Chapter 9
Nina
The tap is still running. I don’t remember turning it on.
Three sticks lined up on the edge of the tub, timers counting down like synchronized grenades.
I didn’t mean to do all of them at once, but once I opened the boxes it felt inevitable.
Like if I tested one at a time, the first could be wrong.
The second a fluke. Three is data. Three is confirmation.
Three means I can’t lie to myself after.
My back’s against the wall. I’m sitting on the bath mat, knees bent, jeans still caught around my ankles. I can’t remember if I wiped. I think I did. Maybe.
The tests are just shapes. Plastic and pink. The light above the mirror is too bright, buzzing faintly like it’s about to burn out. It’s the only sound besides the tap.
I should look.
But my head won’t turn to look straight on, as if keeping them in my periphery will keep the answer at bay.
Something’s wrong with my hands. They’re on my thighs but they don’t feel like mine.
My stomach twists. Not nausea this time—just a slow, grinding clamp like something inside me has decided to self-destruct.
I think of the copper coil curled inside me. My silent sentinel. My failsafe. I remember the insertion. The way I gripped the edges of the exam table, trying not to flinch. The doctor had said it was good for ten years. That it would protect me.
Three years in. And still, here I am.
I breathe, but it’s not working. The air goes in, but nothing settles.
I don’t mean to look. My head just tilts, like the weight of it’s too much to hold. My eyes land on the first test. Then the second. Then the third.
All three. Same result.
Two lines.
The room sways. I reach for the edge of the tub, miss, and end up curled on my side instead, one arm folded under me, the other splayed against the tile like it might anchor me to the floor.
I can’t breathe past the sound in my ears. A low rush, like wind or blood or memory.
Something cracks loose. Not in the room—inside me.
And suddenly I’m eight again.
“Hold my hand, baby. Don’t look.”
My mother’s voice, sharp and calm. I remember her face slick with sweat, lips pale.
The midwife was yelling. Nothing was going right. It wasn’t how they said it would be.
I was told it would be beautiful. A beginning. A miracle.
But there was blood. So much blood.
Then nothing.
My mother stopped breathing.
My father pulled me out of the room by the arm. Left me in the hallway.
Sirens came later. So did the grief.
I never went back in.
I don’t remember the baby.
Just the sound of the door closing behind me. And how quiet the world was after.
There’s something in my throat now. A keening, silent thing that won’t come out. My body curls tighter.
I don’t hear the door open. I only feel the shadow shift across the tile.
“Nina?”
The voice doesn’t register right away. I think it’s hers, at first. I brace for it—panic, instructions, screaming.
But then a hand touches my shoulder.
“Nina—hey—hey, I’ve got you.”
Callie.
I blink. The lights smear sideways.
She’s kneeling beside me now, hands warm and careful. Her voice low, steady. “Come on. Let’s get you up, okay? You’re okay. I’m here.”
I don’t know how she gets me upright. Just that I’m standing somehow. My pants up and fastened. I’m walking, maybe. Floating.
The couch appears like a hallucination. A mug in my hands. Steam curling from the rim.
I still haven’t said anything.
I don’t know if I can.
The couch is soft, but I’m perched on the edge like I might need to flee. Callie doesn’t speak. She sits beside me, close but not crowding, legs tucked up under her like we’re watching a movie. Her presence hums quietly against my skin, not quite comfort—just a signal that I’m not alone.
The tea is too hot. I wrap both hands around the mug anyway, fingers stiff with tension. The steam stings my eyes.
Neither of us speaks.
I sip. Just once. Then again. Halfway through the mug, I start to shake. It’s not dramatic—not the kind of tremble that comes with sobbing. Just a slow, creeping tremor that moves through my wrists and up my forearms like my body’s trying to reboot but keeps glitching.
I spill. Just a little. A slosh of warmth down one side of the mug, a dark circle blooming on the throw blanket. I flinch like I’ve broken something sacred.
Callie moves without a word. She crosses the room and grabs a dish towel from the kitchen counter. When she returns, she crouches in front of me and blots the blanket like it’s nothing. No fuss, no commentary.
That’s what breaks me.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper.
She doesn’t move. Just presses the towel into the fabric. Waiting.
“I can’t—” My throat tightens. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to be pregnant.”
Callie looks up then, unsurprised but attentive.
“It might be Chris’s,” I add, because some part of me is bracing for her to judge. “And I know what that means. I know she—or he—would be your family.”
She doesn’t react; her expression is the same open, quiet focus she’s carried since I sat down.
“I should be able to do this. Fulfill my—” I stop. The shame is bile in my mouth. “Jesus. I was about to say ‘purpose.’ Like I’m a fucking incubator that failed quality control.”
Callie sits back on her heels, folding the towel in her lap. “That’s not your purpose,” she says. Dry. Sharp. “That’s some patriarchal bullshit that got stuck in your brain when you were too young to throw it out.”
I laugh. Sort of. It cracks on the way out.
She leans forward again, elbows on her knees. “Nina. You don’t owe anyone a reason. Not me. Not Chris. Not Wyatt. Not the universe. You already made a choice years ago. This doesn’t change that.”
“I thought I was safe.”
“I know.”
“I was. Statistically.”
“Fuck statistics,” she says gently.
The silence comes back, but softer now. She doesn’t fill it. Just lets me sit in it with her.
I take another sip of the tea. It’s cooled now. Drinkable.
“I need help,” I say.
“I know.”
“Tonight. I can’t—I can’t wake up tomorrow with this still in me.”
She nods once, no hesitation. “I’ll make a call.”
Callie stands. Moves with the same quiet focus she uses in surgery—every motion efficient, unhurried, certain.
She pulls her phone from her pocket as she walks toward the back patio, where the signal is strongest. She doesn’t even ask if I want her to stay inside.
Just gives me space. Like she knows the difference between alone and abandoned.
I set the mug down, hands still trembling.
There’s a tightness behind my eyes that I’ve been holding off for hours. Days. Maybe years. But watching her on the other side of the glass—phone pressed to her ear, one hand braced on the patio railing—I start to unravel.
She’s already pacing. I can’t hear the words, but I know that body language. It’s her surgeon voice. Calm but firm. Explaining things in just enough detail to make impossible things happen.
I press the heel of my hand to my eye, hard.
It’s too much.
Not just the fear or the blood-soaked memory my brain won’t let go of. It’s her. The fact that she didn’t even blink. That I whispered something raw and awful and she didn’t flinch or judge or try to soften the edges.
She nodded, said, “I’ll make a call.” That’s it.
I start crying before I realize it’s happening.
Not a sob. Just… the kind of crying that leaks out when your body gives up on dignity. Silent, steady tears tracking down my face and pooling in the hollow of my throat.
I used to cry like this at Callie’s house. After the funeral. When the casseroles and the side-eyed sympathy dried up and I was just a kid with a dead mom and a dad who couldn’t handle anything.
Dad’s withdrawal was worse in some ways.
He didn’t hit me. Didn’t scream. He just…
stopped. I learned how to microwave frozen dinners before I learned to drive.
I did my own laundry, patched my own clothes.
Taught myself how to look fine in the morning, even when I’d slept on the floor because I couldn’t stand the smell of her shampoo on my pillow.
Callie never asked.
She just started leaving the back door unlocked.
Sometimes I’d show up at ten o’clock with a backpack and a book and nothing to say. Her mom would pretend I was there for a sleepover. Her dad would make hot chocolate like it wasn’t the fourth time that week.
I learned how to breathe again in that house.
Callie never pushed. She never pried.
She just sat with me. Like she’s doing now.
She comes back in, eyes scanning me like she already knows I’ve been crying but won’t say it out loud. She kneels again, rests a hand on my knee.
“They can see you tonight,” she says. “It won’t be at a clinic. It’ll be private. Safe. You’ll be home in no time.”
I nod and try to speak, but my throat catches on the first word. So I just squeeze her hand instead.
She squeezes back.
“I’ll drive,” she says softly. “Whenever you’re ready.”
The sun’s setting by the time we cross Sepulveda.
Traffic’s light—it’s Sunday, and the city feels like it’s gone quiet on purpose. Westwood gets cleaner the closer we get to the medical district. Fresh paint. Wide sidewalks. Even the graffiti looks like an aesthetic choice.
It’s nothing like Westlake where Callie lives now.
Mason’s street is all sagging porches and iron fences, narrow lots crammed with history and deferred maintenance.
You can still hear kids playing outside after dark, but only if you’re close enough to notice the security bars on every window.
I’d only been there once, right after I found out Chris wasn’t dead.
“This area’s so different from yours,” I murmur, more to myself than to Callie.
She glances over. “You mean Mason’s?”
I nod.
She makes a soft sound in her throat. “He’s planning to renovate it and put it on the market once our new place is finished. If he can get his mom to agree.”
“She doesn’t want to let go.”
“No. Too many ghosts in the walls. She raised all her kids there.”
I look out the window. “Too much love. That’s always the trap.”