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Chapter 4
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2026-04-16 14:29:58"I'm sorry, Harper."
Dr. Joel was standing at the foot of my hospital bed and he was still in his grey sweater. He hadn't had time to change. There was blood on his sleeve, my blood, and he was standing there with the face of a man who had delivered terrible news before but never found it easy.
"The pregnancy." He stopped.
I knew. I had known somewhere between the floor of that empty apartment and the back of his car. My body had known before my brain was willing to.
"You lost it."
The words dropped into the room like stones into still water.
I stared at the ceiling.
I had never said it out loud to anyone. Not once. I had carried it for three weeks, this small enormous secret, and told no one, not Justin, not a friend, not a single person on earth. It had existed only inside me and now it didn't exist at all and I was the only one alive who knew there was something to grieve.
The loneliness of that was indescribable.
"Harper." Dr. Joel moved to the chair beside my bed. He sat down carefully. "Please say something."
I couldn't.
What was there to say? What possible combination of words was adequate for this? My husband was divorced me. My body was failing me. And now the last small thing that had felt like a reason, the tiny life that I had spent three weeks talking to in my head, promising things to, was gone.
The first tear slid from the corner of my eye into my hair.
Then another.
I didn't make a sound. I just cried silently at the ceiling of a hospital room while Dr. Joel sat beside me and didn't try to make it better because he was smart enough to know that some things simply weren't better yet.
His hand found mine on the blanket. He didn't squeeze it. He just placed it there. Present. Witnessing. He didn't care that a doctor shouldn't be this involved with his patient
When there was nothing left, when I was dry and exhausted and hollowed out clean, I turned my head and looked at him.
His eyes were red.
I hadn't expected that.
"Were you crying?" My voice was wrecked. Barely working.
He looked away briefly. "I'm fine."
"Joel."
He looked back. His jaw was tight. "You came into my office six months ago and I have watched you carry things that would have broken most people twice over. I am allowed to find that difficult."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"I was pregnant," I said. Out loud. For the first time. The words felt enormous. "I found out three weeks ago. I never told anyone. I kept waiting for the right moment to tell Justin and then." I stopped. "And then there was no right moment."
Dr. Joel closed his eyes briefly.
"I'm so sorry," he said. And it was nothing like the clinical apology from the top of the conversation. It was the real kind. The kind that comes from the gut.
I nodded. I looked back at the ceiling.
"The treatment," he said after a while.
"Don't."
"Harper—"
"I have nothing left, Joel." My voice cracked on the last word. "I have no money, no husband, no baby. I am lying in a hospital bed and I have three months and I am so tired." A tear slid down again. I didn't stop it. "I am so tired of fighting."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I know," he said.
The gentleness of it nearly undid me again.
"I know you're tired." He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his voice low and steady. "And I am not going to pretend that what you're carrying is small or manageable or fair. Because it isn't. It is enormous and it is devastating and you have every right to fall apart." He paused. "But I need you to hear me. There is a trial. A real one, at the Harlow Institute. I have a colleague running it. The results are unlike anything I have seen in a decade of practice." He looked at her steadily. "I can get you in. On a research basis. No cost. You would need to commit, and it would be hard. But Harper." His voice dropped. "You could survive this."
I stared at him.
"Why would you do that?" I whispered. "Why do you keep trying to save me when I keep telling you to let me go?"
He held my gaze.
"Because you're worth saving," he said simply. Like it was obvious. Like it required no further explanation.
I looked away because if I kept looking at him I was going to cry again and I was genuinely tired of crying. I need to end the toxic relationship I have with tears.
"No one can know," I said eventually. My voice was quiet but it had something new in it. Something small and fragile and deciding. "About the the time I have left, about the pregnancy. Not Justin, not Vivian, not anyone." I pressed my hands flat on the blanket. "If I do this. If I get better. I want to come back different. I want to come back as someone they don't recognize. Someone they never saw coming."
Dr. Joel was quiet for a moment.
Then he said:"That sounds like a reason to fight."
It did.
It was the first one I'd had all day.
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