Chapter 2

Sable tossed my chart onto the desk, grinning.

"Wren, don't sit there with that look. I'm blunt. I'm not like the delicate ones you're used to."

She added, "And Callum and I go way back. I've seen him shirtless on a court. I've seen him throw up on a curb. Don't treat me like a stranger."

I sat down across from her.

"Dr. Smith. The results, please."

"Wren speaks, I work."

She dragged the words out and flipped through my ultrasound and bloodwork, loud enough for the back of the room.

Her eyebrows came together.

Mine did too. "Is something wrong with the baby?"

She didn't answer right away. She looked at me. Then at my stomach.

"You're twenty-eight. You're not a kid anymore. Your body isn't what a twenty-two-year-old's is."

My palms went damp. "Is twenty-eight advanced?"

She laughed. "Don't detonate the second you hear the word. You know what shape you're in. You can't feel it?"

One of the residents glanced up at me.

"And there's the sex," she said, leaning back. "First-trimester spotting? Nine times out of ten, somebody's been going at it."

"I know Callum. Guy ran three thousand meters in college like it was a warmup."

"You're carrying now. Pace yourself."

Heat crawled up my ears.

"We haven't."

"Great answer." She put her hands up. "Look, I'm crude, I'm not wrong. We see it every day in OB. Women who cling to their husbands all night and cry in the morning when they spot. Don't be that one."

My nails went into my palm.

"Dr. Smith. Don't talk about me that way."

Something shifted in her face. "Okay, now you're being no fun."

She set the pen down.

"Doctors ask about sexual history. That's the job. You heard something dirty in it, and somehow that's on me?"

"I don't talk in circles like other women. I say what I mean. If you can't handle this, what are you going to do for the next seven months? You expect every doctor to baby you?"

My throat closed.

She pulled a second sheet from the stack and pushed it across the desk.

"Here. Let's be safe. Add these."

I looked down.

Coagulation panel. Full immune workup. Repeat thyroid. Early Pregnancy Risk Assessment Package.

Six thousand eight hundred dollars.

"Do I need all of these?"

Her eyebrows went up. "If something goes wrong later, can you live with that?"

She paused, and her voice turned generous, like she was defending him from me.

"Besides, Callum can afford it. He's exhausted as it is. Be a wife. Take something off his plate."

I sat there and got cold.

My hand went to my stomach. Nothing there yet. Flat.

And I was already too afraid to breathe.

My phone buzzed.

Callum. Still in surgery, can't get out. Did the doctor read the report? Call me if anything's wrong.

My nose stung. I reached for it.

Sable got there first and lifted it off the desk.

"I'll talk to him."

She thumbed the screen awake. "He shouldn't lose focus on the table. You get worked up and he'll think I did something to you."

I grabbed for it. "Don't touch my phone."

Every head in the room turned.

Her smile went out.

"Wren, that's a little dramatic. I offer to call your husband and you look at me like I'm going through your purse."

She made a small sound in her throat.

"Anyway. If there were something going on between me and Callum, what exactly would that have to do with you?"

My hands started shaking.

"You photographed my chart into a group chat. You made a joke about my body in front of a room full of people."

"I'm not comfortable. Is that hard to follow?"

She looked like I'd told the joke of the year.

"That group is Callum's old classmates. Family."

"And what did I send? A name and some numbers. It's not a nude. Does everything have to be a lawsuit with you?"

My voice came out thin. "That's my medical record."

She stared at me for two seconds.

Then she smiled.

"Fine. If that's the game, I'm not touching your case."

She dropped my phone on the desk and pressed the call button.

"I'll get my supervisor down here. That way you can't go crying to them that I bullied Callum's poor pregnant wife."