Chapter 2 - The Name on the Page
At the hospital, they put a cuff around my arm and asked me to explain the pain without apologizing for it.
I found that surprisingly difficult.
"A tightening across here," I told the triage nurse, tracing my lower belly. "It started when I bent down. I had another while I was sitting."
She read the blood pressure, waited, and measured again. The second number was better but still higher than my usual. They placed monitors against my stomach and listened to my daughter's quick, beautiful heartbeat. Dr. Reyes had come along in the ambulance, then handed my care to the obstetric team instead of pretending she was my specialist.
"We're checking for contractions and anything else that needs attention," the resident said. "You did the right thing coming in."
A plastic cup of water sat on the bedside table. I stared at it, remembering how I'd gone without a drink after Grant told us the lobby restroom was off-limits to valets during peak hours.
Nico appeared behind the curtain an hour later, still wearing his black polo and blazer. A nurse asked whether I wanted him admitted.
"Five minutes," I said.
He entered like a man unfamiliar with asking permission. "They said the baby is stable."
"They told me the monitoring looks reassuring. They're still observing me."
He nodded. "I spoke to the attending."
"Did you ask her anything about me?"
His silence answered.
"How long have you known?" he asked.
I turned the paper bracelet around my wrist. "Since January."
"That's seven months."
"I can count."
He winced. Once, when he was exhausted after meetings, he'd called me from hotel rooftops and asked what I saw from the bus window. We had dated for eleven months before he told me his father planned to put him in charge of the Meridian Palm. I hadn't wanted anyone to say I had slept my way into a position. So we'd been careful, and secret, until secrecy became a door he could shut in my face.
"You ended it at breakfast," I reminded him. "You said we couldn't want the same things. Then you stopped taking my calls."
"I believed you wanted me to choose between you and the company."
"I asked you not to let Grant cut people's hours without notice. I asked you to look at the time sheets."
He studied his hands. "My father was sick. The refinancing was close. I was hearing accusations from every direction."
"And you decided the easiest person to stop hearing was me."
He didn't argue.
"Why put my name on the medical papers?" he asked.
"Because they asked who the father was. Telling the truth wasn't a strategy."
His phone lit up with Grant's name. He silenced it. A second call arrived. He turned the screen facedown.
"I've sent your letters to my attorney," he said. "We'll find out what happened."
"You could have asked me."
The fetal monitor clicked softly. There was no music in that room, only machinery and my own breathing and a man who had once memorized how I took my coffee.
"I want to help," he said.
"Then call Marco and tell him not to erase anything. And tell Grant he isn't authorized to discuss my medical information with staff."
"Of course."
"Don't say 'of course' unless you mean it, Nico."
A nurse opened the curtain and reminded us the attending needed to examine me. Nico retreated, but at the entrance he paused.
"Is it a girl?"
I looked down at my belly. "Yes."
Something moved in his face that I didn't have the energy to interpret.
My mother arrived after dark carrying a canvas bag with a clean sweatshirt, a hair tie, and the tangerines she always brought to the hospital because the peel helped with nausea. Teresa Alvarez cleaned offices at night and had switched shifts without asking me whether I could afford to miss another day of work.
"He's here?" she said, seeing Nico's shadow beyond the curtain.
"He was."
My mother set the bag down. "Do you want him gone?"
"I want him to understand what he did."
"That's harder."
The team found no active preterm labor and arranged close follow-up. I cried into my mother's shoulder, then grew angry at myself for crying.
My phone buzzed at 9:18. Marco had sent a picture of our digital intake log. The row for Nico's sedan had been replaced by a blank space. I could see the timestamp before it, and the timestamp after it. Both were intact.
Underneath he typed: They told us it was a system error. I don't believe them.
I held the phone closer. At the bottom of Marco's screenshot was a tiny icon showing the log had been exported that afternoon.
Exported by: G. MERCER.
May you like
Then another message arrived, not from Marco.
A number I didn't recognize wrote: If you keep claiming that baby is his, the hospital will be the least of your worries.
