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I nod and say nothing, pressing my face into his chest and thinking about what it means to bring a child into this dangerous world.

The following weeks unfold with a strange, fragile sweetness. I spend my days measuring rooms in the new space and ordering equipment for the clinic, letting myself believe that maybe, I’m allowed to be happy.

My nausea, however, refuses to cooperate with that belief. It comes and goes without warning, settling behind my ribs at odd hours. Morning, noon, the middle of the night. Exhaustion trails me through my shifts like a shadow that coffee can’t shake. My body still feels an unexplainable tenderness. My breasts ache with a new softness, and smells I never noticed now sicken me.

A dozen medical explanations exist for how I’m feeling, and I run through them in my head every morning as the nausea crests and subsides.

None of those explanations fully satisfy me, though. Through it all, my heart keeps insisting on a truth my mind refuses to accept.

In the bathroom, I grip the sink, the porcelain cool under my palms as I wait for the wave of queasiness to pass. It’s the third time this week I’ve lost my breakfast.

My mind whirls with the question I buried after the negative test.

Why is my pseudocyesis still happening?

These signs should stop now that I’ve stopped believing I’m pregnant.

Unless I haven’t?

I look at the pale, hollow-eyed version of myself in the mirror, and my hand presses against my flat belly. For a moment, I imagine Marco walking into a nursery painted soft yellow, picking up our little child, and beaming.

Then the negative test replaces that image, and I push away from the sink. I force myself to get dressed, to braid my hair, and to go to work. There’s still a lot to be done at the Santori Community Center.

Jenna needs my help. Marco needs me to be okay. I can’t fall apart over a future I built in my head and lost before it could begin.

Working a shift at the hospital these days feels strange, like I’m reassessing a life that’s no longer mine. Jenna’s at the nurses’ station when I walk in, and when she sees me, her face lights up. For a second, the world seems almost normal.

“You look terrible.” Jenna’s brow furrows as she hands me a chart and falls into step beside me. “I’ve been watching you push your food around your plate for three days. Are you going to tell me what’s actually going on? I’ve had to stop myself from prying it out of you in front of Noah.”

I chuckle. “I’m good, Jen.”

“So why does it seem like you haven’t slept in a week?” Jenna’s frown deepens, her voice heightened by the sharp concern she’s perfected over the years. “Lu. Talk to me. You’ve got that face.”

“I’m fine.” My answer comes out automatically. “Just busy working on the community center, and I’m still feeling a bit sick.”

“Get a full workup done. Diagnostic testing, metabolic panel, urinalysis, EKG…everything. I’m worried about you.” Jenna’s voice softens. “You’ve been through so much lately.”

I reply more sharply than I intend. “It’s stress. It happens. I’m fine.”

Jenna studies me for a long moment, then nods. “Okay. If you say so.”

We work throughout the morning in companionable silence, falling back into the rhythm we’ve established over years of shared shifts.

I treat a teenager with a broken wrist. His mother hovers at his shoulder, visibly relieved when I confirm it’s a clean break. I check on a grandmother with chest pain, and her hands shake as she describes the tightness, the fear, and the weight pressing against her insides. My last patient at the end of my shift is a feverish baby. Her parents narrate how her cries have been keeping the whole family up as I administer some fever-reducers.

On my way out of the hospital, my phone rings with an unknown number. When I pick up, I hear an unmistakable voice.

“Lucia, please don’t hang up.”

Mason. Calling from a burner, which means he ditched his regular number that Nico’s people were tracking.

I’ve ignored every call and deleted every message without reading, telling myself I don’t need him and that I shouldn’t trust anything he has to say if Marco and Nico are digging into him.

I hang up and turn back to the chart in my hand. Not two seconds later, the desk phone at the nurses’ station rings, and Jenna answers.

“Ashford County ER, nursing station. …Mason?” Jenna’s eyes shift to mine, her brow lifting as I shake my head vehemently. “She’s busy. Yeah, I can take a message.” She listens to him for a moment. “Matteo’s case? What do you mean, you found something?”

I go still for a half second, my mind racing.