Chapter Four

Isolde's POV

Morning came faster than I expected.

I hadn't slept. I knew it before I even opened my eyes, because they burned like someone had rubbed sand under the lids. When I finally dragged myself up and caught my face in the little mirror on the wardrobe, I almost didn't recognize it. Red eyes, puffy lids, skin the color of old paper. I looked like a woman who had been to a funeral.

Maybe I had.

It was my grandmother's voice that pulled me out of bed. She was singing in the kitchen, the same old hymn she hummed every morning, slightly flat on the high notes. A pan clattered. The smell of fried plantain drifted under my door, and for a moment, just a moment, I forgot where I was and why. I was seven years old again and nothing had happened yet.

Then my stomach turned over, and everything came back.

I washed my face with cold water and pulled my hair into a loose knot. When I walked into the kitchen she was already setting the table. Two plates. Two cups of tea. She didn't say anything about my eyes. She only touched my cheek as she passed, and that was enough.

We ate quietly. The plantain was sweet and a little burnt on the edges, just how I liked it. I managed half of mine before my stomach started to complain, and Grandma pushed a piece of dry bread toward me without looking up.

"Nibble that slowly. It settles things."

"How do you know?"

"I had your father, didn't I?"

I almost smiled. I wrapped my hands around the warm cup and watched the steam curl up between us.

"Granny, I'm going to the hospital today."

Her eyes lifted to mine. "What do you want to do there?"

"A proper checkup. The clinic only confirmed it. I want to know the baby is okay."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"No, Grandma."

"Isolde..."

"Please." I put my cup down. "Your knees hurt on the bus, and the hospital queues are long. You'll stand for hours. I don't want you tired because of me."

"I am not too old to sit in a hospital."

"I know you're not." My voice softened. "But let me do this one thing alone. Let me start learning how."

She stared at me for a long time. Her lips pressed together, and I could see the argument rising in her and then, slowly, being folded away.

"Take your umbrella," she said finally. "And drink water. Don't let them keep you waiting without food."

"I will."

"And Isolde." She reached across the table and covered my hand. "Whatever they say, you come home and tell me. Good or bad. Yes?"

"Yes, Grandma."

---

The bus was crowded and smelled of sweat and engine oil. I stood the whole way, one hand on the pole and the other pressed against my stomach, afraid of every sudden stop. A woman in the seat beside me noticed and offered her place. I didn't know how she knew. Maybe it was the way I was holding myself. I thanked her and sat down, and felt oddly close to tears again.

The hospital was a big gray building with a crowded waiting area and a nurse behind the desk who did not look up when I spoke. I filled the form with a pen that kept running dry. Name, age, address. Under marital status my pen hovered, and I wrote divorced, and the word looked strange in my own handwriting. It had only been one day.

I waited almost two hours. I watched women pass with husbands holding their bags, couples whispering over ultrasound printouts, a man asleep on his wife's shoulder with his mouth open. I looked at my phone once. Nothing. I put it away and did not look at it again.

"Isolde Laurent?"

The doctor was a woman in her fifties with short silver hair and a tired, kind face. She asked me to sit, asked a few questions, and then led me behind a curtain for the scan. The gel was cold on my skin. The room was dim and quiet except for the soft hum of the machine.

I stopped breathing.

On the little screen, among the gray and black, there was a tiny flicker. Small as a bean. Pulsing, steady, completely alive.

"There," the doctor said, pointing. "That is your baby."

My baby.

I covered my mouth. I couldn't stop it. The tears rolled down the sides of my face and into my ears, and I laughed at the same time, because it was the first thing in two days that did not hurt.

"Is it okay?" I whispered. "Is everything okay?"

"Heartbeat is strong. Everything looks good so far." She tapped a few keys. "You are four weeks pregnant."

"Four?" I frowned. "The clinic said seven."

"Clinics count from your last period. We count from conception. You are roughly four weeks along, so the baby is still very early." She smiled over her glasses. "Early, but healthy. You need rest, good food, and no stress."

No stress. I almost laughed again.

She gave me a list of vitamins, a follow-up date, and a small printed picture of the scan that I tucked carefully into my bag, beside the doctor's letter from yesterday. When she asked if anyone was with me, I said no. Her eyes lingered a moment too long. She didn't push.

"Take care of yourself," she said. "You are carrying two people now."

I walked out of the hospital holding that sentence close.

---

The sun was lower now but still harsh. I stood on the pavement with the scan picture in my bag and a few crumpled notes in my pocket, and the weight of the day finally started to sink in.

Vitamins cost money. Follow-up visits cost money. Food, clothes, a crib, a place to put the crib. All of it cost money, and I had none. Five years as a housewife had taught me how to run a home and how to smile at his mother, and nothing that the world would pay for. Saffron had controlled every account. I had never needed a card of my own, and I had never asked for one.

I had never needed to, because I thought I would be there forever.

I started walking with no direction in mind, just moving, because standing still made the thoughts louder. I passed a bakery, a phone shop, a row of women selling vegetables from plastic basins. My feet hurt. My head hurt. My own mind kept turning over the same thing. Grandma's pension. The money in the biscuit tin on top of her cupboard. How she cut her medicine tablets in half to make them last.

I could not let her carry me. Not again. She had carried me through my parents' deaths, through school, through every heartbreak, through my marriage. Now I was thirty minutes away from asking her to carry another life too.

I turned a corner, and the street opened into a wide boulevard lined with glass towers. Offices. Banks. Companies with polished lobbies and men in suits hurrying through revolving doors. I stopped, almost without meaning to, in front of a tall silver building with a name carved in steel across the front.

Outside the gate stood a standing signboard, white with black letters, tilted a little from the wind.

SECRETARY NEEDED. INTERVIEWS TODAY. WALK IN.

I read it once. Then again.

I had never worked a day in my adult life. I didn't have a resume. I didn't have a decent pair of shoes or a single office dress that wasn't five years old. I had a school certificate, a head full of how to organize a household, and the ability to sit through the worst dinner of my life without breaking a plate.

I stood there so long a security guard glanced my way.

I thought about the doctor's voice. You are carrying two people now.

I thought about the flicker on that screen. I thought about my grandmother, cutting her tablets in half.

I smoothed my dress. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and lifted my chin.

I couldn't let my grandmother keep taking care of herself and of me and of my unborn baby too.

I pushed open the gate and walked in.