14. Elena
Elena
I don’t tell anyone I’m leaving.
The omission settles into my morning with surprising ease, slipping between the familiar markers of routine, breakfast, vitamins, the quiet check of my phone for appointment reminders.
It doesn’t feel like rebellion, not in any dramatic sense.
There’s no rush of defiance, no sharp break from what I’ve been doing for weeks.
It feels smaller than that. More intentional. A deviation I can still pretend doesn’t matter.
The letter rests in my bag, folded along the same careful crease I made the night before, as though preserving its shape might preserve what it offers.
I check for it more than once before I leave, my fingers brushing against the paper in a way that borders on instinct, needing the reassurance that it’s still there, still real, still something I didn’t imagine in a moment of weakness.
The hallway outside the apartment is empty, as it always is at this time of day, the quiet pressing in on all sides.
It should feel the same as it always has—contained, monitored, part of the system I’ve learned to move through without resistance.
But today, it feels slightly altered. Less like something I’m inside.
More like something I’m stepping away from.
Outside, the air is cool and heavy with the threat of rain, the sky a dull stretch of gray that reflects faintly in the windows lining the street.
I pause at the curb, adjusting my coat over the curve of my stomach, the movement automatic now, my body already compensating for the shape that has become impossible to ignore.
I am visible like this. There is no disguising it anymore.
The thought lingers as a taxi pulls up, and I slide into the backseat, the seatbelt catching awkwardly across my stomach before I shift it lower and settle it carefully into place. The driver barely glances at me when I give the address, his attention already returning to the road.
That, more than anything, steadies me. Here, I am just another passenger. Not someone whose movements are tracked, recorded, anticipated.
The city unfolds around me in familiar fragments. People crossing streets with purpose, shopfronts opening, conversations spilling out into the open air. But it all feels slightly distant, as though I’m watching it from behind a pane of glass rather than moving through it.
This used to be my life. Unstructured. Unscheduled. Mine . I know I agreed to the contract, but I was thinking only of the money and security then. Not the rest of it.
My hand drifts to my stomach without thought, resting there as the taxi turns onto a quieter street, the buildings shifting subtly in character. Cleaner lines, polished glass. A kind of sleek calm that feels curated rather than incidental.
We stop in front of a building that reflects the gray sky back at itself, its surface smooth and impersonal like all the others.
Hennessy Fertility Institute.
I don’t move immediately. Instead, I sit there for a moment longer than necessary, my hand still resting over the curve of my belly, my thoughts catching somewhere between anticipation and something more fragile.
If I walk in, this becomes real. A decision.
The realization settles slowly, but once it does, it doesn’t leave.
I exhale, push the car door open, and step out. The difference is immediate, though not dramatic enough to name outright.
The space inside feels… softer. Not in any obvious way—there is still the faint, familiar scent of antiseptic, the quiet hum of a well-run clinic, but it’s layered with something else.
Warmer lighting. Wood where I expect to see steel.
A receptionist who looks up and meets my eyes before asking for my name.
“Good morning,” she says, her voice easy, unhurried.
“Good morning,” I reply, cautious.
“Name?”
“Elena Rowe.”
She types it in, nods once, and gestures toward the seating area. “Dr. Hennessy will be with you shortly.”
Shortly. Not at a fixed minute. Not already anticipated, already logged.
I sit, smoothing my hands over my thighs before letting one rest lightly against my stomach, grounding myself in something familiar as I take in the room around me.
There’s a woman across from me flipping through a magazine, her posture relaxed in a way that looks almost foreign.
Further down, a couple leans toward each other, speaking quietly, their heads close together as if this space allows for that kind of closeness.
The woman in the couple is pregnant. Not as far along as I am, but enough that it shows, enough that the man beside her keeps glancing down at her stomach like he can’t quite help himself. His hand drifts there once, hesitant at first, then more certain when she smiles and covers it with her own.
The moment is small. Casual. Unremarkable.
And it hits harder than it should.
I look away too quickly, my hand tightening slightly against my own stomach as something uncomfortable settles in my chest. This is what it was supposed to look like.
Not this formal arrangement, this quiet, controlled system I’ve stepped into, but something human. Something chosen for the right reasons.
I remember Dublin before it went wrong. Before the lease, before the calls I stopped answering, before everything narrowed into survival.
Liam, in a kitchen that wasn’t ours yet, talking about how it would be.
What we would do. Where we’d go. The kind of life we were building, as if saying it out loud made it real.
We never talked about this part. About what it would really take to hold something together once it stopped being easy.
My gaze drifts back despite myself. The couple is still there, still folded into each other in a way that feels unguarded, uncomplicated. The woman laughs softly at something he says, her head tipping slightly toward him, her body angled in a way that assumes he’ll still be there when she leans.
I feel the absence of that more sharply than I expect. Not just Liam. But the version of my life that would have come with him. The one where this—pregnancy, waiting rooms, quiet moments between appointments—would have been shared instead of scheduled. Chosen instead of negotiated.
I press my palm a little more firmly against my stomach, grounding myself in something real, something present. That life doesn’t exist for me anymore.
This one does.
The thought settles without drama, but it lingers. I become aware of the way I’m holding myself. Too still, too contained, my back straight in a way that belongs to a different environment.
To him.
The realization makes me shift slightly in my seat, though the tension doesn’t fully leave me. My fingers curl around the edge of my bag, brushing against the letter again. A reminder.
I’m not supposed to be here.
The thought comes quietly, but it lands.
Not approved. Not scheduled. Not his.
My stomach tightens, a reflex that feels instinctive rather than chosen, and for a moment I consider standing, walking out, and returning to the system I understand.
But the words from the letter rise again, uninvited but persistent. More autonomy. Less restrictive.
And I stay.
“Ms. Rowe?”
I look up. Dr. Marcus Hennessy stands in the doorway, his expression open in a way that doesn’t feel performative. He doesn’t study me the way I’ve grown used to. Doesn’t assess me before speaking.
“Hi,” I say, standing, the movement slightly too quick before I steady myself.
“Come in.”
His office is brighter than I expect, sunlight filtering through partially drawn blinds, softening the edges of the space. There’s no desk placed deliberately between us. No barrier that defines authority before the conversation even begins. Just two chairs.
I sit carefully, adjusting my coat again, aware of the shape of my body. He sits across from me, but in a way that feels confrontational. He’s slightly angled, as though conversation is expected rather than managed.
“I’m glad you came,” he says.
“I almost didn’t,” I admit, the truth slipping out before I can reshape it.
“That’s usually how these things begin,” he replies, a small, understanding curve to his mouth that doesn’t feel like reassurance so much as recognition.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“I understand you’re currently under Dr. Brennan’s program,” he continues, his tone shifting slightly, losing its warmth. “And I understand his protocols can be… intensive.”
That word sits carefully between us.
“They are,” I say.
“Effective,” he adds, “but not always flexible.”
Flexible . The word feels unfamiliar in a way I can’t quite explain.
“I take a different approach,” he continues. “More collaborative. Patients are involved in decisions, rather than simply informed of them.”
Something in my chest shifts at that. “Involved, how?” I ask, my voice steadier now, curiosity threading through the caution.
“It means your schedule isn’t dictated unless medically necessary. It means you have input. It means fewer restrictions where they aren’t clinically required.”
Fewer restrictions. The phrase settles slowly in my mind, unfolding in a way that feels almost unreal.
“And housing?” I ask, already anticipating the answer, already bracing for it.
“No program housing,” he says plainly. “You would arrange your own. We can recommend options, but the decision would be yours.”
Mine .
The word lands differently than anything else he’s said.
“And the medical care?”
“Fully covered,” he replies. “Structured differently, but comprehensive. You wouldn’t lose support. You’d simply have more control over how that support functions.”
Control. Not his. Mine.
This could work. This could actually?—
“There is one complication,” he says gently.
The shift is immediate. I still, not quite freezing but feeling something inside me tighten, the fragile shape of possibility adjusting rather than collapsing. “What kind of complication?”
“Dr. Brennan.”
Of course. The name settles into the space between us with a quiet inevitability, and I feel it not as a surprise, but a correction. It’s as though I’ve been briefly allowed to imagine a version of events where he isn’t central, and now that illusion is being carefully, deliberately dismantled.
“He would need to transfer your medical records,” Hennessy continues. “And formally release you from the contract. It’s standard practice.”
Standard . The word feels misplaced here.
“What if he doesn’t?” I ask quietly, already anticipating the answer.
Hennessy meets my gaze without hesitation, his expression steady in a way that suggests he’s had this conversation before, though perhaps not quite under the same circumstances.
“He cannot legally prevent you from seeking care elsewhere,” he says. “But he can make the process difficult.”
Difficult . The word settles, but it doesn’t remain contained. It expands almost immediately, stretching into possibilities I can’t quite define but instinctively understand. Delays, refusals, complications that exist just within the boundaries of what’s allowed.
And beyond that, him.
My hand moves to my stomach again. This isn’t just about leaving a program.
It’s about leaving him. And the reality of that doesn’t exist in isolation.
It’s tied to this. To the quiet, constant shape beneath my hand, to the life that has already begun to define the shape of my days, the limits of my choices.
This is his child.
The thought doesn’t come as a shock, but it lands differently now.
Heavier, more complicated, woven with implications I hadn’t fully allowed myself to examine.
If I leave, I’m not simply stepping out of his program.
I’m taking something with me that was never meant to belong to me in any permanent sense.
The question forms slowly, almost reluctantly. What happens then?
I don’t ask it out loud. I don’t need to. I know enough about him to understand that control, once established, isn’t something he relinquishes easily. Not in his work. Not in his decisions. Not in anything he has set into motion.
This is his child.
And yet…
The thought shifts, unsettled by its own implications.
What if he doesn’t follow? What if, faced with resistance, with complication, with something that doesn’t move according to his design, he simply… steps back?
The idea feels wrong as soon as it forms, but I can’t dismiss it entirely. Because if I leave, I am no longer compliant. No longer operating within the system he built.
And without that, would he still want me? Or would I become something less precise, less manageable, less worth the effort it would take to manage?
There’s another layer to it, too. The practical one. If I leave, I lose the framework that made my survival possible in the first place. The housing, the payments, the stability I told myself I needed when I signed the contract. I would be choosing something else instead.
Autonomy, in place of constraint. Uncertainty, in place of control.
And I would be doing it while still carrying his child.
The weight of that knowledge settles gradually. It should be enough to stop me, and it almost is.
“But it’s possible?” I ask, because despite everything, I need to hear it again.
“Yes,” Dr. Hennessy answers.
The word anchors itself immediately, simple and unqualified in a way that cuts cleanly through the complexity surrounding it. Possible. Not easy. Not without consequence. But possible.
And even with everything else pressing in—the uncertainty, the risk, the unavoidable presence of Brennan in every part of this decision—I feel something in my chest hold onto that word for dear life.