Ultrasound
Valeria
A good surprise is waiting for me at the lab on Monday.
As we compile the previous week’s tests, we get promising results—not definitive yet, but enough to tell us we’re heading in the right direction.
Louane is beyond excited. I discover a whole new side of her personality: when she gets enthusiastic, she talks.
A lot. Gone is her almost austere reserve—she becomes an entirely different person.
It makes me laugh.
At this rate, I’m going to have to ration her caffeine intake.
To confirm the results, we begin another series of tests.
At noon, I have lunch with Dante.
This time, he takes me to his floor. The meeting room next to his office has been transformed into an improvised buffet. The table is overflowing with catered food.
Good thing he doesn’t know I’m pregnant, otherwise he would’ve ordered twice as much.
“You’re completely insane. There’s enough food for ten people.”
“I want you to eat. I’ve noticed you haven’t had much appetite lately.”
I don’t know what to say, so I kiss his cheek.
“Thank you. You’re an angel.”
He chuckles.
Then, toward the end of the meal, as he tells me about the Pharmaceutical Convention taking place on Thursday, January 19, he grabs an orange from the fruit basket, peels it, separates it into segments, and absentmindedly hands them to me one by one without even interrupting his sentence.
Oranges are one of my favorite fruits.
He hasn’t forgotten.
I take the slices from his hand.
I suddenly have to blink hard.
It’s probably the hormones.
Then comes the moment when he has to go to the obstetrician appointment with Bianca.
“Stay at the office,” he tells me. “I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”
“No. I’m coming with you. I’ll stay in the waiting room, but I refuse to let her forget my presence for even a second. I refuse to disappear while she plays family with you. She’s the mother of your child, nothing more.”
Dante nods, and we head to the clinic together.
When we walk through the clinic’s glass doors, Bianca is already there.
She’s sitting in the waiting room, and her face lights up the moment she sees Dante. Then her gaze slides toward me, and the light instantly dies.
An icy coldness settles over her features before twisting into a smirk—that small, crooked, satisfied smile curling at the corner of her lips.
She stands and walks toward us.
“Dante. I’m so happy you’re here,” she coos.
Then she turns toward me.
“What is she doing here?”
“We’re together now,” Dante replies.
Bianca’s head snaps toward him. Her eyes immediately cloud over.
As if, despite everything, some part of her had never truly prepared herself to hear those words.
Does she love him?
The thought crosses my mind despite myself.
I see the exact moment she swallows her pain. The moment the mask slips back into place. By the time she turns toward me again, a cruel smile is already stretching across her lips.
“Valeria. You never congratulated me,” she says with mock hurt.
So much for compassion.
Would it be terrible if I punched her in the face? The idea is alarmingly tempting.
I answer her with silence, and we take our seats in the uncomfortable waiting-room chairs—Dante in the middle, Bianca and me on either side of him.
The conversations around us quiet slightly.
A few glances drift toward Dante.
Then Bianca.
Then me.
No one asks questions.
But the discomfort hangs in the air.
The tension is palpable, but I don’t care.
I chose to be here.
Bianca keeps talking to him, trying to hold his attention. Dante responds in monosyllables while pressing kisses to the back of my hand.
The nausea hits me without warning.
I fight it for several minutes, teeth clenched, refusing to let my body betray me here, now, in front of her.
But my stomach has never had a sense of timing.
I murmur a vague excuse to Dante—something that sounds like I urgently need the restroom—and stand up.
Inside the bathroom, I pull out my anti-nausea inhaler and take a deep breath, waiting for my stomach to cooperate.
I’ve just slipped it back into my bag when the door opens.
Bianca.
I stare at her, genuinely surprised.
I expected her to use my absence to close the distance between herself and Dante—but no. She chose to come here instead. Apparently, tormenting me is a priority.
We look at each other without a shred of kindness left between us.
There’s very little left to hide now—we’re past that stage.
Since she just stands there staring at me in silence, I move around her and head for the exit.
“So,” she calls after me, “what does it feel like knowing I’m carrying the child of the man you love?”
I stop.
Slowly, I turn back toward her.
“What is wrong with you, Bianca? Why did you come in here?”
“Oh, I just wanted to see your face and enjoy the moment.”
And something inside me snaps.
“What did I ever do to deserve this kind of hatred from you?”
She laughs.
A short sound devoid of joy.
“Stop pretending to be some innocent saint. You always had everything. The best parents, the best grades, the best vacations. Then Dante—rich, handsome, brilliant, and completely obsessed with you. Why you? What do you have that I don’t? Why do I only ever get the leftovers?”
The silence that follows is heavy with years of jealousy and hatred.
I really look at her.
And what I see twists my stomach.
I knew her parents had been negligent, selfish, absent. That’s why I invited her into our home when we were teenagers. That’s why my parents slowly became hers too, over the years, until the accident.
And all that time… she envied me.
She attended my wedding dreaming of stealing the man I loved.
“I’m sorry, Bianca. Truly. But here’s a newsflash for you: envying other people’s lives doesn’t make you happy. Before envying what others have, maybe ask yourself what you actually bring to the table.”
Her smile returns, slow and cruel.
“Oh, I know exactly what I have to offer,” she replies with icy softness. “A baby.”
Then she leaves the room.
When I return to the waiting room, Bianca’s chair is empty.
So is Dante’s.
I spot them at the end of the hallway, entering the consultation room. Bianca walks with her head held high, triumphant.
Dante turns around for a fraction of a second, his gaze finds mine, worried.
I force a smile. Then I sit down. And stare at that closed door as if it could give me the answers I refuse to face.
The minutes that follow are a form of personal hell.
I imagine them talking with the doctor about their baby.
Someone sits down on my left.
Stephen.
Dante must have called him.
He doesn’t say anything at first. He simply settles beside me with that way he has of occupying space without invading it, and looks at the closed door too.
“You holding up?” he finally asks.
“Yes.”
It’s a lie.
And we both know it.