“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.
“And I need you to understand this clearly,” she said. “Based on the development we’re seeing… the conception date does not align with the timeline you just gave me.”
The words hit harder than anything before.
Diego felt the ground shift under him.
“What are you saying?” he asked, his voice tightening.
The doctor met his eyes.
“I’m saying this pregnancy began before your relationship.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Absolute.
Diego’s hands slowly curled into fists.
He turned to Allison again.
