” I whispered the lie behind those final thoughts, and his vested interest in a product made for women, having nothing to do with IT or electric cars, dawned on me.

My phone buzzed, but Miranda grabbed it off the table before I could move my fingers.

“Ah, it's Alejandra,” she said, “Ale, call only if the baby is choking or the house is burning down. Text the rest.” She hung up.

The phone chimed, and she announced that my baby girl was a little fussy at first, but now was sound asleep with a bit of medication for numbing the teething pain.

“It helps to get help sometimes,” she said under her breath. “Sorry for not asking you first.” She placed the phone in my hand and moved over to the TV screen, which displayed our product, deemed to change the workplace game forever.

I wasn’t hallucinating when I had spotted Alejandra entering our office building, but how did I not hear her wheeling away the noisy stroller from the office creche room on an empty floor before Miranda came in with her company?

“Your handbag is still in the stroller, by the way. Don’t forget your wallet in the office,” Miranda bent to whisper in my ear, thereby confirming my thoughts.

“Contracolr…sorry, Contracoldu..ahem, Contracauldron is here,” she said, fetching a prototype from behind the big television screen.

She saw me rolling my eyes, which was the least surprising as the nauseating, tongue-twister of a name wasn’t of my doing. She was the one getting the money, so she could have named it ‘uterus-blasters’ for all I cared.

“Shabana is going to show you how it works. Umm, within the capacity of our office, of course,” Miranda said as she passed the harmonica-shaped device to me.

I gulped. I had used it on myself and on our market research volunteers multiple times, but demonstrating it in front of these powerful men felt way too awkward.

“Contracauldron’s use is simple. After you give birth, err, I mean after a woman gives birth, she has a high risk of a hemorrhage where the uterus contracts inefficiently for the bleeding to stop. There are other reasons too, but uterine atony is the main one and…”

“Shabana, they loved your speech at the auditorium, you don’t need to give a science lesson anymore. Does she, gentlemen?”

Everyone in the room agreed with her, but we both knew they had absolutely no idea of how a woman’s body reacted immediately after giving birth. I could never forget how the spotlight had shifted to their arrival, well after I had discussed the science and the need behind the product.

“Alright then. You see these grills here?” I pointed to the front of the device horizontally. “A precisely directed ultrasound wave goes through these all the way to the uterus when you stick it 1/4th of the way through the..umm.. entry point. The uterus, which is also called a cauldron as it clearly looks like one, contracts rapidly and efficiently – hence the name ‘contra’, and all of the lochia is flushed out at once. No need for painful uterus massages or weeks of bleeding.”

“Ah, brilliant,” Melon Sandalwood said. “Massages after birth, and they still complain of pain.” Then he read the room and said, “Oh, I don’t mean any offence. I wasn’t aware of that part.”

A quick knock at the door, and a genial lady with a silver pantsuit walked in. Her thick head of silver hair complemented her olive skin.

“Okay, gentlemen. This is Dr. Fertily Woodhouse, the Chief Medical Officer at AMA,” Miranda said, nodding at smiles of familiarity. “And she, or shall I say, we have some important findings to share.”

“Well, I’d like to congratulate Miranda and Shabana for coming up with this ingenious product. Miranda has been able to conduct successful clinical trials on pregnant women needing emergency C-sections, and Contracauldron has reduced the need for these surgeries by over eighty-five percent,” Dr. Woodhouse said, raising her hands in a cheer.

“In addition to that, vaginal birth has been quick and pain free when Contracauldron’s frequencies were administered right at the start of active labor,” Miranda added.

“So, women won’t need fentanyl or epidurals anymore. Is that what you are saying?” Mr. Harding scowled.

“That would help in faster recovery of your workforce and save you loads of money with staff turnover,” I added more salt to his bruise. A pharma company not being able to cash in on women’s vulnerability pinched his pockets more than he would ever admit.

“Great, Now that the agreement and contracts have been signed, we will soon be getting into production.

“Hang on,” Mr. Sandalwood said, raising his hand. “The figures have changed since we last discussed the matter.”

“How so?” Miranda asked.

“Umm, we will have more women available at work immediately, so the family…”

“We don’t have the budget to cover family allowance for that many families. It would be too high,” Mr. Harding folded his hands to his mouth.

“Right. I know the cost of no maternity leave means providing a package for a house nanny, a chef, a cleaner, and security, in addition to a security deposit for emergencies. We already have all of that accounted for in our contracts, isn’t it?” Miranda said.

“But, no c-section recoveries, or easy vaginal births… It’s just too many women to cover!” Mr. Harding rose from his chair and flung his hands in the air.

“It is a significant medical advancement for the well-being of women. I sent the proposal to FDA to work with the government to make it a federally available product, and I have received positive feedback from the representatives,” Dr. Woodhouse said, smiling and tapping our backs lightly.

“They know we are all set for production. They have requested some more units. We will have to up the number,” Miranda said. “And, we’ll be needing a forty-five percent advance to cover bureaucratic costs, now that we have the government on board.” She bared her teeth.

Mr. Sandalwood and Mr. Harding discussed their copies of contracts with their accompanying assistants, which took longer than expected. The look on their faces ultimately reflected the aftereffects of some tough decisions they had made.

Mr. Harding took a deep breath. “Great! FemPharma’s three factories down south will be available for production by next week.”

“We have five available for you by the end of next week, too,” Mr. Sandalwood declared.

He got off and walked towards us with his head hanging and nodding at something he had been pondering over.

“You’ve got the women covered over here. As for maternity leave, I think we should not be taking that away from the ladies.”

“Ah! You took the words right out of my mouth,” Miranda said as she grabbed Contracauldron off my hands and raised it to his chin. “This is literally a Harmonica. Shabana is not bleeding, but her brain is still mush at three months postpartum.”

My jaw dropped, and I could feel blood rushing to my cheeks. The room warmed in an instant, and I broke into a cold sweat. When I pulled a chair to sit down, I nearly fell over with embarrassment, or whack hormones, or both.

“That will take a lot of time to recover,” Mr. Harding joined the group, shaking his head at my misery.

“Hmm, a year to a year and a half, probably,” Dr. Woodhouse said. “That’s why it’s the standard in Europe.”

“I am sure a pay cut from the top honchos of your companies will fund the leaves and still be way lower than what you’d have to pay for family support,” Miranda said, offering a solution to their raised eyebrows but reflective wrinkles.

Miranda thanked the group, and they left at a slower pace than they had when they first arrived at my cabin.

“Thank you so much, Dr. Woodhouse, for taking time out of your busy schedule and joining us for this meeting. My dad will be getting your Medicare issue resolved soon.”

Money talks again, and I thought it was a woman working for women’s welfare.

The room went quiet, and I hoped my stomach would bring on its grumbling relief, but it came with silent sobs from my mouth and lungs.

Miranda hunched to face me, and I flung myself on her for an outstanding embrace.

“You did everything on your own, Miranda,” I said, tasting the wet saltiness. “Got us the product and maternity leave, and me some help.”

“Ah, you made it, bestie-saurus. I couldn’t have done anything without Contracol.. Contracerd..ahhh.. our ‘uterus-blaster’,” she smiled.

“I was a bitch to you last night; I am so sorry. I didn’t mean any of that. Don’t know what came over me,” I howled.

“Get over it, babe. It’s all good. We got our babies out in the market, on our own. We should be celebrating.”

“But, will have to pay off the loan we took from your dad first.” I wiped my nose with a clean napkin this time.

“It’s all my savings from child support over the years from the time he abandoned my mom and me right after I was born. A single mom raised me, too; I know the toll it takes.”

“What? But your mom and dad are together,” My neurons fired off in all directions.

“That’s my stepmom, babe. My dad left us after a week because he couldn’t handle my mom’s physical condition, postpartum. He was disgusted by her state and how long she was taking to get back on her feet for his next important business dinner with his board members.”

“Then why is he helping Dr. Fertily if he is not involved?”

“Babe, babe, you are too naïve for all this. That’s why it was so easy for me to convince you to do business together.” She pulled my cheeks playfully, but she couldn’t hide the pain in her eyes. “It’s all about money. He knows we have a great product. I need his connections, and he needs his reputation. A win-win for both parties.”

“Contracouldron will still be under ShaMir tech, right?”

“Of course, babe! But let’s change that damn name..umm..how about ‘Utesqueezers’? It has a nice ring to it.”

I slapped my forehead and gave her a big hug.

“You have done so much already, my friend.” I saw her eyes twinkle and hated myself for undermining her efforts all this while. “Let me name our babies this time, please.” I smiled with folded hands.