But I didn’t. I remember thinking I had, that’s the worst part.
I didn’t.
My chest tightens, breath going shallow as the implications slot into place with awful efficiency. One missed pill, one exhausted night. One slip that doesn’t care how careful I am the rest of the time. One goddamn moment of forgetting.
I stare at the counter, willing my brain to find another answer. Another reason. But all I can think about is the way I’ve been dragging, the sleep that never quite refreshes. The tug in my lower back that won’t go away.
Still, I move carefully, not panicked. This might be nothing. I open the bottom drawer and pull out a pregnancy test I bought months ago. It was from a pack I’d got for Heidi, from some half-drunken night when she joked she might be pregnant with twins.
I’d kept the spare one, because I keep contingencies. Because I don’t like being unprepared.
I sit on the toilet while it processes, letting the minutes tick by, the test lying on the counter beside me. I don’t let myself pace. I just stare at the grout between the floor tiles as though it might rearrange itself into a different answer.
When I finally drag my eyes to the test, the result is already there.
Two pink lines.
Clear and bold and fucking undeniable.
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp exhale as I stand, and my hand presses to my mouth without conscious thought. I don’t make a sound, just clutch the test in my other hand and sink down until my back hits the cabinet and the coolness of it seeps through my skin.
There’s a long, splintering silence as I hold my breath, staring at the test. This isn’t a question ofwho;there’s no confusion there.
I haven’t been with anyone else, haven’t wanted to be. Haven’t had the time or the inclination or the emotional bandwidth for anything beyond the quiet, unspoken orbit Reid and I slipped into months ago.
This baby is his.
That certainty lands heavy in my chest with an inevitability that terrifies me, not because of who he is, but who hewas.
My patient.
I was his surgeon. Not the attending, but still involved and part of his care. Still someone who stood across from him in a hospital room and made decisions about his body, his recovery, his future.
I can already hear the voices. Not illegal, but unethical. Not unethical, but irresponsible. Not irresponsible, but unprofessional.
And for women in medicine, perception is everything.
Even if he was signed off my care by the time we first slept together, the overlap alone is enough to invite scrutiny. Enough to invite whispers and change how people look at me.
I see it all at once—the raised brows, the quiet recalculations. The timing, the optics. The assumptions layered onto my work like sediment.
Female surgeon gets pregnant by the professional athlete she treated.
Will they wonder if I compromised care? Will they question my judgment? What will Moreno say?
My stomach twists with nausea, and I press my palm flat against it like I can contain the fallout if I hold still enough.
This wasn’t in the plan. And I don’t get to not have a plan, because I’ve always had a plan.
The one I built piece by perfect piece. The one I’ve bled for and fought for. Protected at the cost of sleep, sanity, and sometimes self-worth.
I’ve built my life on precision. On timing and control. Knowing exactly where I’m going and how long it will take to get there.
But one missed pill, one late period, and two tiny pink lines have split my future wide open.
The questions keep coming fast, too fast to catch.
Will they think I was reckless? Stupid? Will they question whether I can still do the job?
