The door closed again.
This time, the silence wasn’t just uncomfortable.
It was suffocating.
Inside the room, Allison was sitting upright now.
But she didn’t look like the glowing, triumphant woman from twenty minutes ago.
Her face was pale.
Her eyes wide.
Her hands trembling slightly as they rested on her stomach.
Diego’s chest tightened.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly. “Is the baby okay?”
The doctor turned the monitor slightly toward him.
“Mr. Rivera,” she said, voice calm but firm, “before I answer that… I need to ask you a question.”
His stomach dropped.
“What kind of question?”
She didn’t blink.
“How long have you and Ms. Allison been together?”
The question caught him off guard.
“Why does that matter?” he snapped. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“It matters,” she said quietly.
A pause.
Then—
“How long?”
Diego hesitated.
“…About eight months.”
The doctor nodded slowly.
Then she tapped the screen.
“According to this scan,” she said, “the pregnancy is approximately twenty-four weeks along.”
The room went completely still.
Diego blinked.
Once.
Twice.
“That’s… six months,” he said slowly.
“Yes.”
His brain scrambled to keep up.
“No, that’s not possible,” he said quickly. “She told me—”
“She told you it was fourteen weeks,” the doctor finished.
Allison’s breath hitched.
Diego turned to her slowly.
“Is that true?”
She didn’t answer.
Didn’t look at him.
Didn’t move.
And that silence…
That silence said everything.
“No,” he whispered.
The doctor continued, her voice clinical now.
“There’s more.”
Diego’s heart started pounding.
“What do you mean ‘more’?”
She turned the screen again.
Zoomed in.
