Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
Breaking Points
Lena
Four days since the bleeding stopped. Four days of bedrest, of careful movements, of measuring my life in milliliters of urine output and blood pressure readings. Four days since I mouthed "please" to Zane through the glass, though I still don't know what I was begging for.
The room smells like industrial laundry and the particular staleness of recycled air.
My skin feels grimy despite the bed baths, and I can taste the metallic residue of too many medications.
The mag makes me flush hot, then cold, sweat pooling in uncomfortable places while my hands shake from dehydration the IV can't quite fix.
"Your blood pressure's better," Dr. Morrison says, checking the automatic cuff's latest reading. "120 over 78. Much improved."
"Can I—"
"No. Whatever you're about to ask, no. No walking except to the bathroom. No visitors who raise your heart rate. No news about the outside world. You're a human incubator now, Lena. Your only job is to keep that baby inside for as many more weeks as possible."
She leaves, and I'm alone with the rhythmic whoosh of the baby's heartbeat and my own fracturing thoughts.
Twenty weeks and four days. Every day inside gives our child a better chance.
At twenty-four weeks, the survival rate jumps to 60%.
At twenty-eight weeks, 90%. Eight more weeks of this medical purgatory, of existing in suspended animation while the world burns outside.
My phone buzzes. A text from a number I don't recognize:
This is Tommy. Zane doesn't know I'm texting. The war stopped. Both sides holding positions but no new violence. He's respecting your need for space. Just thought you should know.
I delete it immediately, but the words stick like splinters. The war stopped. Because of the baby? Because of Zane? Because even violence exhausts itself eventually?
A knock interrupts my spiraling. Sister Margaret enters—the nun who took us in after our parents died, though I haven't been to confession in months. She still smells like church incense and the particular soap they use at the convent. Comfort and guilt mixed into one tiny Irish woman.
"Heard you were having a time of it," she says, pulling the visitor's chair close. Her accent turns 'time' into 'toime,' soft and musical.
"Sister, I can't—"
"Hush. I'm not here for confession, child. Though Lord knows you could use it." She eyes the monitor, the IV poles, the evidence of medical crisis. "Twenty weeks is early."
"Too early."
"Aye. But sometimes the smallest seeds grow the strongest trees, given the right soil.
" She takes my hand, careful of the IV. "I called Tommy to check on you—the boy's been beside himself with worry.
He mentioned your young man's been sleeping in the waiting room.
Four days now. Showering in the staff locker room when the nurses take pity. "
"He's not my—"
"No? Then what is he? The father of your child who betrayed your trust so fundamentally you nearly miscarried from the shock?" Her directness cuts through the mag fog. "Or the man who's stopped a war to keep you calm enough to carry to term?"
"Both. Neither. I don't know."
"The surveillance was wrong," she says simply.
"Violation dressed as protection. Tommy told me about it when I called—said you'd discovered something awful.
But I've seen him these four days. He's not eating, barely sleeping.
Tommy brings him food he doesn't touch. He stands at your window when he thinks you're sleeping, just..
. watching. But different from before. Like he's memorizing you in case you disappear. "
"Good. Let him suffer."
"Oh, child. He is. But that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if his suffering helps your healing. If his pain eases yours. If watching him waste away through that window makes your baby stronger."
The monitor beeps—baby's heart rate jumping to 175. Sister Margaret eyes it knowingly.
"Your brother came yesterday," she says quietly, and I feel my whole body tense. "While you were sleeping. Stood in the doorway for twenty minutes, just looking at you. At the monitors. At what he's done."
"He didn't—"
"No, didn't come in. Couldn't, I think. The weight of it—seeing you like this, knowing his part in it—it broke something in him. I've known that boy since he was twelve, angry and scared after your parents died. Never seen him cry like that." She adjusts her habit. "He left this."
She pulls out a small envelope, Miguel's careful handwriting spelling my name.
"I don't want—"
"You don't have to read it now. Or ever. But it's yours to decide." She places it on the bedside table, just out of reach but visible. "Sometimes the hardest prison to escape is the one we build from other people's sins against us."
"He chose war over me. His own sister."
"Aye. And you chose a love that started a war. Both of you choosing things that burn everything down." She stands, joints creaking. "The question now is whether you'll let it all stay ash or try to build something new."
"Stress kills," she says. "Seen it enough in my seventy years.
But so does unfinished business. Untied knots.
Unspoken words." She pauses at the door.
"I'll be holding a special service tomorrow.
Neutral ground. Hospital chapel. Both clubs invited to pray for this baby.
Separately, of course—Coyote Fangs at noon, Talons at one. "
"Miguel won't come."
"Already confirmed he will. Seems even men who've forgotten God remember Him when babies are dying." She looks back at me. "Your young man asked if you'd see him. Just five minutes. Supervised, if you prefer."
"I can't. The stress—"
"Will be there whether you see him or not. Question is whether you want to carry it alone or start laying it down." She adjusts her habit. "Think on it. The baby needs both parents whole, not broken. And right now, you're both shattered glass trying not to cut anyone but yourselves."
She leaves me with that image—Zane and me, broken glass. Our baby growing in the spaces between our sharp edges, trying not to get cut.
My phone buzzes again. This time it's Zane:
I know you said no contact. I'm sorry. Delete this if you need to. But I wanted you to know: I had all the surveillance destroyed. Every file, every photo, every transcript. Burned it all. Not asking for forgiveness. Just wanted you to know it's gone. All of it. You're free.
I read it three times before deleting it, but the words burn themselves into my brain anyway.
You're free. As if freedom is possible when you're chained to someone by DNA replicating inside your womb.
As if destroying evidence erases violation.
As if anything is ever really gone once it's been seen.
But something in my chest loosens, just slightly. A fist unclenching one finger at a time.
The baby moves—not the frantic movements from before but something softer. A roll, maybe. A stretch. Signs of a nervous system that might be calming, might be finding peace in the chaos.
I text back from my own number, two words:
Five minutes.
Then I delete that too, but I know he screenshots everything now. Know he'll be here within seconds of reading it. Know I'm opening a door I might not be able to close.
But Sister Margaret was right. Broken glass cuts deepest when you try to hold it alone.
The door opens ninety seconds later. He looks like death warmed over—hollow eyes, stubble past fashionable into desperate, the kind of weight loss that happens when you forget your body needs fuel. He stops just inside the doorway, like there's an invisible line he won't cross.
"Hi," he says, and his voice cracks on that single syllable.
"You look like shit."
"You look beautiful."
"I'm covered in four days of sweat and mag sulfate. I smell like a hospital."
"You're alive. The baby's alive. That's beautiful to me."
We stare at each other across eight feet that might as well be eight miles. The monitor continues its rhythm—baby's heartbeat, my heartbeat, the spaces between where his should be.
"You burned it all?" I finally ask.
"Everything. Tommy witnessed it. Every photo, every file, every backup. It's gone."
"But not from your memory."
"No," he admits. "Not from there."
"So you still know. Everything you read, saw, heard. It's all still in your head."
"Yes."
At least he's honest. The mag makes me feel floaty, disconnected, but also somehow clearer. Like I can see through to the bone of things.
"The war really stopped?"
"Forty-eight-hour ceasefire. Renewable if..." He gestures vaguely at my belly. "If needed."
"And Miguel?"
"Hasn't left the hospital. His car's been in the parking garage for two days. Can't come up, can't leave." He takes a half-step forward, then stops. "Carlito says he cries. Alone in his car, he cries."
"Good."
"Lena—"
"No." The word comes out sharp enough to raise my blood pressure—I can feel it in the sudden head rush. "You don't get to 'Lena' me. Not yet. Maybe not ever. You violated something fundamental. You took my agency, my privacy, my trust, and you twisted it into some sick version of love."
"I know."
"Do you? Do you really understand what you did? Every patient who trusted me with their darkest moments—you made me complicit in violating them. Every time I thought I was alone, processing, healing, being human—you were there, watching, judging, cataloging."
"I wasn't judging—"
"You were CONSUMING. Like I was content to be devoured." The baby's heart rate jumps—170, 175. I force myself to breathe, to calm. "And the worst part? The absolute worst part? You did it AFTER I loved you. Like my love was a trigger for your need to own me completely."
He sinks into the visitor's chair—the same one Sister Margaret just vacated—and puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, there are actual tears.
"I was terrified," he says, so quiet I almost miss it.
"The moment you said you loved me, I was fucking terrified.
Because love means loss in my world. Everyone I've loved has been taken—by violence, by betrayal, by death.
And you... you were this perfect, clean thing in my dirty world, and I thought if I could just know everything, control everything, I could keep you safe. Keep you mine."
"But I wasn't yours to keep. I was my own person who CHOSE to be with you. And you turned that choice into surveillance."
"I know. I know. I destroyed us trying to preserve us." He looks at the monitor, at our baby's heartbeat. "And I almost killed our child doing it."
The truth of that sits between us, heavy as the magnesium in my veins.
"Five minutes are up," I say.
He stands immediately, no argument. But at the door, he turns back.
"The chapel thing tomorrow. Sister Margaret's service. Will you... would it be okay if I went? Not to see you, just to pray. For the baby."
I want to say no. Want to punish him more. But I think about broken glass trying not to cut, about our child growing between sharp edges.
"Noon is Coyote Fangs. Stay with your club."
He nods, understanding more than I'm saying. I'm giving him permission to exist in the same building. To pray to the same God for the same child. It's not forgiveness—not even close. But it's a crack in the wall. A finger unclenching from a fist.
After he leaves, the baby settles. Heart rate dropping to 155, then 150. Still high but better. Like maybe they feel the difference when both parents aren't drowning in cortisol and rage.
I close my eyes, hand on my belly, and try to imagine a future where trust rebuilds, where surveillance doesn't mean love, where our child grows up free to have secrets, to make mistakes, to exist unwatched.
It feels impossible. But then again, so does keeping this baby inside for twenty more weeks.
Sometimes impossible is all we have.