Today. Not the promise I want, but enough to keep me breathing.
Lorenzo closes his eyes briefly, as if the words hit him somewhere deep. When he opens them again, they are blazing.
“What caused this?”
The doctor strips off one glove. “Stress could contribute. So could dehydration. So could something ingested.” Her gazesweeps the room with new sharpness. “What has she had to drink?”
On the bedside table sits a glass of water. I hadn’t thought about it. I drank from it in the night, half-asleep and grateful for anything to ease the dryness in my throat.
The doctor reaches for it then frowns.
“This was given to her?”
Lorenzo’s voice drops into something deadly quiet. “Why?”
She lifts the glass toward the light. The water is slightly cloudy. Not enough to notice casually. But now that she’s holding it up, I can see it—the faint haze drifting through it, wrong somehow against the clear glass. My stomach turns.
The doctor brings it to her nose and inhales once. Her whole face changes.
“What is in this?”
Lorenzo takes one step forward. “What?”
She smells it again, more carefully this time, then sets the glass down with deliberate precision, like it has become dangerous in her hand.
“This is not plain water,” she says.
A chill skates over my skin.
Lorenzo’s jaw locks. “Tell me.”
“It smells medicinal. Bitter.” Her eyes flicker to me, then back to him. “I can’t identify it by scent alone, but it smells like something that should never have been near a pregnant woman.”
My hand flies to my stomach.
The doctor’s voice sharpens. “Did you put anything in this yourself?”
“No!”
How could she think I would do this to myself?
The doctor continues, each word clipped and precise. “Whatever this is, it may have been enough to trigger crampingand bleeding. Enough to threaten the pregnancy.” She looks at Lorenzo without blinking. “If she drank this, someone may have tried to make her miscarry.”
A shudder tears through me.
Lorenzo hears it. He turns back to me at once, and whatever murder is in his face gentles by a fraction when he looks at me.
“Elizabeth.”
I shake my head. “No.”
His voice is rough. “No what?”
“No one was supposed to know.” Terror claws up my throat. “No one. Who did you tell?”
The doctor is already opening her bag again, pulling out vials, swabs, something to collect a sample. “I’m taking this for testing. She needs fluids, monitoring, and complete bed rest. And if there is anyone in this house you do not trust?—”
Lorenzo laughs once. It’s the coldest sound I have ever heard.
