Semua Bab The Wife He Never Saw: Carrying His Secret Twins In Silence: Bab 21 - Bab 30

Elena's POVI was in the middle of my lunch break, eating crackers in the small courtyard behind the hospital's east wing, when I heard my name.I turned to find Catherine Cross walking toward me across the courtyard with the particular purpose of a woman who has decided to do something and is not looking for permission. She was wearing a camel-colored coat and carrying a handbag that probably cost more than my monthly salary and she looked so entirely out of place in the functional grey of the hospital exterior that several passing staff members glanced at her twice."There you are," she said, as though she had been looking for me for some time, which given that she had not called ahead was a logistical achievement. "I went to the surgical floor first. A very kind nurse told me you sometimes come out here.""Catherine." I stood up, tucking my crackers away. "I did not know you were coming.""I know. That was intentional." She looked at me with the same careful attention she had given

Elena's POVThe studio was different at night.During the day it held the particular energy of people working, the focused collective hum of fifteen individuals each in their own world but sharing a space. At night, after the staff had gone and the drawing lamps had been switched off one by one, it became something quieter. The big windows that looked over the park showed the city at its evening pace, lights coming on in buildings across the street, the last of the daylight giving way.I had been staying late most evenings this week. Not because the work required it, Marco had been careful about my hours, checking in at five each afternoon and making clear that the schedule was flexible and my health came first. I stayed because the studio was easier than the apartment in the evenings. The apartment was quiet in a way that invited thinking, and thinking in the evenings tended to spiral toward the same three or four things I had no resolution for. The studio had the smell of ink and th

Elena's POVFourteen weeks arrived on a Thursday.I marked it the way I had been marking each week, quietly and privately, a note in the small calendar app on my phone that no one else could see. Another week that the twins had held on. Another week that my body had managed, despite everything I was asking of it.I was grateful and I was exhausted and I was, on that particular Thursday morning, standing in the locker room at six fifteen staring at my reflection in a way I had been avoiding for the past week.The scrubs were not fitting.This was not a surprise exactly. I had been watching the gradual changes in my body with the detached monitoring of someone tracking a clinical progression, documenting each shift the way Dr. Patel had encouraged me to. But documentation and confrontation were different things. Documentation happened in the privacy of Marco's bathroom in the morning before anyone else was awake. Confrontation happened here, in the locker room mirror, in the institution

Elena's POVI went to the bathroom after the main course arrived.Not because of the nausea this time. The nausea had settled into a dull background presence by the second hour of dinner, manageable enough that I could eat small portions without incident. I went because I needed three minutes away from the table. Away from my father's performance and Vivian's watching eyes and the sustained effort of sitting beside Tristan while pretending we were a unit rather than two people who had exchanged perhaps fifty words in the past two weeks.The bathroom was at the back of the restaurant, past the bar, through a short corridor with framed prints on the walls. It was clean and quiet and smelled like the expensive candles the restaurant kept on the shelf above the sinks. Two stalls, both empty. I went to the mirror and ran cold water over my hands and looked at my reflection.The dress was holding. Draped fabric, nothing fitted, chosen three days ago specifically for this occasion. I did not

Elena's POVThe invitation had been on the hospital calendar for months.The Cross-Vitale Medical Institute Annual Fundraising Gala was the kind of event that sustained itself on its own momentum, booked the same venue every year, attracted the same donors, generated the same photographs for the hospital's publications. Attendance for department heads and senior staff was not optional. Attendance for the wife of the co-founding cardiac surgeon was even less optional, regardless of the current state of that marriage or the fact that the wife in question had been sleeping in another man's guest room for the past several weeks.Linda had sent me a calendar reminder ten days ago. She had done it quietly, via personal email rather than the hospital system, with a single line beneath the event details: I thought you would want to know. It was Linda's way of telling me something without quite saying it. She was good at that.I had been trying not to think about it.On the morning of the gala