Page 27

The door opens again, and this time it’s a doctor, gray-haired, unhurried in a way that reads as competence rather than carelessness, a clipboard tucked under one arm.

She checks my chart, checks the monitor, and asks a few questions about how I’m feeling that I answer on autopilot, still waiting for the one thing she hasn’t said yet, my whole body tensed like I’m bracing for a blow I already half-know is coming.

“Your bloodwork came back consistent with a reaction to something ingested, likely in your food. We’re treating for that now, and you should continue improving steadily over the next day or so.” She glances at the chart again, unhurried, like she delivers news like this every day and has long since stopped letting it show on her face either way. “The pregnancy test came back positive, for what it’s worth. Given your vitals otherwise, everything there looks stable too.”

I don’t say anything right away. The words land the way a stone lands in still water, no sound at first, just the ripples spreading out slowly from the point of impact, working their way outward until they’ve touched every part of me.

“Positive,” I repeat, mostly to hear myself say it out loud, to see if saying it out loud makes it feel any more real than it currently does.

“Yes. Very, very early, based on the levels, but positive.” She studies me for a second, professionally reading how I’m taking the news and gauging whether I need anything more from her right now. “Do you want a few minutes before anyone else comes in? I can hold off on letting your partner back in the room.”

I nod, unable to manage words for that one, and she leaves without pushing further, the door clicking shut behind her the same quiet way it did for the nurse before her.

Alone, I let myself actually feel it, whatever it is that’s rising under the shock, too tangled to name rightly right now. Fear, first, because pregnant is not a word I ever planned to hear inside a life like this one, restrained, uncertain, built on captivity before anything else. I think about my own mother, gone before I was old enough to really know her, and some old ache surfaces alongside the fear, a question about whether I even know how to do this.

Then something else creeps in underneath the fear, harder to name clearly. It’s not happiness exactly, something that has his face attached to it even though I haven’t let myself think through what this means for him—or us.

I picture him hearing this news, try to guess at what his face might do, and can’t land on a single clear guess no matter how many times I run through it.

I press both hands flat against my stomach, still mostly numb from the anesthesia they must’ve given me at some point, and try to imagine an actual person growing there, something real instead of an abstract fact delivered in a doctor’s flat, professional voice.

It doesn’t feel real yet.

I’m not sure how long it takes for something like this to start feeling real, whether it happens all at once or arrives the same way the fatigue and the nausea did, in small unnoticed pieces until one day the whole shape of it is simply there.

I don’t cry. I don’t laugh either, though some strange pressure builds behind my sternum that could tip into either given the smallest push. I just lie there, hands on my stomach, running through every possible shape of what happens next that I can think of and settling on none of them, because none of them feel like they belong to a life I ever agreed to live in the first place.

A knock sounds at the door, and I know without looking that it’s him.

I straighten up as much as the IV line allows, wipe my palms against the blanket even though there’s nothing on them, and try to arrange my face into something that won’t give it away before I’ve even decided how exactly I want to say it.

“Come in,” I say, my voice more stable than I expect it to be.

18

ARTEM

I push the door open slower than I mean to, some instinct in me bracing for whatever state I’m about to find her in.

She’s sitting up against the pillows, color back in her face, better than she looked when they wheeled her in last night, pale and gasping, her hand crushing mine like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the room.

“How are you feeling?” I pull the chair closer to the bed, close enough to take her hand, which I do without asking.

“Better… Tired.” She studies my face for a few beats. “They said it was something in the food.”

“I know. I’m having it looked into.” I don’t tell her the rest of what I know yet, that I’ve already started running through every person who had access to that kitchen last night, that Nadia took the tray up herself for reasons I still haven’t fully accounted for. There’s time for that conversation. Not this one, not while she’s sitting here with an IV in her hand and a night in this bed still ahead of her.

The doctor knocks twice and lets herself in before I can answer, clipboard in hand, the same unhurried competence I remember from when they first brought Harper in last night, gray hair pulled back, glasses pushed up on top of her head. “Good, you’re both here. I wanted to go over recovery and discharge timing before you head home.”

“Go ahead.” I keep my voice level, giving nothing away yet.

“Physically, she’s stable, and the treatment’s working the way we’d expect. I’d like to keep her one more night for observation, purely as a precaution, and then she should be fine to go home tomorrow with some basic aftercare instructions.” She flips a page on the clipboard. I catch Harper’s hand tightening slightly in mine, some tension building in her that I don’t yet understand the source of. “Given the positive pregnancy result, I’d also recommend she follow up with an OB within the next week or two, just to confirm dating and make sure everything’s progressing normally.”

The words land somewhere behind my sternum, like they need a second to travel the full distance before they mean anything.

“Positive?” I repeat, and the word comes out flatter than I intend it to, not because I feel nothing, but because everything I do feel is arriving at once, too fast to sort into any order I recognize, layers of it stacking up faster than I can process each one individually.

“Yes. I assumed you’d already discussed it.” The doctor glances between the two of us, catching something in the room she wasn’t expecting. “My apologies. I’ll give you two a minute.”