I tried to forget that night with Daniel. I tried to forget what I had seen at the party.
But then the nausea started.
At first, I thought it was the flu. Then I counted the days.
Ten days late.
I took a pregnancy test in the restroom of a pharmacy 20 blocks from home just to avoid being recognized.
Two pink lines appeared immediately.
I stared at them, sitting on a closed toilet seat with my coat still buttoned.
My heart thudded in my throat.
Pregnant.
And the worst part? I didn’t know whose it was.
Eric and I had been together that week. But so had Daniel.
The math didn’t lie. It could be either of them.
I stuffed the test into my purse and walked home in a daze.
Eric was reading on his phone at the kitchen island.
“How’s my sunshine?” he asked without looking up.
“Fine,” I said.
It was my first lie in this new chapter, a quiet one. The kind that slips past the tongue and settles deep in the bones.
For two weeks, I carried that truth like a ticking bomb.
Every day I woke up telling myself, “Today, I’ll tell him.”
And every night, I went to bed with a secret still locked in my chest.
I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter, that the baby was Eric’s, that if I just ignored the doubt long enough, it would dissolve.
But it didn’t.
Eric became sneakier. He answered calls in the hallway. He started working late again, turned his phone face down during dinner, and I… I got sicker.
The nausea wasn’t just physical. It was emotional. A twisting weight inside me I couldn’t shake.
On a Wednesday night, while Eric watched basketball with a beer in hand, I pretended to work on spa invoices.
In reality, I was reading pregnancy forums, trying to figure out how early a DNA test could be done.
His phone buzzed again and again. He ignored it, but I didn’t.
The preview flashed.
Kelsey: You promised you’d talk to her. I can’t wait anymore.
That’s when something inside me snapped.
I stood up, walked to the bedroom, opened my top drawer, and pulled out a crumpled card.
It was the number of a women’s health clinic. I had taken it from the wall the day I bought the test, just in case.
My hands trembled as I dialed.
The woman who answered the phone sounded bored. Routine. Like she had scheduled a hundred procedures already that morning.
I gave her my name and asked for the earliest appointment available.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked, not unkindly.
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
“There’s an opening tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. Dr. Kim is on rotation. He’s excellent.”
I wrote it down on a Post-it and stuck it to the inside of my wallet. Then I flushed with nausea again and stumbled to the sink.
Eric didn’t notice. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care.
He muttered something about meeting a supplier with our spa director, then disappeared into the bedroom.
The next morning, I left before sunrise. I told Eric I was going to help my sister with something.
He didn’t ask questions.
The clinic sat tucked between a laundromat and a dental office on a quiet block near the university. It smelled like bleach and silence.
The waiting room was filled with other women, some alone, some with partners.
No one looked up. Everyone stared at their phones or their shoes.
When they called my name, Rachel Meyers, I stood on unsteady legs and followed a nurse down a long hallway lined with closed doors.
She opened one.
“Go ahead and step inside. Dr. Kim will be with you shortly.”
I walked in and stopped.
Daniel.
He sat at a desk in a white coat, flipping through a patient chart. His hair was neater than I remembered, his face calmer, but it was him.
His eyes lifted. For a second, he didn’t move. Then he blinked and said quietly, “Rachel.”
I wanted the ground to swallow me whole.
Out of every clinic in the city, every rotation, every possibility, it had to be him.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk.
I sat down, clenching my hands in my lap to stop them from shaking.
He closed the file slowly, eyes never leaving mine.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yes,” I said, though my voice cracked on the word.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t flinch. He just nodded and said, “May I tell you something first?”
I swallowed hard.
“Okay.”
He leaned back slightly in his chair as if bracing himself against something heavy.
“That night,” he said, “the night we met, I had just buried my father. Cancer. It was fast and brutal. I hadn’t slept in days. After the funeral, I went to that hotel because my father used to dance there with my mom. It was his favorite place. I just wanted to feel close to him again.”
I blinked.
His voice was so calm, but there was something raw just beneath it.
“I got into an argument with someone at the bar. I don’t even remember what it was about. I got punched, ended up outside bleeding and drunk and thinking maybe I’d just lie there until I disappeared.”
Then he looked at me directly.
“And then you showed up.”
My breath caught.
“You saved me that night. Not just physically, emotionally.”
I didn’t know what to say. I stared at my shoes.
Daniel exhaled.
“And now you’re here asking me to do something I never imagined.”
The silence between us thickened.
“I can’t talk about this,” I whispered. “I just… I can’t.”
He stood.
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything, but I do want you to be honest with yourself. Are you here because you don’t want the child or because you’re afraid?”
Tears welled up, hot and sudden.
“I’m afraid,” I admitted. “I don’t know who the father is. My husband cheated. He’s planning to leave. I’m 33 and barely hanging on. I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
Daniel nodded slowly.
“You don’t have to decide right now. You have until tomorrow to confirm. But if you do go through with it, I’ll make sure it’s done safely and respectfully.”
I stood up, ready to flee.
“Rachel,” he said as I reached the door.
I paused.
“No matter what you choose, you’re not alone.”
I didn’t look back, but his words followed me all the way out.