“Okay then, well I—” She was cut off by a knock on the door, and a nurse came in.
“Hi, I’m sorry. Mrs. Doherty? Your husband is here, and he wants to come in. Is that okay with you?”
“Of course,” I said faintly after a beat of silence. I couldn’t stop the way my body noticeably locked up and my eyes widened, and from the look on the doctor’s face when I turned back toward her, she’d seen it.
The first day Collin had ever left work early in his life, I was with a woman who was trying to see if I needed help getting away from him, knew about my birth control implant, and I’d made plans to meet Knox afterward. And that’s when I realized: Oh my God I have the secret phone in my purse. I quickly reached into my purse and shut the secret phone off, just in case Knox called or texted again, and was waiting for Collin with a bright smile when he walked in.
“Hey, baby.” He gave me a quick kiss, then shook the doctor’s hand and gave her his million-dollar smile as he introduced himself. “Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to be here for the first appointment.”
Of course, I thought, and held back a defeated laugh when it all made sense. Collin wasn’t here simply because he was excited. He was here because he didn’t trust me to be with the doctor alone. It was the same reason he wouldn’t force me into seeing a fertility specialist even though there was seemingly no reason that I never got pregnant. He was afraid they would find evidence of our home life—of the toll my body took as a result of my husband turning into a monster.
My doctor glanced at me before giving Collin her attention again. “Not a problem. I was just telling Harlow that we needed to get her in now since we had no way of knowing how far along she is.”
My arms tightened around my body at where this conversation was already going, and if Collin noticed from where he was rubbing my back, he didn’t make any indication.
“Harlow has very irregular menstrual cycles, but that is common with young women like her. Her metabolism is so high that she can’t keep weight on, and then it starts messing with her cycle.”
“Ah, of course!” Collin said, as if her explanation made complete sense.
Another knock sounded on the door. This time the nurse came in, handed something to the doctor, and walked back out.
Collin and I both stilled at her expression.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked her.
Her eyes flicked up to mine, and in the brief second that they met, I could’ve sworn that I saw worry, but didn’t understand why. “Yes, I need to do an ultrasound, though. So if you could follow me down the hall.” Halfway to the room, she said, “It will be internal, so it’s up to you, Harlow, if you want your husband in there.”
Collin’s fingers dug into my elbow, so I quickly said, “Of course . . . I want him in there.”
The doctor held her arm out to show us into the room, and again that fake smile was on her face. “Okay then. Undress from the waist down, and I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Weird woman,” Collin said once we were in the room and I was undressing. He didn’t seem happy, as he had the entire last week; he was just staring at the closed door with a confused look—like he was trying to figure the doctor out. When I was up on the exam table and covered with the sheet left there, he looked back at me and smiled. “Are you excited?”
“I am,” I lied, trying to pass off my fear as the good kind of nervousness. “I was starting to worry we’d never get here.”
“I’m back,” the doctor said as she peeked in. “You ready?”
“We are,” Collin answered, and stepped back so she could come in. With a cold glance in her direction, he came to my side and took my hand as he asked her, “Are you sure you’re okay? You looked worried in the room back there.”
The doctor quickly explained how the ultrasound was going to work, then looked at Collin as she began. “The results from Harlow’s urine came back, and her levels looked low. What we would consider a negative pregnancy test, low. But I was planning on doing an ultrasound anyway to get a good idea of where we were at, so I didn’t want to scare anyone since tests can always be weird.”
My eyes shot over to Collin, and I watched as his chest stopped moving and his body quickly locked up. Long moments passed before he started breathing again, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the screen on the wall, where he’d been expecting a baby . . . where there was nothing. Collin’s hand started squeezing mine harder and harder, but he never moved to touch me anywhere else, and his eyes never left the screen.
After another few minutes, the doctor stopped the ultrasound and sighed sadly when I sat up.
“She lost the baby?” Collin asked softly, a hint of darkness in his tone.
“No, I’m sorry. It uh . . . it looks like Harlow was never pregnant. The test must have been a false positive. Not as common as a false negative, but it can happen. Old tests, defective tests, prescriptions you may be taking, that sort of thing.”
A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, and I didn’t hear anything else the doctor or Collin said after that. Collin continued to dig his fingers into spots along the inside of my wrist, forearm, and elbow, but I’m not sure I was even reacting to them. All I could think about was what was to come.
Maybe if I had been pregnant and lost the baby, Collin would have gone easy—well, easier—on me. But to not have been pregnant at all? To get his hopes up even more than I’d planned to with my original lie? It didn’t matter that I didn’t take prescriptions. It didn’t matter that Collin bought all the tests, gave them to me, and watched me take them; I knew he would see this as my fault—as something I’d done.
I was suddenly slammed back onto the table, and Collin’s finger was digging into a pressure point on the bottom of my abdomen. My mouth opened and a soft gasp escaped my throat before his face was directly above mine.
“Shut up, Harlow,” he gritted out.
My eyes darted around the room, but I didn’t see the doctor. I hadn’t even realized she’d left.
“Where’s the baby?” he asked in a soft, dark voice.
My head shook quickly, and I tried to repeat the words that the doctor had said, but all that was coming out were squeaks of pain.
“Do not show your pain.” He emphasized his demand by digging in harder, and moved his other hand down my leg to press his fingers into the inside of my thigh. “Where is the baby?”