Coed Turned Housewife

Coed Turned Housewife, Ch. 8 - "The Flower in Bloom"

The eighth in a series about innocent Chelsea Pelham and her handsome professor, Dr. Mark Benning.

***

January marked not only the beginning of a new year, but of a new life for Chelsea.

After leaving her parents house that holiday break, she and Mark had begun to plan how to merge their lives together in earnest. They needed to plan a wedding, buy a house, furnish a nursery - in short, to accomplish all the tasks of adulthood in a few very brief months. The stress drove a little wedge between them.

Prior to undertaking the home search, he had moved Chelsea into his apartment and explained that he expected her to start practicing the habits of a wife and mother. "What do you mean?" she had stammered. "I already do a lot of the wife stuff?" she added flirtatiously, thinking of their humid couplings that had grown less frequent of late.

"You're going to be Mrs. Benning soon, Chelsea," Mark responded evenly. "That means managing a household: laundry, shopping, groceries, chores, and laundry," he repeated. He gestured toward a neatly folded stack of shirts. "I expect my shirts to be ironed for work each day. I expect to see you do your part," he said over the tone of protest that came from her lips, "because I will be supporting the household."

To that end, Chelsea had practiced sprucing up Mark's apartment, locating the mop and broom, doing her best to keep the sink clear of dishes, watching Youtube channels to help her master the ironing. By the end of the winter break, she knew this would be hard to keep up with if she were to return to the full courseload she had registered for last semester - before the pregnancy, before Mark came into her life.

She brought it up one night as they ate bland spaghetti she had ambitiously constructed via box and jar. "Mark, it's almost time for school to start again and I need to figure out how to handle my classes. If I'm going to attend, I need to buy my books. Or I have to withdraw, I guess..." she trailed off, as his expression was unreadable.

He slowly nodded. "I think it's time we schedule your first ultrasound. We need to know when you're due, and how many children are IN THERE." He said the last words with emphasis, indicating his belief that the multiples pregnancy was inevitable. They had not discussed this possibility with her parents, but she knew it worried him.

He attended the first doctor's visit with her, and all went according to plan. She was very healthy - her wide hips built for childbirth - but when the specialist brought up the ultrasound she drew in a sharp breath.

"And Ms. Pelham, have you been receiving fertility treatments?" she asked with professional decorum.

Mark looked up at her quickly. "Why do you ask? Is there a problem?" Chelsea was silent, tense with fear as the jellied wand floated across her slightly curved tummy.

The specialist gestured vaguely to the screen. "I'm seeing here...three fetal heartbeats. Yes, definitely three." Mark let out a breath. "Triplets?" He asked.

The specialist nodded. Chelsea grew pale. Mark had been right. Her life was about to change utterly: from virginal college freshman, to married mother of three. She felt a sob welling up in her chest, but breathed deeply to quell the emotion. She didn't want the specialist or Mark to see her fall to pieces.

The upshot of the doctor's visit was that Chelsea was facing a higher-order multiples pregnancy, with danger of needing bedrest by the second or third trimester. They pegged her due date at July 1st, a little earlier than she expected. She was instructed to limit her activities and stay close to home to monitor her movement and weight gain as carefully as possible. Mark had offered to withdraw her from all of her classes, and she nodded gratefully, hoping he didn't notice she was blinking back tears. It was really over, her education.

That night, while Mark snored softly next to her in bed, Chelsea thought about the due date and her initial encounter with Mark. He had been only "Dr. Benning" to her then, a professor whose ethics she held in question, since she had covertly learned that he was using drugs to conduct research on the unsuspecting young women who developed breast growth from exposure to the compounds in his lab.

Something about that had always sat ill with her, but - since she had fallen so fully in love with him - her mind had never allowed herself to explore the possibilities. Now she wondered.

Using drugs on the undergraduates to conduct research. Using drugs. That first date. She had met him in order to get an audio-recording with her confrontation about the illicit breast research, to expose him to the administration and stop the research. They had met at the diner. She had ordered a regular Coke, but had received a Diet Coke. It had had a strange bitter taste. Had it really been diet soda at all? Then she had become disoriented and he had taken her to a bar. She remember the two small amber drinks he had playfully forced her to drink, wrapping his hand around her own to help her swallow the fiery liquid in one gulp. Had he dosed those drinks? Or was she served something previously that made her more susceptible to alcohol? She knew other women drank often without completely losing their memory. Yet somehow she never was able to remember what happened that night after the drinks - after the bar. That was the night she had lost her virginity, and - it seemed, based on her due date - most likely the night she had conceived three children.

The following week, Mark left town for a conference. Chelsea put on her sleekest maternity wear to visit his lab. Her fashionable black sweater, jeans and tailored jacket did little to downplay her figure. At 11 weeks, her petite frame carried the babies fully forward, giving her all too early the distinctive silhouette of a woman with child. She sighed and her chestnut curls fell around her face as she ran her hands over the spreading belly. She would love to be with child, to be facing marriage with Mark, to be his wife and a mother for the rest of her life - but he had been so remote lately! And she had to know more about the lab's research. Was she simply (she felt sick to consider it) a guinea pig for his hormonal research?

Her reception in the lab was awkward. The female students' eyes widened - they had known her only a few months before as an athletic, even mousy, undergrad with A-cup breasts. Now she had zoomed up to a DD cup size in less than six months, had become engaged to their professor and was quickly growing heavy with child. A tasteful small diamond glittered on her finger as she waved nervously to some of her old cohort. Candy approached her, examining the ring.

"Girl, congratulations!!" Candy exclaimed. She gestured to the belly. Chelsea smiled and flushed. "Thanks. It's triplets, you know." Candy's eyes got huge. "What!! Dr. Benning didn't mention that. We only learned by hearsay that you two were engaged and expecting. Oh my GOD." Candy looked like she was about to burst if she didn't share the gossip immediately.

In the background, a pair of narrowed eyes met Chelsea's. This was Tim, one of the male grad students, who had always kept a respectful distance from her while still engaging in the occasional friendly office banter. When she had said "triplets," she saw Tim face flicker with recognition or interest...or suspicion?

"That's a lot of responsibility, Chelsea," he offered, approaching Chelsea with a smile. "Think you'll be up to that much motherhood?" His voice had a somber tone, despite the smile.

She smiled back, a little grimly. "I'll manage somehow, Tim. It does seem like a lot at once, doesn't it?" She measured her tone so it didn't sound like she was baiting him, but the silence that followed suggested he was carefully choosing his words in response.

"There have been some indications that exposure to the lab environment here may make women more susceptible to a multiples birth," he noted, trying to sound casual. His eyes darted to an unused office room off to the side. "Would you like to talk about this a little, learn a little more about it?" His eyes met hers. He seemed to have accurately gauged her reasons for coming to the lab.

They stepped into the office and closed the door. She brought her hands up to her temples briefly. "Tim, honestly I don't even know what happened." She felt her voice catch a little. He was waiting patiently for her to continue in the privacy of the closed room. "It all started with the breast growth. That was exciting and even - fun - up until the point where it became an inconvenience."

Tim nodded. He was now all too familiar with the difficulties a large bosom presented.

"The thing is," she glanced around, a little nervous, "I had overheard Mark, er, Dr. Benning mention some of his data collection methods for tracking the breast research. Yet all the while I was here, my understanding was that the research was about frog ovarian stimulation."

Tim nodded and cleared his throat. "The university hasn't acknowledged or licensed some of the pharmaceutically beneficial side effects of our herpetology gonadal differentiation research. I myself wish we had stuck to the script, but Dr. Benning has a somewhat 'Wild West' attitude about these things. Pride goeth before the fall.'"

Chelsea nodded slowly, as her heart sank with the confirmation of her suspicions. So Mark had been lying to her, to the administration - to everyone. "Tim, it's just so confusing. I was going to confront him back then in early November with the essence of what I had overheard, to get an audio-recording of his admission, to go to the authorities with what I knew. But that was the very night that I blacked out, that I can't remember anything."

She closed her eyes. Tim was waiting for her to go on.

"Then I woke up the next day, it seemed like he was saying I had... thrown myself at him. Seduced him. He seemed receptive, but clearly I made all of the moves. There were even messages on my phone to him, that I don't remember sending." She met Tim's eyes, and his teeth set. "Compromising messages, with photos. Somehow, I don't know, it became a real relationship because there was so much...passion between us. I think I've just been blind to what may have really been going on." She cleared her throat to regain her composure.

"He didn't..want me. He just wanted me out of the way."

Tim sat back in his chair and watched her thoughtfully. "How far along are you, Chelsea?" She swallowed. "Just over 11 weeks." He nodded and looked toward the ceiling. "You know, Chelsea, a pregnancy can be terminated up to 20 weeks legally. It's not pleasant, but you have the right to make a choice, especially with a high-risk pregnancy. It may be the best thing medically and...emotionally...for you."

Chelsea's face burned red. She didn't know much about what happened with the so-called "termination," but she knew she had to protect her children. "No, Tim," she almost sputtered, "That's not an option for me, and it wasn't from the very beginning." She steadied her voice. She would be a mother to the children with or without Mark, but it was Mark she needed to know about now.

"What I want to know is, did he forcibly impregnate me to test some implications of his research, to silence me, or did something ...real...happen between us that first night?" She stopped. "I feel so ashamed that I remember nothing, but I think maybe I wasn't MEANT to be able to remember."

Tim was turned away from her now and had brought a video file up onto a tablet screen.

"Chelsea, I'm going to leave the room while you watch this. I'll be right outside the door when you want to continue this conversation."

"Take as much time as you need." He respectfully closed the door as her heart pounded in her ears, and she pressed the arrow to begin the clip.

It was a long clip, a montage, but it ran above 40 minutes. The footage was taken inside of Mark's apartment, the apartment where they currently both lived until they could buy a house.

She could see her old self - smaller, younger, more innocent - lying still, as if sleeping, on a couch in a darkened room. Mark entered the room and approached her, undressed her. He picked her up and the camera angle changed as he brought her to a room with a bed. He was gagging her and blindfolding her, then rubbing her disrobed body with what looked like some kind of product. It might have been a massage oil or lotion, as he lingered around her breasts and her pubic area, spreading her legs wide, then finally tying them in a spread eagle to the bed posts. She sucked in her breath. The girl tied to the bed was fully unconscious. The girl on the bed was HER. She felt the blood thundering in her ears, but remained watching the clip.

The next segment showed Mark on top of her, then him repositioning her onto her belly. She saw his movements and his positions and recognized the postures he used when they had been making love frequently, how deeply he penetrated her, and how prostrate and vulnerable she had been under his spell. A sleeping beauty who couldn't be awakened. Chelsea's heart ached for the girl in the video, but she also knew exactly what was happening. The girl was being impregnated. Suddenly a voice came through on the video.

"First breeding event on Specimen 16. Specimen received 12 inseminations while under chemical restraint." The date and some scientific mumbo-jumbo followed.

Chelsea's eyes bulged. "TWELVE inseminations?" she thought. He must have taken some Viagra or something, she thought bitterly. She also realized it was no wonder she had turned up pregnant. She had been placed in a position where no other outcome was possible, and the context of the affair with her professor had made her feel accountable, responsible and even - yes - willing and receptive to that fate.

She walked outside and touched Tim's shoulder. "Come back in here a moment?" She asked. He looked up at her and gave a quick nod. She sensed that he felt terribly sorry for her. At minimum, the footage was incredibly embarrassing and at worst, it was tragic and damning for both her and Mark.

"Tim, the thing I want to know is this. How did he drug me? Did he do it again later on? Why is he so involved with me now, in terms of planning a marriage, and a life together?" She looked off to the side. "Up until recently, he seemed to want nothing more than this life together. But lately I don't know. Now I think maybe I am just a specimen to him after all."

Tim nodded and pursed his lips. "Honestly, Chelsea, I don't think there's only one easy answer. You know, Dr. Benning had been engaged when he first came to the university as a grad student. This was before his frog research started yielding any interesting results. That relationship didn't go anywhere, and I heard it was because another man got his fiance with child." Chelsea clucked in compassion for her poor Mark. Tim was continuing his story.

"Mark's an attractive guy, but he had no contact with women the first couple of years I knew him. Zero. I knew he was going out of his way to avoid even female coworkers. Then out of nowhere, he suggested recruiting women in the lab. Undergrads, undeclared majors, the least likely people. I suspected something then, that maybe...well, that maybe there was a purpose."

Tim shrugged. "Most labs don't have so many women doing administrative work, especially those without a science major. I mean, what was your major?" He glanced at Chelsea. "Mmm, undeclared," she said with a slight wry smile. He smiled back, "Right, exactly. So that's kind of fishy, right?"

He leaned back. "The day I put two and two together was when I realized that all the incoming recruits had very minimal breast development, every single one - almost abnormally flat-chested. Thin, wispy girls. I liked these girls a lot for who they were naturally, but during their time in the lab they became almost cartoonishly sexy. I have seen breast implants, and these weren't breast implants. It was real, God-given breast maturation beyond the typical age of completed development. When I asked Mark about it, he wanted to involve me in the covert research and so I became part of his web of lies - somewhat."

Tim looked down. "I never tracked data from the coeds...without their consent." He grinned, a little wolfishly. "And I had NO idea that Mark was taking this to another level with the fertility research. I am just...shocked...about what has happened."

Chelsea was taking this all in. She waited, in case he had more to say.

"What I mean is this: I think he has feelings for you as a person, as a woman, as a friend. I also think he is inevitably attracted to you because you represent his scientific success - you're his test case for a ground-breaking fertility treatment. Of course he wants marriage and children. He's a man, a sensitive man with love to offer. But you're offering him something else as well: a real-life realization of his intellectual genius."

Chelsea felt exhausted suddenly. She was nodding politely and stood up, a little unsteadily. "Tim, I have to go now. I don't want Mark to know I came here today. Try and make sure the others keep it quiet." Tim was nodding.

She paused at the doorway. "I just wonder if there's any advice you have for me, knowing what you know about this research. If Mark and I have triplets now, will any future pregnancies have such high volume? What can I do to support Mark, to maybe keep him from advancing this unethical and frankly illegal aspect of his research?" She paused, "I don't want my husband arrested, or even to lose his job."

Tim pursed his lips. "Chelsea, if I knew those answers, we wouldn't be standing here right now. You're a living experiment. Any future pregnancies may be - we conjecture - up to six embryos, that is, if the fertility enhancement mimics our analysis of the breast-growth ratios." She sat back on her heels a little. Six. She had dodged a bullet by merely having triplets.

"As for Mark's activities, I'm hoping he'll get into R&D with a pharmaceutical company. He's been in conversation lately with one of those West Coast labs that is much more focused on pushing the bioethical cutting-edge. I think he could make a lot of money that way, too, as this university research is just too grants-dependent. With no real limits on his behavior, with all of that sophisticated corporate legal machinery behind him, I think he'll have a lot more breakthroughs and hopefully avoid the worst ethical downfall - bad research." Tim laughed at his little joke. Chelsea looked down. It was time to go.

***

That night, Chelsea made Mark an extra-ambitious dinner and waited until he had finished eating. He was absently swirling a glass of red wine, holding her hand across the table.

"Mark, I want you to know something." He glanced up at her. His mind had been far away. "Yes, my love?" He sounded distant.

"The first time we were...together. I want you to know that I know what you...did. How it happened. I...I remembered some of the things that happened," she added hurriedly, unacquainted with how it felt to tell a baldfaced lie. But she didn't want to get Tim in trouble for showing her the footage.

"I know you put something in my soda that first night to drug me, that you - you took advantage - of me when I was unconscious. I know why I couldn't remember for so long." She held his gaze. "Because you didn't WANT me to remember." She had mostly kept her voice steady, but she knew her tone belied her fear of his reaction.

"And?" Mark's voice was soft, vulnerable. He was very tired and helpless, his hair mussed. Like a lost boy. She wanted to reach out and hug him, even though the truth was appalling. He had raped her. He had done medical experiments on her. And yet she loved him passionately and wanted to devote her life to raising his children. It was a horrifying situation.