Page 1 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

Chapter One

MAGGIE

The last injection hurts more than the others.

Medically, it’s the same tiny needle, same chilled vial, same brisk alcohol swab dragged over the same patch of skin on my lower abdomen. It doesn’t deserve a soundtrack. It doesn’t deserve my betrayal face.

Still, I give it one.

The nurse presses cotton to the spot and says, “All done, Maggie.”

All done.

As if I had just finished a manicure and not completed the final hormonal step before a very wealthy man’s very expensive reproductive plan attempted to rent space inside my uterus.

“Great,” I say, because that’s what people say in clinics when the correct response is technically screaming.

The nurse gives me a polite smile. She has the soft voice of someone who has said “mild discomfort” to too many women with a straight face. “You may feel some bloating today,” she says.

I look down at myself. “I’m going to be honest, I feel like an emotionally unstable dumpling already.”

This should feel like a milestone. A tiny medical drumroll. A little body-sponsored parade. Instead, it feels like someone has inflated a balloon inside my pelvis and written “financial decisions” on it in permanent marker.

I sit up slowly, one hand pressed to the cotton ball taped to my stomach.

The nurse smiles at me. She’s young, maybe a year or two older than me, with very neat eyebrows and the calm, hydrated look of someone who meal preps. I distrust her immediately.

“You may feel some tenderness at the injection site,” she says.

“I’ve developed a deep personal relationship with tenderness.”

She pauses.

I smile.

She decides not to ask. Smart woman.

“You’re free to get dressed. Ms. Lindqvist is waiting outside.”

Of course she is.

Petra Lindqvist is always waiting outside.

Not hovering. Hovering implies emotional investment. Petra waits the way a guillotine waits. Upright, polished, and certain gravity will do the rest.

The nurse leaves. I swing my legs over the side of the exam table and look down at myself. Paper gown. Socks. Slightly bruised stomach. Hair in a bun that started the morning as “efficient medical student” and has now become “feral Victorian orphan.”

Beautiful. Truly, if fertility had a mascot, I would be asked to leave the audition.

I peel off the paper gown, get dressed, and try not to think too hard about the fact that this is the last stop before the actual procedure. The injections are done. The prep is done. My body has been poked, monitored, timed, measured, encouraged, and billed.

In three days, the clinic introduces Alester Chandler’s genetic material to the very expensive chaos garden currently happening inside me.

Alester Chandler himself is not here. He hasn’t been here for any of the injections.

This isn’t surprising. Men like Alester Chandler do not attend injections. They attend board meetings, legacy dinners, and probably oil paintings of their ancestors.

He sends Petra. Always Petra.