I step into a patient’s room and examine a laceration along a forearm, skillfully guiding the sutures into place. My hands don’t tremble. My voice remains calm as I explain aftercareinstructions. Yet beneath that composure runs a new current, a soft vigilance that accompanies every movement.
I’m attentive to how close the IV pole stands to my hip. I notice the angle of the swinging door. I veer slightly in crowded hallways without thinking, creating a fraction more space between myself and anyone moving too quickly.
Protect.
The word surfaces before I can stop it. Between cases, when the hallway clears for a brief stretch, I slip toward the lab with a clipboard tucked under my arm to justify my detour. I close the door behind me and draw in a slow breath. There’s no room for doubt now. Verification isn’t about disbelief. It’s about confirmation.
I wrap the tourniquet around my upper arm and flex my hand once, watching the vein rise beneath my skin. The motion feels familiar, almost comforting. I’ve performed this action countless times on other people. Doing it on my own is a different type of intimacy.
The needle slides in smoothly. A dark thread appears in the chamber before the vial begins to fill. I watch the blood collect, rich and opaque, pooling in a way that feels symbolic. When the vial is full, I withdraw the needle and press gauze against the puncture site, applying pressure without looking away from what I’ve drawn. I label the sample carefully, writing my name in neat letters, and load it into the analyzer myself.
I lean against the counter and fold my arms loosely across my midsection, my hand finding its way there again, almostunconsciously. My pulse beats in my throat. Not frantic. Just present.
The result fills the screen, bright and impossible to ignore. I step closer anyway, searching for a mistake, a glitch, or something that would give me a reason to doubt what’s right in front of me. There are none.
Positive.
I inhale slowly, allowing the information to move through me. Despite the prognosis delivered in a cold office years ago, I’m pregnant. Undeniably pregnant.
I rinse my hands, staring at the sink until the water runs lukewarm. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Somewhere down the hall, a code is called, pulling the hospital back into focus. I dry my hands, smooth my scrub top, and open the door.
The hospital is the same blur it’s always been, gurneys rushing past, doors swinging open without warning, voices layered over monitors, but I move through it differently now. I catch myself noticing things I never paid attention to before. The sharp corner of a counter. The way a supply cart juts out just far enough to bruise a hip. The sudden glide of the automatic doors.
I slow down without meaning to. I take wider turns. Between patients, when no one is watching, my hand moves to my abdomen and rests there briefly, my fingers splayed across the fabric of my scrubs. The gesture is subtle enough to go unnoticed, but the contact makes the moment real in a way I can’t fully explain.
You are here.
The thought doesn’t feel sentimental. It feels factual. Like acknowledging a pulse beneath the skin.
For the first time, I let myself imagine telling Kiren. I don’t picture a smile. I picture stillness.
His expression would give nothing away at first. He’s too disciplined for that. His posture would straighten slightly, his shoulders setting as he absorbs the information and runs through its implications. Risk. Exposure. Leverage. My world colliding with his in a way that can’t be undone.
Would he be angry?
Not at me. But at the vulnerability of it. At the danger it creates. At the way it ties me more tightly to a world he already believes is unsafe for me.
A quiet pressure builds behind my sternum.
I know him well enough to understand that his first instinct wouldn’t be celebration. It would be protection. Calculation. A silent restructuring of everything he thought he could control.
And yet…
I also know the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. The way his hand rests on my back as if the world might tilt without warning. The way he chose me without theatrics or hesitation.
If there’s even a fraction of that same instinct in him when I tellhim, it won’t be anger that wins. It’ll be resolve. The image eases me more than it should.
I don’t want to tell him over the phone. I don’t want this reduced to a sentence delivered between meetings. I want to see his face. I want to watch the moment it sinks in. I want to know exactly where we stand when this becomes real between us.
Fear is there. Of course it is. But it isn’t louder than the rest. Tonight, I’ll tell him.
Lila notices before I decide to share it.
We sit across from one another in the hospital café, the late-afternoon crowd thinning as the night shift slowly replaces the day shift. Paper cups rest between our hands, radiating warmth into our palms. The air smells faintly of over-brewed coffee and reheated soup, a scent so familiar it usually fades into the background.
Today, everything feels slightly heightened. A nurse at the next table scrolls through her phone while picking at a muffin. Two residents argue quietly over imaging results near the soda machine. Somewhere behind the counter, milk steams with a soft hiss.
Lila watches me over the rim of her cup, her gaze narrowing with curiosity rather than suspicion.
