I booked my first prenatal appointment for the eight-week mark. I begged Diego to come. I screamed, I pleaded, I told him that if he had any respect for our history, he would sit in that room and hear the truth from a licensed medical professional.

To my surprise, he finally agreed. But his conditions were cold: “I’m only going to see the proof of your lies on that screen, and then I’m calling a divorce lawyer.”
The day of the ultrasound, the tension in the car was so thick I could barely swallow. We sat in the waiting room of the clinic like two strangers waiting for a verdict in a courtroom. When my name was called, we walked into the sterile, dimly lit room. I lay down on the table, staring at the ceiling, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The ultrasound technician, a kind-faced woman named Sarah, smiled warmly at us. “Alright, let’s see how our little one is doing,” she said cheerfully, applying the cold, clear gel to my lower abdomen.

Diego stood in the far corner of the room, his arms tightly crossed over his chest, staring at the blank monitor with a smirk of grim satisfaction. He was waiting for the moment my “lie” would be exposed.
Sarah pressed the transducer against my skin and began moving it around. On the black-and-white screen, the grainy image of my uterus appeared. I held my breath, waiting to see the tiny flickering heartbeat of the miracle I had prayed for.

But as Sarah moved the wand, her cheerful expression suddenly faltered. The easy smile vanished from her face. She squinted at the monitor, tapping a few keys on her machine, her brow furrowing deeply. She glanced at me, then looked over at Diego, her eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and profound unease.

The silence in the room became heavy, suffocating.
“Is… is everything okay?” I whispered, terror gripping my chest. “Is there a heartbeat?”
Sarah swallowed hard, looking back at the screen. “There is a heartbeat, Laura. The fetus is measuring perfectly at eight weeks. But… that’s not what’s concerning me.”