Chapter 2
1290 Words
The clinic smelled like antiseptic and final decisions.
Ethan noticed it the moment he stepped inside, the sharp, sterile scent that lodged itself in his lungs and refused to leave. It clung to his clothes, followed him with every breath. The space was designed to feel neutral, but neutrality was a lie. Every chair in the waiting room held the weight of choices people would carry long after they left.
Amara sat beside him, her posture rigid, hands folded tightly in her lap. She hadn’t spoken since they arrived. Not in the car. Not at the reception desk. Not even when the nurse smiled politely and asked for her name.
Ethan reached for her hand.
Her fingers were cold.
“You don’t have to go through this alone,” he said quietly.
She didn’t pull away. She didn’t squeeze back either.
“I know,” she replied, her voice flat.
The nurse appeared at the doorway with a clipboard.
“Amara Bell?”
Amara rose slowly, as if her body resisted the idea of moving forward. Ethan stood with her instinctively.
“I’ll come….”
“Only patients beyond this point,” the nurse said gently.
Amara hesitated. She looked at Ethan, and for a moment something flickered in her eyes, fear, anger, longing, all tangled together. Then it disappeared.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
The door closed behind her with a soft click that sounded far too loud.
Ethan sat down.
And waited.
Time behaved strangely in that room. Minutes stretched and warped, heavy and elastic. He checked his phone, scrolling through emails without reading them. A supplier dispute. A board vote. Numbers and deadlines that once defined him now felt obscene.
Across from him, a woman cried quietly into a tissue while a man rubbed her back. A few seats away, another woman sat alone, staring at the wall as though she’d already left her body behind.
Ethan stood abruptly and walked to the window, pressing his palm against the glass.
I’m doing the right thing, he told himself.
I’m not ready. That matters.
The words felt thin. Hollow.
When the door finally opened, Amara stepped out.
Her face was pale. Her eyes looked distant, as though something essential had been left behind and she hadn’t decided yet whether to mourn it.
“It’s done,” she said.
Ethan swallowed hard. “Are you okay?”
She studied him for a long moment. “I don’t know.”
The drive home passed in silence.
The city moved around them, cars honking, pedestrians laughing, life continuing with cruel indifference. Amara watched it all without really seeing any of it.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said finally.
She closed her eyes. “Please don’t say that.”
“I mean it.”
“I know,” she replied. “But apologies don’t grow back what’s gone.”
He pulled over suddenly, heart racing. “Talk to me. Yell at me if you need to.”
She laughed softly, humorless. “I don’t have the energy.”
Then she turned her face toward the window.
“Just take me home.”
The days that followed felt disturbingly normal.
Amara rested. She followed the doctor’s instructions. Her body healed faster than Ethan expected, and he clung to that as proof, proof that this had been survivable, manageable, necessary.
Emotionally, she changed.
She spoke less. Choose her words carefully. Smiled often, but the smiles faded quickly, like something borrowed rather than felt. When Ethan touched her, she sometimes flinched before relaxing again, as if her body needed time to remember him.
Ethan noticed everything.
He just didn’t know how to fix it.
So he tried to compensate.
Flowers arrived in extravagant bouquets that filled her apartment with color. He planned a weekend away, booked spa treatments, and candlelit dinners that looked romantic on the surface but felt hollow beneath.
“You don’t have to keep doing all this,” Amara said one evening.
“I want to,” he replied quickly.
She studied him. “Do you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I just want you to be okay.”
She nodded. “I am okay.”
But her voice lacked conviction.
One night, lying beside him in the dark, she finally spoke.
“Do you ever think about the baby?”
Ethan’s chest tightened. “Sometimes.”
“What do you think about?”
He stared at the ceiling. “Who we’d be if things were different.”
She turned toward him. “Do you ever think we would’ve been happy?”
He hesitated, just a second too long.
Her face didn’t harden with anger. It softened with understanding.
“I feel like I keep leaving parts of myself behind,” she whispered. “And I don’t know how many parts I have left to lose.”
Ethan pulled her into his chest, pressing a kiss into her hair. “I promise you, Amara. Next time will be different. I’ll be ready.”
She clung to him tightly, like someone holding onto a promise that had already failed them once.
The second pregnancy came quietly.
Amara noticed first, the nausea in the mornings, the exhaustion that sleep couldn’t cure, the way her emotions sat too close to the surface. She told herself it was stress. Then she bought a test.
Two lines.
Again.
She sat on the bathroom floor, test trembling in her hand, heart racing.
Fear came first.
Then hope.
This time, she waited before telling him. She needed time to believe it herself.
When she finally did, they were having dinner.
“I’m pregnant again,” she said softly.
His fork froze halfway to his mouth.
Again.
He exhaled slowly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back, rubbing his temples. “This is… soon.”
Her eyes flashed. “It’s still a child.”
“I know,” he said quickly. “I just….there’s so much happening right now.”
“There’s always something happening,” she replied.
The argument followed the same tired pattern. Reassurances. Fear dressed up as logic. Love colliding with avoidance.
In the end, the decision was the same.
Another clinic.
Another silent drive home.
This time, Amara didn’t cry.
That frightened Ethan more than tears ever had.
Months later, it happened again.
The third pregnancy.
By then, hope had turned brittle.
When the clinic doors closed behind Amara for the third time, something inside her cracked for good.
After that, she stopped asking about the future.
Stopped mentioning marriage.
Stopped counting years out loud.
Her family did not.
“At your age, you should already have children.”
“Don’t wait too long.”
“What if God closes your womb?”
Each comment landed like a curse.
One evening, Amara sat alone on her bed, scrolling through photos of her cousins with newborns, friends celebrating baby showers, and women younger than her stepping into the life she felt slipping through her fingers.
Her chest tightened painfully.
That was when Lola reappeared.
“You look like someone dying quietly,” Lola said, dropping onto the bed.
“I’m tired,” Amara murmured.
“Tired of him?”
“Tired of waiting.”
Lola studied her. “Men like Ethan don’t change because you love them. They change when they’re forced to.”
Amara turned toward her. “What are you saying?”
Lola smiled slowly. Dangerously. “I’m saying you’ve bled enough for someone who keeps promising tomorrow.”
That night, lying beside Ethan as he slept peacefully, Amara stared into the dark.
For the first time, she didn’t pray for patience.
She prayed for control.
And somewhere in the silence, a lie began to take shape.
- Writer
