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The pieces of the puzzle fall into place one after the other, a row of dominoes tumbling down with a sickening series of clicks.
Misha.
Ivanov Industries.
The gun-filled standoff between him and the CEO with the nasty eyes.
It all hits me like another car accident. Before I can fully process everything, Misha walks into my hospital room.
“There he is!” the nurse says, giving me a smile. “She’s been asking for you, sir.”
I have?
Misha doesn’t even look at the woman. His eyes are pinned on me. “Would you mind giving my wife and me some privacy?”
The nurse nods and slips out of the room. I’m left alone, still reeling. Honestly, I should’ve known.
“Wh… what the hell are you playing at?” I demand through fat, stubborn lips.
“I’m supposed to be gentle with you,” he says impatiently, like he’s obeying that instruction but he’s not happy about it. “They said you might be disoriented.”
“Not disoriented enough to miss the fact that you’re parading around as my husband!”
“They wouldn’t give me the results of your test unless I was a direct family member,” he explains with a shrug.
But it isn’t an explanation at all. “What test?”
“In the course of treating you, the doctors needed to know as much about your current health as possible. They ran a few tests. One of them returned with an… interesting result.”
My stomach bottoms out. “Misha,” I breathe, “what kind of—A test? What test is it? Am I—”
“You’re pregnant.”
I blink slowly, the information bouncing off of me like a rubber ball off a black top. “I can’t get pregnant.”
“We have proof that you are.”
I shiver and pull the covers up over my body, as if that’ll hide me from him. As if that’ll protect me from him. “Wedon’t have anything. You had no right! This is my body. I get to decide what’s done to it. You aren’t my husband. I did not consent to you knowing anything about my health or—”
But the words are fluttering and dying on my lips. Premature baby birds that never had a chance of taking to the air. It’s loss in its purest form, desperate and ugly. That weird and intangible sense offailure.
This feeling and I are on very, very intimate terms.
The first time we met, I was sitting in a different room in a different hospital. Anthony got caught up with work at the office, so I was alone.
Building a business means making personal sacrifices.Anthony repeated that all the time. It might’ve been annoying if I didn’t agree with him. Besides, I wasn’t afraid of making sacrifices. I wanted to be better than my parents. More generous, more supportive, more willing to sacrifice for the greater good.
Even when it felt like I was the one doing most of the sacrificing.
“I’m sorry, Paige,”Dr. Gilpin told me that day, his hands clasped together on his desk.“From what we are able to tell, it will be impossible for you to ever get pregnant.”
I knew intellectually that it wasn’t my fault. Emotionally, it was a whole different story. The framed picture of Dr. Gilpin on a fishing trip with his two grinning boys on his desk felt like a slap in the face. The sound of a baby crying in the hallway outside felt like a knife in the gut.
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
What a violent, disgusting word.
The way I felt then is the way I feel now as the door opens and a new, strange doctor walks into my room. He’s an older man with drooping eyes and rounded shoulders. But his hands—those are just like Dr. Gilpin’s. Pale and frail and veiny and somehow nauseating. Do all doctors who come with terrible news have hands like that?
