21. Ana
ANA
He knows. I see it in the way he straightens, his hand lowering the phone slowly. His eyes find mine and hold. What gets me is how fast it happens. His eyes change for a second, caught off guard, and then his face settles. Whatever the message says, he’s ready to move.
Mila sits on the floor with her crayons spread around her.
She draws a wide blue sea, a yellow sun with lines shooting out, and a sword with a crooked handle.
She talks to herself, a sound she makes when she’s trying to think about where she is.
I keep my hand moving, spoon after spoon, cereal and milk, the rhythm enough to keep my hands busy.
Dominik is still outside. I don’t go to him. I don’t ask what the message says. I already know what it could be. He opens the door and comes back inside. The glass slides shut behind him, and the house feels tighter. He doesn’t look at Mila right away. He looks at me.
I stand and carry the empty bowl to the sink. He comes in and stops beside me. I set the bowl down and turn on the tap. Water fills the basin. He watches me for a moment, his arms folded, waiting.
“They want us back,” he says when I don’t give him anything. His voice is even. That scares me more than if he’d raised it. “They flagged something in her panel,” he says. “It’s not urgent, but it’s not clean either. Enough to call us back to take another sample.”
I nod once and keep washing the bowl. My hand stays steady. Dominik reaches over and turns off the tap, then takes the bowl from me and sets it on the drying rack.
I reach for the cloth because my hands need something to do, but he stops me. His hands come to my shoulders, holding me there without pressure.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s just a test.”
“To you, it is,” I say, shrugging his hands off and picking the bowl back up. Another blood draw means more forms, more names written down, and another stretch of time where someone sits across a desk and looks too closely.
“I know you don’t like it,” he says. “I don’t either.”
“Do you?” I ask, and this time, I look at him properly, searching his face for something that might make this easier.
“Do we really have to go today?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says without hesitation.
A small sound comes from the doorway before either of us moves. Mila is standing there in her pajamas, one hand on the doorframe, the other clutching the sword.
“Mommy?” she says, unsure.
“It’s nothing, baby,” I say. “We just need to go to the hospital one more time.”
“No. Not there, Mommy,” she says, dropping the sword and running into me.
I bend and wrap my arms around her, holding her close enough that she can feel my breath against her hair. She presses her face into my shoulder, her small hands gripping my shirt, and I stay like that until her body stops shaking.
“It’s just another check,” I say, keeping my voice light because that’s what she needs from me right now. “Then we’ll come back home, make hot cookies, and watch a cartoon together. You can pick which one.”
She pulls back just enough to look at my face, studying it the way she does when she’s deciding whether to believe me. After a moment, she nods and wipes her nose on her sleeve without apology.
“Mila’s going to tell the nurse to go home,” she says, serious now.
“Right, Mommy?”
“Right,” I say.
She turns to go back to the room. To her books and colors.
“Mila, keep your things in place,” I say after her, keeping my voice easy, like nothing in this room has shifted.
She nods and does exactly that. She draws a careful red line around the picture, closing it like a fence, then shuts the book and sets it neatly on the table.
We leave an hour later, and Dominik drives without asking. The street is wet from the earlier rain, so he keeps the car steady and slow, braking early and taking the turns wide.
I sit in the back with Mila against me, her body warm and solid in my arms. She tucks her head under my chin, and I hold her there.
I don’t notice I was holding my breath until I finally let it out.
Inside the clinic, the lights are bright, and everything is moving at once.
People walk past us, doors keep opening and closing, and voices overlap until it starts to feel like too much.
The nurse at the desk looks up and knows who we are, and that hits me harder than I expect.
She smiles at Mila and asks how she’s feeling today.
Mila buries her face in my shoulder and clings tighter.
“She’s better,” I say. “But she still feels warm at night.”
The nurse nods, types for a moment, then prints the forms and slides them across the counter.
Dominik takes them before I do and signs where he needs to, one page after another, his handwriting clean and steady.
I catch the nurse looking at him for a second too long before she looks back at the screen.
They take us down the hall to a smaller room. There are no posters in this one, just a desk, two chairs, and a sink in the corner. The doctor comes in a minute later and shuts the door behind him.
“I want to talk through the results from yesterday,” he says. He looks at Mila, then back to me. “Nothing concerning so far. There is one thing I’d like to double-check.”
My back straightens. “What is it?”
“The marker in Mila’s blood,” he says. “Sometimes, it runs in families. We usually confirm that by checking a close blood relative. When that’s the case, it’s usually harmless.”
The fluorescent light seems too bright. The words on the page don’t move, but everything in me does. Dominik stays still. He leans back in his chair, one arm resting along the back of Mila’s seat, close enough that his fingers touch her hair. “What do you need to confirm it?”
“A comparison sample,” the doctor says. “From a parent.”
“No,” I say too fast. “That won’t be necessary.”
The doctor looks at me instead of answering right away. His face stays neutral, but his attention stills. “Can you tell me why?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my bloodwork.” I say, pushing the words out before I can slow them down. “You can look at my records from when I was pregnant. Everything was normal.”
He nods once, then shifts his gaze to Dominik. “And the father?”
Dominik doesn’t answer immediately. He adjusts his chair closer to Mila and rests his hand on the back of it. His voice stays level when he speaks.
“I’m fine with a blood test,” he says. “If it helps her, you can take it.”
Then he looks at me. There’s no warning in his expression and no softness, either. He isn’t asking.
“Anything for Mila,” he adds, and his thumb strokes once through her hair.
The doctor watches us without comment, already reaching for the chart.
I lean back in the chair, my hands in my lap.
Mila watches while the nurse wheels in the tray.
Dominik doesn’t look at the needle. He keeps his eyes on Mila and talks to her instead, asking about the picture she’s coloring and whether she kept the sword beside her bed.
She answers him seriously, caught up in it enough that she barely notices when the nurse takes his arm.
It’s finished in seconds. Faster than I expect, faster than I want.
The nurse presses a strip of gauze in place and moves on like this is routine, because for her it is.
She labels the samples carefully, one vial after another.
I see the names printed in black, lined up side by side, before she turns the tray away.
Dominik steps out with the doctor for a moment and tells me to wait near the front desk.
Mila runs out of patience fast. She frowns and tells me the lights hurt her eyes and that she wants to go home. Her voice gets louder with each sentence, not crying yet. She’s seeing what works.
I take her to the window. Outside, a boy rides past on a small blue bicycle, his feet pumping so fast, they blur. Mila puts both hands on the glass and watches him like he is a miracle.
“You want a bicycle like that?” I ask.
She nods hard, and just like that, the complaining disappears.
Dominik comes back. He doesn’t mention where he went or what he did.
“What happened?” I ask, keeping my voice neutral.
“Just a little work,” he says, like it’s nothing worth explaining.
Then he crouches in front of Mila, and the corners of his mouth lift. He straightens her sleeve with two fingers.
“All done,” he says. “Let’s get you home.”
We don’t talk much after that. Dominik carries Mila to the car, and I follow them, trying to get my thoughts in order and getting nowhere. There’s too much between us now, and no room to say any of it.
I’ve known about Mila’s blood marker since she was a newborn. A doctor told me early that it could mean mild symptoms, or nothing at all, and that when it runs in the family, it’s usually not serious.
Mila used to get fevers a lot when she was small. The doctors told me her immune system was weak and said it should get better as she grew, but we had to be careful until then.
I took her to clinics and sat through long nights that felt like they would never end.
I measured medicine, cooled her down when she got too hot, and stayed up listening to her breathe until morning.
Then I still went to work and left her with whoever I trusted that week, a student who needed money or a neighbor who could help.
I called to check on her whenever I could, and I came home as fast as I could.
I did what I knew how to do. I kept her fed, medicated, and safe. The way I did it meant he was never part of it.
I couldn’t stay in the city with him, moving from place to place before we even knew the street names, not while I was pregnant.
The Bratva wanted me badly enough to use me, and if they found out I was carrying his child, they would’ve used her too.
Dominik never would’ve backed off. He would’ve risked his life and his standing to protect me and Mila.
Then I found out hiding still wasn’t enough.
I saw it by accident, buried in a shared folder I used for clinic paperwork.
I clicked the wrong file, expecting invoices or lab notes, and the screen changed before I could stop it.
A dead drop. One line of text, a timestamp that had already passed.
There was a photo of Dominik standing near the side entrance of the clinic I used during my first trimester. I knew they were tracking where I went.
I saw two other men after that, and they stood out right away.
One was on a route I took to work. One was at a supermarket near my apartment.
They weren’t there to wait for anyone they cared about, and they weren’t there to shop.
They stood where they could see the doors, watched people instead of products, and moved only when they had to.
Both had earpieces. Both tracked the space the same way.
I knew what I was looking at, and I knew what it meant.
I changed my route to work. I switched stores. I paid cash when I could. I kept moving even when my body needed rest and my mind told me I wasn’t doing enough for Mila. Working, relocating, staying alert, raising her alone.
I got up for work even when Mila wrapped her hands around my legs and cried for me not to leave. I cried with her, handed her to the sitter, and walked out without turning back. I could hear her crying from the street, and I didn’t stop. It wore me down. I kept going anyway.
I did what I could with what I had. I made the choices that were in front of me at the time.
I look at Mila, her head resting against my shoulder. She’s already half asleep, and we're almost home. I lay her on the bed and smooth her hair back from her face, my hand following the familiar line of her ear and cheek.
She looks like him when she sleeps. I’ve seen it for years and chose not to name it. Seeing something and admitting it aren’t the same thing.
I know this moved past without me, and I won’t be able to pull it back. What I don’t know is whether I’m ready for what comes after.