CHAPTER 4

The pregnancy test is still on the floor where it fell. I stare at it for so long that Elias finally bends down, picks it up, and places it on the cabinet like it might bite him.

“Say something,” he says.

“I already did. I said I’m removing it.”

“You did. And I said we should try first.” He pulls a chair beside the bed and sits, elbows on his knees. “Serena, I’m not asking you to be happy about this. I’m asking you to look before you decide.”

“Look at what?”

“Your baby.”

I flinch at the word. My baby. Not Damien’s baby, not the heir, not the thing that will end in blood and tears like the rest. Mine.

“Elias…”

“Ten minutes. If you still want to end it after that, I will personally book the appointment and drive you there. No lectures. I swear.”

I want to say no. Every part of me that has been broken over three years of miscarriages wants to say no, roll over, and pretend this room does not exist.

But I am a doctor. And doctors look at the scan before they decide.

“Ten minutes,” I say, and I hate how small my voice sounds.

He leaves the room and comes back wheeling a small portable scanner. I raise my eyebrow.

“I borrowed it from the hospital before I resigned,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “Technically it’s still mine for the week.”

“Technically that’s theft.”

“Technically I’m a very good doctor. Lie back.”

I do. The cold gel touches my skin and I look at the ceiling instead of the screen. Elias is quiet. The machine hums. My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it.

“Serena,” he says softly. “Look.”

I turn my head.

At first it is only grey shadows, swirling like smoke. Then he taps a key and points at a tiny bean shape near the center, and in the middle of it, something flickers, fast, tiny and alive.

The speaker crackles and a sound fills the room. A rapid, steady thump, like a small fist knocking on a door from the inside.

I stop breathing.

“That’s the heartbeat,” Elias whispers. “One hundred and sixty beats per minute. Strong. Textbook strong.”

Tears rush into my eyes before I can stop them. I have seen a hundred of these screens. I have delivered the news to a hundred women. I have never once been on this side of the gel.

The other times, there was silence. A doctor with a careful face. A hand on my shoulder.

This time there is a knock.

“It’s still there,” I choke out.

“It is.”

“It’s really still there.”

“Seven weeks and counting,” Elias says, and I hear the smile in his voice. “And it seems to have your stubbornness.”

I laugh, and the laugh breaks in the middle and turns into a sob. I cover my mouth with my hand. Elias does not say anything. He just lets me cry, and he keeps the sound on.

When I finally wipe my face, I notice he is frowning at the screen. His eyes are fixed on the edge of the image, near the bean, and he has stopped moving the probe.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He blinks and the frown disappears. “Probably the machine. It’s old. There’s some interference here.”

“Elias.”

“I said it’s nothing.” He smiles too quickly and wipes the gel off my stomach with a towel. “Your baby is healthy. That’s all you need to know today.”

I should push. I would push on any other day. But the knocking is still ringing in my ears, and my chest feels lighter than it has in years. I lie there, staring at the ceiling.

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Okay, what?”

“I’m keeping it.”

Elias goes very still. “You’re sure?”

“No. I’m terrified.” I sit up slowly, my hand already resting on my stomach. “But I’m not throwing away the one thing that has a heartbeat and nothing to do with the Vance family. I’m keeping it, and I’m going to do everything right this time. Rest. Food. Fewer parents.”

He laughs so hard he has to put the towel down. “Fewer parents. I can arrange that.”

“Good.”

“And Serena?”

“Yes?”

“Congratulations.”

I don’t cry again. I just nod, because if I say anything else, I will.

My phone buzzes on the bedside table. I glance at the screen. Forty-two missed calls. Twenty-two from Damien, eleven from my mother, four from my father, and five from numbers I don’t recognize, probably reporters or guests from the party who have already turned my slap into gossip.

The phone buzzes again. A voicemail from my father.

I put it on speaker before I can talk myself out of it.

“Serena.” His voice is calm, which is worse than shouting. “You will come home tonight and apologize to Damien in front of your mother and me. You will withdraw the divorce petition. If you don’t, you can forget you were ever a Vance. Every account, every card, every key. You have until midnight.”

The message ends and the room becomes quiet.

“Well,” Elias says. “He didn’t even say goodbye.”

“He never does.” I pick up the phone and turn it off. My hands are steady, which surprises me. “Let him freeze whatever he wants. I have my hands and my license and my brain.”

“And me,” Elias says. “And a couch you can sleep on. Actually, a real bed. I’m taking the couch.”

“Elias, you’ve done enough.”

“I’ve done nothing yet. Eat something first. You have hypotension and you’re feeding two people now.”

“One person.”

“Right. One.” He says it a bit too fast again, and again I let it go.

He heads to the kitchen. I hear cabinet doors, a pan hitting the stove, and a curse word he tries to hide. Ten minutes later he comes back with a bowl of instant noodles and a boiled egg that is somehow both raw and burnt.

“It’s a work in progress,” he says.

“You’re a doctor. You can read a recipe.”

“I can read a chart. A recipe is fiction. Eat.”

I eat. It’s terrible. It’s the best thing I have tasted all week.

After a while, he stands and stretches. “I need to go to the hospital and clear out my locker before the security guy changes shifts. Will you be okay alone for an hour?”

“I’m pregnant, not sick.”

“Both, according to your chart. Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“I mean it.”

He grabs his keys and leaves. I hear the lock turn from outside, then his footsteps fade down the corridor.

Silence settles over the apartment. I rest against the pillows, the bowl warm in my hands, and let myself breathe.

For the first time in three years, nobody is asking anything of me. No hospital board. No parents. No husband.

Only a small, stubborn flicker that has decided to stay.

Elias printed the scan before he left. It sits on the cabinet, a grey smudge on glossy paper, and I pick it up and stare at it until I catch myself smiling.

Then the smile dies, because my mind goes where it always goes.

Three years of Damien kissing my forehead before every shift. Three years of warm coffee left on my desk, of “text me when you land,” of “you work too hard, Serena.” And the whole time, he was climbing into my sister’s bed.

Which one was the lie? The kisses, or the man behind them?

I put the scan down, harder than I mean to.

I get up to rinse the bowl and pass the window on my way. Something dark catches my eye on the street below.

I stop.

A black car is parked across the road, under the streetlight. Long, sleek, engine off. I know the license plate. I know it better than my own, because it sat outside my hospital every night for three years, waiting for me to finish my shift.

The driver’s door is open.

Damien is leaning against it, still in the same suit from the ceremony, the collar torn where his own hand must have pulled at it. He has a red mark across his cheek that never faded, shaped like my palm.

He isn’t looking at his phone. He isn’t pacing. In his other hand is a folded slip of paper, crumpled like he has been gripping it for hours.

How does he even know where I am? I never told anyone. I never told him.

He is looking straight up at my window.

My heart slams against my ribs. I take a step back, but it is too late. His eyes lock onto mine through the glass, and even from this distance I see his mouth move.

Serena.

Then he pushes off the car, crosses the street, and walks into the building.