CHAPTER 24

ELENA

Chloe Alexander. I read the name printed across the file before I let myself look at the woman it belonged to, still wiping at her cheeks like she could erase the last ten minutes if she worked fast enough.

"May I sit?"

She shifted over without a word, and I settled beside her, saying nothing at all. I didn't know what she was carrying, and I wasn't going to pretend I did just to fill a silence. Some people don't need questions. They need someone willing to sit in the mess with them until it passes.

So I stayed quiet while the hospital moved around us.... doctors cutting past, a phone ringing somewhere down the hall, the ordinary noise of a place that never really stops. When the tears started again, I just laid a hand against her back and let it rest there.

She cried. I stayed. She cried harder. I stayed longer.

Eventually her breathing evened out enough that I pulled a tissue from my coat pocket. "Here."

She took it, wiped her face, and blew her nose with a sound so undignified I couldn't hold back a small laugh.

"Sorry," she said, catching my expression.

"Don't be." I nodded at my coat. "I'm a doctor. This is basically the job description."

That got her attention. "You're a doctor?"

"Resident. Pediatrics." Saying it out loud still did something to my chest.... a small, private swell of pride I hadn't expected to feel this early, given everything it had cost to get here.

"Oh." Her voice went quiet again.

"Is there a problem?"

"No." A beat. "Yes." Another beat. "No."

I smiled. "Which is it?"

She laughed, weak but real. "Yes. There are a lot of problems, if I'm honest." The smile dropped as fast as it came. "I'm just having a hard time with everything right now."

"What happened?"

"Marriage." She exhaled through her nose. "And a stupid doctor's report."

My eyes went to the file still in her hands. "I'm definitely not qualified to give marriage advice."

"Wasn't asking for any."

"Good." I softened. "But I could look at the report, if you want a second opinion from someone who isn't emotionally destroyed by reading it."

She hesitated only a second before handing it over.

I opened it and read carefully, my face changing somewhere around the third line. Diminished ovarian reserve.... earlier and steeper than her age should account for. Fewer eggs than expected, and a quality decline moving faster than the standard curve. The recommendation was straightforward on paper: a fertility specialist, a conversation about preservation, sooner rather than later. Less straightforward in practice, given how low her reserve already sat. Freezing eggs was on the table. Nothing about it was promised.

I closed the file slowly.

Chloe was watching my face like she could read the diagnosis off my expression before I said a word. "What?"

"Mrs Chloe...."

"Oh no please. Just Chloe."

I exhaled. "Your fertility appears to be declining faster than it should be for your age. There are options, but they need a specialist....freezing your eggs, mainly, though your numbers make that more complicated than it would be for someone else."

"They told me that part already." Her laugh came out bitter. "They just kept using words like 'percentages' and 'odds', and all I heard underneath it was that I might not get to be a mother."

Something in my chest pulled tight, because I understood that fear in a way I wished I didn't. My situation wasn't identical to hers. But the shape of it.... the not-knowing, the future you'd already started building in your head getting quietly rearranged without your permission.... that part I knew intimately.

I'd pictured holding my own child. I'd built an entire future around a heartbeat that had stopped weeks before anyone told me. And even now, my own doctor couldn't promise me what came next for my body. Uncertainty has its own particular cruelty. It doesn't close a door. It just leaves you standing in front of one you can't see through.

"Can I be honest with you?" I asked.

She nodded fast. "Please."

I handed the file back. "I can't give you anything definitive off this report alone."

"Aren't you a doctor?"

"I am." A faint smile. "But I'm not going to sit here and hand you a script for how your life turns out. Nobody gets that, and I'd be lying if I pretended I could."

She went quiet, watching me.

"What I can tell you," I said, leaning in slightly, "is that women get handed impossible standards from every direction. We're supposed to be strong and also somehow the fragile sex. We're supposed to build families, raise everyone else's children along with our own, sacrifice pieces of ourselves we never ask for back ....and then when life hands us something we didn't choose, people expect us to just fold."

Her eyes filled again.

"I don't buy it," I said. "I think we stand."

She squeezed my fingers I didn't realize she'd reached for.

"Sometimes the plan falls apart," I went on. "Sometimes a diagnosis lands somewhere you never expected. Sometimes people you trusted hurt you in ways you couldn't have imagined." I thought of Daniel. My parents. The son I never got to hold. "And we still stand anyway."

"So fight," I told her, quieter now. "For yourself. For whatever future you still want, even the scared version of it. Especially the scared version." I held her gaze. "Don't let one report write the whole story. Don't let society decide who you are, and don't let a man decide it either. You climb the mountain in front of you, and if you fall off it, you get back up."

A tear slid free from her face. "And if life throws a rock at me?"

"You dodge it."

She laughed through the tears. "And another one?"

"Dodge that too."

"We fight," I said, "until we get the life we actually want."

She stared at me for a long moment before she managed, "Thank you." Then, more broken: "I really needed that today."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with any of this," she admitted. "An arranged marriage I never asked for. A future I didn't choose. And now this on top of it."

I let that sit before offering something back. "Funny thing.... I understand more of that than you'd think."

"How?"

I laughed a little, mostly at myself. "I'm in a contract marriage."

Her eyes went wide. "A what?"

"A contract marriage."

"You're joking."

"I'm really not."

"Oh my god." She pressed a hand over her mouth. "This sounds like something out of a novel."

"It kinda does."

"Let me guess.... you fall madly in love with your fake husband by the end?"

"No." I shook my head firmly. "Absolutely not."

"That's usually how it goes."

"Not mine."

"You sure about that?"

"Completely sure." I crossed my arms. "Love was never part of the deal."

She raised an eyebrow, entirely unconvinced. "But he's nice?"

I hesitated a beat too long. "...Yes."

"Interesting."

"Don't."

"I'm not saying anything."

"No love," I said again.

"Sure."

"No romance."

"Absolutely."

"Nothing."

"Nothing," she agreed, far too solemnly.

"Why do I feel like you don't believe a word of that?"

"Because I'm a woman, and I've read the same books you have."

I burst out laughing, and she joined in, until I pointed a finger at her.

"And your arranged marriage....how's that going?"

Her laughter died instantly. "Oh. My husband-to-be can't stand me."

"Can't stand you? Why?"

"No idea. Probably because I'm annoying."

"You don't seem annoying to me."

"You haven't known me long enough."

"Well," I said, "arranged marriage turning into true love is also a classic."

She groaned. "Please, no."

"No love there either?"

"None. Not even in the slightest."

"That's exactly the kind of thing people say right before they fall for each other in every one of these stories."

"Then I guess I'm disappointing the readers."

We were both laughing again by the time I said, "Maybe we're just living the kind of stories people only expect to read about."

"Contract marriage and arranged marriage."

"Exactly."

"That's actually kind of funny, in a bleak way."

"Very." I let the humor settle before turning serious again. "Chloe. I don't know what your future holds. Neither do you. That's the part that matters most, honestly.... not knowing doesn't mean it's already decided badly."

Her eyes glistened.

"I can't promise you it works out the way you want. I can't promise you a child." I paused. "But I can promise you this.... don't quit before you've actually finished fighting." I took a breath. "And for what it's worth.... I don't know what my own future looks like either. Nobody's told me I definitely can't have children. But there's enough uncertainty, after everything, that I understand exactly what it feels like to be scared something you always assumed you'd have might not be there for you."

She stared at me, quiet.

"We just met," I said, "but I like you. And weirdly, I think I see a little of myself in you."

"So we fight," she said.

"Together."

"Until the end?"

"Until the end."

She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me before I fully registered it happening. I hugged her back without hesitation.

"Thank you," she said into my shoulder. "I really, really needed to meet you today."

"I think I needed it too."

When we finally pulled apart, she wiped her eyes one more time. "Can I get your number?"

"Of course."

She dialed herself from my phone, and mine lit up a second later.

"Now you've got mine," she said.

"And you've got mine."

We walked out together, and by the time we reached the entrance, some color had come back into her face.

"Thank you....?"

"Elena and you need to stop thanking me."

"I really can't." She hugged me once more before stepping back toward her car. "Bye, Elena"

"Bye, Chloe."

She turned and waved before climbing in, and I watched her drive off feeling like I'd known her for years rather than under an hour.

I turned back toward the ward, smiling to myself, and made it maybe ten steps before a voice stopped me cold.

"Elena?"

Familiar. Too familiar.

I turned slowly, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Daniel stood at the far end of the corridor. My ex-husband. My past, standing in the one place I'd finally started to feel like myself again.

"What are you doing here?"