Chapter Forty-Three
FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, I lived inside a carefully curated bubble of delusion.
It was surprisingly easy. If denial were an Olympic sport, I would’ve been draped in gold.
I went to work, wrote prescriptions, smiled at patients, and pretended there wasn’t a tiny, rapidly dividing human growing inside me.
Other than the ten different urine-stained sticks hiding in my bathroom trash can like crime scene clues, and the small—but undeniably present—bump I’d written off as a side effect of post-Khalifa binge eating, there was no evidence, no proof. Not yet.
I hadn’t gone to a doctor, hadn’t done an ultrasound. I could have—hell, I was surrounded by them—but I couldn’t bring myself to make it real, to see it, hear it, name it.
Sarah’s words kept ringing in my ears, on loop like a song I didn’t like but couldn’t turn off: being a bad mom isn’t genetic.
But what if it was?
Why hadn’t I known earlier, felt something earlier? Wasn’t there supposed to be some instinct sparking to life inside me the second Khalifa’s DNA started its overly ambitious project in my uterus? Some flicker of connection, of joy, of anything?
Instead, there was just...blank space.
Shouldn’t I be happy? Sad? Excited? Petrified?
Decorating nurseries? Buying baby clothes?
Screaming, I’m pregnant! from rooftops like a woman in a commercial for domestic bliss?
Shouldn’t I be calling Khalifa, telling him we’d created something permanent, something binding, something terrifyingly alive?
But I couldn’t. Because it didn’t feel real.
There was a part of me—an awful, broken part—that believed something inside me was missing. That whatever switch turned women into mothers had skipped me entirely. That my mom’s lifelong coldness had been genetic after all, freezing every seed of maternal tenderness before it had a chance to bloom.
I spent years studying to be an OB. I knew everything there was to know about pregnancy—hormones, trimesters, fetal development, even the best kind of prenatal vitamins depending on iron absorption rates.
I could recite the stages of labor like the alphabet.
I’d coached anxious mothers through contractions, held their hands when monitors spiked, delivered crying bundles into trembling arms.
But this—this was different.
The physical part I understood; it was textbook.
The emotional part felt like trying to read a language I’d never learned.
How was I supposed to nurture something I couldn’t even feel? To mother a heartbeat I hadn’t yet heard? I knew what to do with data, with symptoms, with measurable outcomes—but feelings weren’t quantifiable. There was no chart, no test result, no checklist for this.
And maybe that was what scared me most. That, for all my education and control, I might never ace this one subject.
I looked at myself in the mirror one morning, at the faint curve of my stomach, and felt...nothing. No excitement, no dread, just this gnawing guilt. Because if this was supposed to be a miracle, then why did it feel like a mistake?
MY PHONE BUZZED AGAINST my hip. I glanced down at the screen and frowned—it wasn’t one of my patients, just a text from the front desk: Room 204. Urgent.
When I walked in, I froze. Sarah was there. So was Dr. Harper. And the hospital bed—my hospital bed—was empty.
“Oh, hell no,” I said, pivoting on my heel. “Absolutely not.”
Before I could make a run for it, Sarah’s hand shot out, catching my arm with frightening precision. “Get your ass in here, Lillian, or I’ll start using violence.”
I gaped at her. “You’d really hurt a pregnant woman?”
“If she keeps being an idiot, then yes.”
And just like that, I was manhandled onto the bed I’d delivered dozens of babies from, never once imagining I’d end up horizontal on it myself. Sarah yanked up my shirt with all the grace of an over-caffeinated toddler.
“Um, hello? Boundaries much?” I said, swatting at her hand. “This is assault.”
Dr. Harper, ever the professional, was trying and failing not to laugh as she snapped on her gloves and picked up a bottle of ultrasound gel.
Sarah crossed her arms. “I know you’re scared, but you have to stop pretending.”
“I’m not—” I started, but my throat betrayed me, my voice catching somewhere between denial and confession.
Her face softened as she reached for my hand. “Hey, it’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
I didn’t believe her. But I didn’t pull away either.
Dr. Harper clicked on the machine. The screen came to life with a hum, the transducer cool and slick as it met my stomach. I flinched when the gel touched my skin—cold and startling, like truth. Then came the steady, rhythmic sound—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—filling the room. Filling me.
“There it is,” Dr. Harper murmured, adjusting the probe until the sound deepened, stronger now, almost defiant. “A healthy heartbeat.”
Sarah squeezed my hand tightly, but I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at anything except the screen, where a tiny flicker pulsed in shades of gray. A heartbeat. My heartbeat’s echo.
Dr. Harper smiled. “Do you want to know the gender?”
“I’m already that far along?”
“Looks like it.”
“But that means...” I trailed off, doing the math in my head. My face scrunched as the realization landed. “Oh my God,” I groaned. “Of course I’d get pregnant the first time I ever have sex. That feels extremely on brand for my life.”
Dr. Harper chuckled. “Well,” she said, turning the monitor slightly, “your very efficient first try is a girl.”
For a second, I thought I misheard her.
A girl.
A girl.
The word landed in my chest like an earthquake disguised as a whisper—soft at first, then shattering everything it touched. My breath caught midair, trembling in my throat, and I wasn’t sure if I was laughing or breaking or doing both in slow motion.
Sarah let out a small, breathless gasp beside me, but her voice sounded distant, like it was drifting through water, because all I could see was her.
Not the grainy blur on the monitor, not the ghost of a profile taking shape—but the idea of her, a soul, a heartbeat, a future, a little girl who would one day call me Mama.
And for the first time in my life, the word didn’t taste bitter. It wasn’t painful anymore; there was no acidic savor of disappointment or longing or everything my mother could never give. It felt like sunlight warming a place that had been frozen for decades.
I had spent years haunted by silence, by closed doors and cold stares, by years of feeling like I’d been an accident that just kept happening, by the unspoken truth that I had been a mistake my mother never learned to love.
I built my life around that absence, shaped myself around the hollow she left behind.
I thought I was broken because I couldn’t stop needing what my mother refused to give, and I thought that emptiness defined me.
But maybe that emptiness hadn’t been a flaw.
Maybe it was space carved out long ago, waiting for her.
The tears came in a rush before I could stop them, hot and unstoppable, slipping into my hijab, down my neck. Sarah handed me a tissue, but I couldn’t take it. I needed to feel every raw, impossible, gut-deep second of this.
At some point in my life, I’d decided not to need love at all, convincing myself I was better off without it—only because I didn’t believe, in my most honest moments, that I was a person love could ever stay with.
But as I stared at that tiny flicker, I understood—love wasn’t something you earned or chased.
It was something you created. Something you became.
This little girl, who hadn’t even taken her first breath, had already rewritten my entire existence. Every shattered piece, every empty corner, every unanswered ache—I felt them rearranging, reshaping themselves around her.
I wanted to tell her that she would never question her worth.
That she’d never have to earn affection or tiptoe around it, never wonder if she was too much or not enough.
That she would be raised in warmth and safety, in a family free of cutting lines and conditions, in a world where love wasn’t something she had to deserve—it would be her birthright.
That she would always know—down to her smallest heartbeat—that she was cherished, valued, wanted.
And maybe that was what healing really was. Not fixing the past, but planting something new inside its ruins.
Dr. Harper’s voice floated back to me, but I barely heard her. The room had gone quiet except for the steady rhythm of my daughter’s chest, strong and sure. It filled every vacancy I’d been carrying for years, like the universe whispering: Here. This is what it was all for.
I pressed a trembling hand to my stomach and smiled through the tears.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. “And I swear—you’ll always have me.”
I GATHERED THE STACK of papers Dr. Harper handed me—prenatal prescriptions, appointment schedules, ultrasound images printed on glossy sheets that already felt sacred.
Sarah was leaning against the counter when I turned, watching me with that smug, fond little smirk she reserved for when she knew she was right.
I exhaled a shaky laugh. “Thank you for...assaulting me into motherhood.”
“Of course. Though next time, I’d prefer it if you just listened to me like a normal person.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I said. “Seriously, Sarah—thank you. If you hadn’t forced me in there...” My voice faltered. “I think I would’ve kept pretending forever.”
“You wouldn’t have. You just needed to hear her first.”
I nodded, clutching my bag to my chest as if it contained my entire life. In a way, it did.
When I stepped outside, the air felt new. It was the same old hospital parking lot, the same dull stretch of pavement and white lines—but everything looked different now, brighter somehow. Even the sunlight felt gentler, like the universe had adjusted its dimmer switch just for me.
I walked toward my car, phone in hand. For months, I’d avoided his name, built walls between us out of anger and pride, but after hearing that heartbeat—our daughter’s heartbeat—every ounce of resentment dissolved like sugar in water.
I’d realized it myself, hadn’t I? That goodness could grow from imperfect motives. And Khalifa, as imperfect as his motives were, was so perfectly the best thing that had ever happened to me.
He’d sent me flowers and meals and divorce papers. He’d given me space, but not absence. He’d been loving me from the periphery, waiting patiently while I untangled myself.
I thought back to every moment I’d snapped at him, every time I’d unraveled over something small, let my emotions spill everywhere—and how he never once met me with the same storm.
He only ever met my chaos with calm. Somehow my fire found a home cradled in the shadow of his peace, still burning bright.
And suddenly, I didn’t want the space anymore. I wanted him.
My thumb hovered over his name in my contacts. I typed out Can we talk? Then deleted it. Too formal. Then I need to see you. Too desperate. Then Hi. Too stupid.
I sighed, drumming the phone against my forehead. “Come on, Lilly,” I muttered. “You deliver babies for a living, but you can’t deliver one text?”
Before I could type another word, a voice broke through the noise of the street—deep, accented, achingly familiar.
“Lillian?”