I looked at the man I had loved for nearly a decade, holding the life of our true miracle inside me—a miracle that, through a twist of medical fate and a brief separation period where we had tried one last time before his “surgery,” was entirely his biologically, despite his self-diagnosis.

He had ruined our love over his own wounded pride. I wiped the gel from my stomach, stood up from the table, and walked out of the clinic, leaving him alone in the dark room with his lies.