chapitre : 8
1184 Words
The nausea had become a stormy sea, unpredictable and violent. That morning, after vomiting until tears streamed from her eyes, a defeated Marina called a taxi to the hospital. She hated this place, the smell of antiseptic, the clinical whiteness, the hushed silence of the corridors that amplified every frantic heartbeat.
Sitting on the examination table in her simple denim dress, she felt tiny and vulnerable. The doctor, a man in his fifties with a calm gaze, scanned his notes.
"So, Miss Vasseur, you're describing significant nausea, extreme fatigue, and dizziness. For about two weeks, is that right?"
— "Yes," she confirmed in a weak voice. "I... I thought it was stress. Nervous exhaustion."
He nodded, then performed a quick examination before prescribing a blood test. "To rule out any organic causes. We'll check for deficiencies, thyroid function... and we'll do a beta-hCG level as a matter of routine."
Marina didn't even flinch. Beta-hCG? The acronym meant nothing to her. She was too focused on fighting another wave of nausea tightening her throat.
An hour later, the doctor returned, results in hand. His expression was neutral, professional, but a shadow of gravity crossed his eyes.
"Miss Vasseur, the initial results are unequivocal. Your beta-hCG level is significantly elevated."
Marina looked at him, perplexed. "What does that mean? Is it a deficiency?"
A slight, almost compassionate smile touched the doctor's lips. "No. Beta-hCG is the pregnancy hormone. You are pregnant."
The world stopped. Literally. The hum of the ventilation, the footsteps in the hall, everything vanished. A dull buzzing filled her ears.
"That's... that's impossible," she managed to stammer, a nervous laugh catching in her throat. "You've made a mistake. It's impossible."
The doctor took a chair and sat facing her, his hands clasped on his knees. "I understand this is a shock. But there's no mistake. The test is conclusive."
— "But I can't be pregnant!" Panic rose, pitching her voice an octave higher. "I haven't had s*x. Not for months. It's... it's completely impossible."
The doctor's face grew more serious. He looked her straight in the eyes, with a frankness devoid of judgment. "Marina... there are circumstances, extremely rare, I grant you, where a pregnancy can occur without complete s****l intercourse, or even without penetration."
She stared at him, stunned, unable to form a coherent thought.
"Explain it to me," she begged in a whisper.
"I'll try. For fertilization to occur, a sperm cell needs to meet an egg. This implies contact between seminal fluid or even just sperm and the female genital area. This contact does not necessarily require classic s****l intercourse."
He paused, letting the information sink in. Marina felt an icy chill run through her.
"Sometimes," he continued softly, "it can be indirect contact. For example, if an object—a towel, a garment, fingers—on which there is fresh sperm comes into contact with the vulva. Sperm can survive for a few minutes in the open air, in a warm, moist environment. If the conditions are right—ovulation period, favorable cervical mucus, sperm vitality—fertilization is a possibility, however minute. This is sometimes called indirect contact fertilization, or 'pregnancy without penetration.' It's exceptional, but it exists. Medical science has documented cases."
Each word was a hammer driving the reality deeper into her skull. An object. A towel. A warm, moist environment.
Suddenly, her mind, until then numb from the shock, made the connection. A blinding, terrifying flash of lucidity.
The towel.
That night, at Léna's. The bathroom saturated with steam. Her, stepping out of the bath, dizzy from the heat and the emotion of the argument. The thick towel hanging on the rack. She had grabbed it, wrapped herself in it, buried her face in it to wipe her furtive tears. She had even found its smell strange, a bit musky, different from the floral one she usually used. She thought it was a new laundry detergent.
Chris's towel.
The one he had just used after his shower. The one that, perhaps, still bore fresh traces of his body, his unfulfilled desire, his semen.
"No..." she moaned.
Marina's face disintegrated. A deathly pallor replaced the last colors in her cheeks. Her hands began to tremble so violently she had to clamp them between her knees.
"It can't be possible," she whispered, but this time, she was speaking to herself.
The doctor saw her change in complexion and her agitation. "Marina? Are you feeling alright? Did you think of something?"
She didn't even hear him anymore. A deafening roar filled her head. Memories jostled, assembling to form a picture of absolute horror.
The towel. The argument. Chris's confession on the USB key. "I loved you, Marina. Long before Léna." His desire, silent and constant. And her own body, in the midst of ovulation, vulnerable, betrayed by a monstrous coincidence, by an innocuous gesture that revealed itself to be the starting point of a catastrophe.
The child she was carrying... was Chris's. Her sister's husband. The man she loved in secret, but who belonged to another. A child conceived without physical love, without an embrace, without shared desire. Fruit of a masculine despair frozen on the cotton of a towel and a moment of feminine weakness.
The reality crashed down on her with the crushing weight of a skyscraper. She felt the floor give way beneath her feet. The dizziness was so intense she grabbed the edge of the table.
"I... I'm going to be sick," she gasped.
The doctor quickly handed her a basin, but it was only bile, bitter as her fate. When she looked up, her eyes were those of a cornered animal.
"How... how will I manage?" she murmured, not to the doctor, but to the entire universe.
The dilemma was too enormous, too vast to be contained in her mind. To carry the child of the man her sister loved with a possessive, sick love. A child born from a biological accident that felt like a curse. Should she tell? Chris? Léna? Keep it? Raise it alone, with this abominable secret?
The tragic romance of their story had just plunged into the most primal nightmare. Her love for Chris, until now pure and platonic, was sullied, materialized in the cruelest, most involuntary way possible. Her body had become the silent battlefield of their thwarted passions.
The doctor, worried, offered her water, suggested she lie down. But Marina shook her head, stood up swaying. She had to leave. Flee this place, this truth.
She signed the papers with a trembling scrawl, retaining none of the doctor's recommendations about vitamins or the first prenatal checkup. She walked the corridors like a sleepwalker, her face streaming with silent tears.
Outside, the sun was too bright, the city too loud. She stood on the sidewalk, lost, her hands instinctively placed on her still-flat stomach. A belly that housed the impossible. The child of chance, of a towel, and of a cursed love.
The world, her world, had fractured for good. And she was alone, terribly alone, bearing the weight of this truth burning her from the inside.
- Writer
