Chapter 2

The next morning, a doctor from the genetics clinic came by to take down our family history for the miscarriage panel.

After questioning me, the doctor turned to Ethan.

"Any history of genetic disorders on the paternal side?"

Ethan hesitated, glanced quickly at me, and kept his head down. "If... if the biological father might be someone else, does that person need to come in for testing instead?"

The doctor looked back and forth between us, momentarily stunned into silence.

The room turned dead quiet.

A wave of humiliation and fury rushed to my head.

I grabbed the clipboard off the bedside table and hurled it straight at Ethan's face. Papers scattered all over the floor.

"The baby is dead! What more do you want?!"

Ethan's face drained of color. "I just want to know why we couldn't keep the baby!"

"Haven't you already convinced yourself it wasn't yours? Does it even matter to you why it's gone?!"

"Of course it matters! You carried it!" Ethan suddenly snapped, his fists clenched tight, veins bulging on his forearms.

Sensing the explosive tension, the doctor hastily gathered the papers and slipped out of the room.

Ethan knelt, picked up the scattered medical records, and placed them on a high shelf out of my reach.

"Nora, I just need closure. This matters to me."

"Please stop throwing tantrums."

I stared at the red scrape on the back of his hand, feeling an overwhelming sense of absurdity.

That afternoon, Chloe texted him what she claimed to be the "full lab summary." It was still just isolated raw data.

The conclusion remained identical.

Ethan brought the screen over, his eyes practically begging me to confess something.

I asked him, "Didn't you say you'd pick up the official paper report yourself?"

"The geneticist is away on leave until next week. Chloe printed out the official lab notes and sent photos."

"You believe everything that comes out of her mouth."

"She's been working in that genetics lab for eight years, Nora."

"I am your wife."

Ethan frowned deeply. "Why are you comparing the two?"

"I'd like to know that myself."

I locked eyes with him. "Just because she works in a lab, when she implies I'm a cheater, you believe her without a second thought?"

"She never said you cheated."

"Then what on earth are you investigating right now?"

He averted his gaze and flipped through my ultrasound printout. "It says here the fetus was measuring nine weeks. Nora, nine weeks ago, I was out of town on a business trip."

I stared at him, dumbfounded. "You think a nine-week gestational age means the baby was conceived exactly nine weeks ago?"

"Doesn't it?"

"Gestational age is calculated from the first day of my last menstrual cycle, not the exact night we had sex!"

"Chloe told me there's an error margin between ultrasound measurements and gestational dating."

He pulled up his calendar from two months prior. "Fine, tell me. Which days was I home? Which nights was I on shift? When was I out of town?"

"Are you interrogating a criminal?"

"I'm just trying to make the timeline work!"

"And what happens after you do?"

"You've already branded me unfaithful. Do these dates even matter to you?"

I snatched the phone from his hands and locked the screen. "You know my exact routine. You know when I leave for work and when I come home. And now you expect me to account for every single hour of every day to prove I didn't sleep with someone else?!"

"Then explain to me why our baby carried a genetic disease that I don't have!"

Our voices grew too loud.

The floor nurse pushed the door open, frowning.

"Folks, this is a recovery ward. Please keep it down."

Ethan fell silent. He pocketed his phone and said quietly, "If you don't want to talk about it, fine. We'll wait for the official paternity report."

To maintain a shred of dignity in public, we tabled the argument once again.

Perhaps exhausted from the emotional toll, I spiked a high fever in the middle of the night.

"The patient has been under severe emotional stress. Her tissue is healing poorly," the nurse warned. "There's a mild post-op infection. Family needs to keep a close eye on her."

Ethan's eyes instantly turned bloodshot with worry.

He stayed up the entire night tending to me.

Dazed by the fever, I leaned weakly against his chest.

This was a chest I had rested against for six years.

When he first started working and didn't make much, he handed our shared savings entirely over to me. When we struggled to conceive and his mother pressed for answers, he shielded me from every single intrusive question.

I used to believe, with absolute certainty, that even if the whole world turned against me, Ethan would stand by my side.

Yet as I rested against his heartbeat, I heard him quietly texting Chloe on his phone.

She says gestational age pushes conception back by about two weeks.

Chloe's reply popped up almost instantly: Ultrasounds have variations too. She can spin whatever story she wants right now. Just wait for the forensic paternity test and the formal genetic review.

My mind snapped completely awake.

I pulled away from his embrace and sat up. He reached out to feel my forehead.

"Still feeling cold?"

"No."

"Then try to get some more sleep."

I turned my back to him, facing the cold hospital wall.

When I was discharged the next morning, Ethan gently wrapped a scarf around my neck. On the drive home, he kept one hand firmly over mine.

I stared out the passenger window.

I didn't pull away.

Nor did I squeeze back.