I did not want my children’s father destroyed.
I wanted him to stop destroying us and calling it his right to begin again.
At the clinic, the doctor ordered further testing.
Allison objected almost immediately.
She sat up and pulled the sheet higher.
“I don’t understand why you’re treating me like I’m lying.”
“No one said that,” the doctor replied.
“I am telling you what we can and cannot medically confirm.”
Derek turned toward Allison.
“Where were the first tests done?”
“I told you.
A private clinic.”
“What was it called?”
She looked at him.
“You saw the results.”
“I saw pictures you sent me.”
“You saw the test.”
“A photograph of a test.”
Jason said the room changed at that sentence.
For months, every person there had been operating from the same assumption: somebody else had verified the story.
Derek believed Allison because she had shown him a photograph.
His mother believed Derek.
Sophia believed their mother.
The aunts believed the confidence with which everyone else spoke.
And because everybody believed, nobody checked.
Allison began to cry.
Not loudly.
Her eyes filled, her breath shortened, and she pressed a hand against her stomach as though the gesture itself could protect the story.
“You said you trusted me.”
Derek’s jaw tightened.
“This isn’t about trust anymore.”
His mother stood.
“Then what is it about?”
Nobody answered her.
The doctor returned after the additional testing.
She closed the door behind her.
There was no celebration left in the room by then.
The flowers looked ridiculous.
The blue ribbon on Leah’s gift bag looked worse.
The doctor sat across from Allison and explained that the examination and testing did not confirm an ongoing pregnancy.
Allison shook her head immediately.
“No.”
The doctor continued carefully.
There could be medical explanations for conflicting symptoms or beliefs, and Allison should follow up appropriately, but the specific pregnancy she had described to the family—the one supposedly far enough along for the scan they had gathered to celebrate—was not present.
Derek stared at her.
“What did she just say?”
Allison said nothing.
He asked again.
“What did she just say?”
“She’s wrong.”
The doctor did not argue.
Derek did.
“You told me you were carrying my son.”
Allison’s voice cracked.
“I thought I was.”
“You told me you had already been tested.”
