Page 190 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

Because we both know how this works. We both know what a full inherited-marker analysis can clarify, even when nobody names it directly. If the result fits the profile they expect, then this collapses back into medical management and routine follow-up. If it doesn’t, then all the uncertainty I shoved at her in that room stops being theoretical.

She looks away first. “I hate this,” she says quietly.

“The waiting?”

“The waiting, the not knowing, the fact that everyone else gets to sound calm about something that doesn’t feel calm from inside my body.”

I watch her for a second before answering.

“Because they’re not the ones standing in the middle of it,” she says.

There’s too much bitterness in that for me to ignore.

“Maggie.”

“No, it’s true.” She folds her arms again. “And you—” She stops.

“And I what?”

Her eyes lift to mine. “You go quiet like you’ve already gone all the way to the end of the problem.”

I don’t answer immediately because she isn’t wrong.

I have gone there. More than once.

I’ve already thought through what the result could mean medically, privately, legally, professionally. I’ve thought about what happens if the child is Alester’s, and what happens if it isn’t. One version is difficult. The other is combustible.

That’s what she hears in my silence, I think. Not certainty. Preparedness.

And maybe she hates that because she doesn’t have room to prepare yet.

“I’m not at the end,” I say finally.

For a moment she just looks at me, tired and angry and more vulnerable than she wants to be in my apartment. Then she says, “I don’t know what I want the result to say.”

If the child is Alester’s, then this stays inside the arrangement she agreed to. It stays ugly, but it stays contained. It stays in a world with paperwork and expectations and rules that existed before I touched her.

I don’t want that for her. Even if some selfish, ruined part of me can’t stop reaching toward the thought anyway.

“I hope the result makes things simpler,” I say.

It isn’t the whole truth, but it’s close enough to stand in the room with us.

She studies my face. “You almost sound like you mean that.”

“I do mean it.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “What?”

I hold her gaze. “I hope the child is Alester’s.”

She looks at me like she wants to argue and knows I’m not wrong enough for it to be satisfying.

“That’s not all you mean,” she says.

No. It isn’t.

I don’t tell her the rest.