13. TRUTH #4
By 6 PM, I’d convinced myself he was already moving on. Already calling Raymond to pull the next candidate file. Already writing me off as a failed investment.
By 10:00 PM, I’d stopped checking my phone every five minutes.
By midnight, I’d given up on sleep entirely.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to Mama’s soft snoring down the hall and the occasional car passing on the street outside.
My mind wouldn’t shut off. It kept replaying the last two weeks on a loop—the transfer, the waiting, the hope I’d tried so hard not to feel, the three negative tests lined up on the bathroom sink like an indictment.
At 2:00 AM, I picked up my phone.
Stared at Amai’s name in my contacts.
Put the phone back down.
Picked it up again.
He wouldn’t answer. It was 2:00 AM, and he was probably asleep or busy or with someone else or any number of things that didn’t include sitting around, waiting for a failed surrogate to call him in the middle of the night.
But my thumb was already pressing his name before I could talk myself out of it.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
Then his voice, rough with sleep but alert: “What’s wrong?”
Not hello. Not do you know what time it is. Just what’s wrong, like he’d been waiting for this call, like he knew something was broken and needed fixing.
My throat closed. I couldn’t speak for a long moment, couldn’t get the words past the tightness in my chest.
“Truth.” His voice was sharper now, more awake. “Talk to me.”
“It didn’t work,” I whispered.
Silence.
Then, “I know. Dr. Beaumont called me.”
Of course she had. Of course, he already knew. I was the last person to find out about my own failure.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because my body didn’t do what it was supposed to do.” The words came out in a rush, desperate and raw. “Because you picked me, and I let you down, and now you’re going to find someone else whose body actually works, and I’m going to be back where I started with nothing and?—”
“Truth.” His voice cut through my spiral, firm but not harsh. “That’s not how this works.”
“I don’t know how this works.” I was crying now, hot tears sliding down my temples into my hair. “I just know I failed. I know my body failed, and that’s all that matters in the end, right? Biology. Science. Results. And I didn’t deliver.”
“You didn’t fail,” Amai said, and there was a tenderness in his voice that I couldn’t ignore. Something that sounded almost like anger, but not at me. “The transfer failed. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I pressed my free hand against my eyes, trying to stop the tears. “Because it feels the same from where I’m sitting.”
“It’s not the same.”
“What if the next one fails too?” The question burst out of me before I could stop it, all the fear I’d been holding back for two weeks spilling over.
“What if my body can’t do this? What if there’s something wrong with me that the doctors didn’t catch, and I’m just wasting your time and your money, and?—”
“Then we try again,” Amai interrupted. His voice was steady, certain, like he was stating a fact rather than making a promise. “And again. Until it works.”
I went still. “Why?”
“Because I picked you.” He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. Like it explained everything. “And I don’t change my mind.”
My breath hitched at those words.
I cried harder then, but it was different. Not the desperate, terrified crying from earlier. Something rawer. More honest.
Amai didn’t try to stop me. Didn’t tell me it was okay or that everything would work out. He just stayed on the line, breathing steady and even, a solid presence on the other end of the phone while I fell apart.
“I’m scared,” I whispered finally, when the crying had subsided to hiccups and shaky breaths.
“I know.”
“What if I can’t do this?”
“You can.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re still here.” His voice was quiet but absolute. “You’re still fighting. That’s how I know. And you told me you can do hard things.”
We stayed on the phone after that, the silence between us comfortable in a way I didn’t expect. I could hear him breathing, slow and steady, and it anchored me somehow. Made the darkness of my bedroom feel less suffocating.
I talked sometimes. Rambling thoughts that didn’t make much sense—about the hormones and the waiting and the way my body felt like it didn’t belong to me anymore.
About Phillip and the divorce and how I’d promised myself I’d never let anyone make me feel worthless again, but here I was, feeling exactly that.
Amai listened. Didn’t interrupt. Didn’t try to fix it or tell me I was wrong. Just listened, his breathing a constant reminder that I wasn’t alone in this.
“Thank you,” I said at some point, my voice thick with exhaustion. “For staying on the phone.”
“Where else would I be?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. My eyelids were getting heavy, my body finally giving in to the exhaustion I’d been fighting all day. The phone was warm against my ear, Amai’s breathing a steady rhythm that pulled me toward sleep.
“Truth,” he said quietly.
“Mm?”
“Close your eyes.”
I did. The darkness behind my eyelids was softer now, less threatening.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and his voice was the last thing I heard before sleep pulled me under. “You hear me? I’m not going anywhere.”
I tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. My mind was drifting, consciousness slipping away in slow waves. I was dimly aware of the phone still pressed to my ear, of Amai’s presence on the other end of the line, solid and unwavering.
I drifted in and out after that. Sometimes I’d surface just enough to hear him—the quiet sound of him moving, the faint rustle of fabric, his breathing steady and even. Then I’d slip back under, pulled down by exhaustion and the strange comfort of knowing he was still there.
At some point—I don’t know how long—I heard him say something soft. Too soft for me to make out the words. Then there was a pause, long and weighted, before the line went dead.
But by then I was already asleep, the phone still clutched in my hand, his absence somehow less lonely than it should have been.
Because he’d stayed.
For forty-five minutes in the middle of the night, Amai Landry had stayed on the phone with me while I fell apart and then fell asleep.
And that meant something.
I just didn’t know what yet.