A doctor entered, offered warm congratulations, examined the baby, and left. Rachel looked up at Ethan with the same bright, familiar smile he had adored since they were young.
“Look… he has your eyes,” she said softly, brushing the baby’s cheek.
Ethan swallowed hard. “Yeah… he’s perfect,” he replied, though his voice felt distant and unfamiliar.
In eight years together, he had never once doubted Rachel. She wasn’t someone capable of betrayal. She was kind, faithful, resilient—the type who prayed, who endured endless treatments, who refused to give up hope.
None of this added up. Unless…
He tried to calm himself. Maybe something had gone wrong. Maybe, somehow, the impossible had happened.
But then he remembered the follow-up appointment—the sterile room, the doctor’s steady voice:
