Time drags. Work moves. The company keeps breathing. I keep my face steady in meetings and I sleep in four hour pieces.
Three months pass.
On a Tuesday afternoon, a number I don’t recognize flashes across my screen, and I answer because I always answer.
“This is Dr. Patel from Saint Mercy Hospital,” a man says. “Am I speaking with Ethan Cross?”
“Yes.”
“You’re listed as an emergency contact for a Lila Bennett,” he continues. “She fainted in our lobby. She’s awake, stable, and refusing to call family. We need support for discharge planning.”
My spine goes rigid. “Is she hurt?”
“Stable,” he says. “Dehydration and stress. She’s pregnant.”
I sit down so fast my knee bumps the desk.
“Gestational age,” I say.
“Approximately seventeen weeks,” Dr. Patel replies. “She needs consistent care and follow up.”
Seventeen weeks.
My throat tightens. “Where are you?”
He gives me the address.
San Francisco.
When the call ends, I stare at my phone until the screen goes dark.
She’s pregnant. She carried it alone. She passed out in a hospital lobby. I book a flight without calling Adam first, and I don’t negotiate with myself.
On the plane, I sit in a window seat and keep my shoulders squared while the cabin fills. My hands are steady, but my head is loud.
I’m not angry at her. I’m angry at the man who found her again, and I’m angry at the circle around Victoria that keeps brushing up against her life.
I’m angry at myself for thinking restraint was enough. I text Adam one line before I turn on airplane mode.
I’m going to San Francisco. Don’t contact her. Don’t pull logs. I’ll handle it.
Then I stare straight ahead while the plane taxis, and my decision settles into something hard.
I won’t crowd her and I’ll do my best to ensure she doesn’t see me as a threat. I see now that this is ingrained in her biology, because she’s been running from the wrong kind of people for far too long. I’m not those people, and she knows it. She’s just too terrified to see it.
What Iwilldo is put eyes on her and ensure she and my child are safe, and if someone tries to touch her again, I won’t be asking for consent from the threat.
18
LILA
I don’t have a big dramatic reinvention story, which is annoying, because if you’re going to run, you’d think you’d at least get a montage and a new wardrobe.
What I have is a smaller city, a smaller apartment, and a name I don’t correct when people say it wrong because correcting them feels like inviting questions. I have a job that pays on time, a landlord who leaves me alone, and a grocery store where nobody recognizes me and nobody cares what I buy. I have routines that aren’t exciting but they’re mine, and right now that’s the point.
My phone has a new number, and it lives in silence unless I call someone first. I don’t scroll the old group chat anymore, and I don’t open my email unless I’m ready to see something I didn’t ask for. I tell myself I’m being smart, not paranoid, and I’m trying to be fair about that distinction because I’m tired of living like my instincts are embarrassing.
I work at a small procurement firm as an analyst, and it’s the kind of place where the printer is always angry, the coffee tastes like burnt regret, and nobody has time for power plays. Mymanager wears sneakers with suits and forgets half his meetings, and it’s the first time in years I’ve been able to exist at work without someone else’s intensity in my peripheral vision.
