My Husband Ignored My Miscarriage to Hold Her Infant

The fluorescent lights in Dr. David Chen's office hummed with a frequency that made my teeth ache. Or maybe that was just the nausea—the constant, gnawing companion I'd been dismissing as stress for weeks. I sat across from David, a colleague I'd consulted with dozens of times about other people's tragedies, and watched his mouth form words that didn't seem real.

"Stage IV stomach cancer, Isla."

The rain drummed against the window behind him, each drop a tiny fist pounding against glass. Seattle's perpetual gray had seeped into this room, into my bones, into the space between David's careful, clinical tone and the roaring silence in my head.

"And you're pregnant. Approximately six weeks along."

My hand moved to my stomach before I could stop it. The gesture felt foreign, like watching someone else's body betray them. Six weeks. Stage IV. The words existed in separate universes that had just collided with the force of a freight train.

"Isla, do you understand what I'm telling you?"

I understood. God, I understood with the crystalline clarity of every oncology rotation I'd ever completed, every terminal patient I'd ever comforted with lies about fighting and hope. I was the doctor who delivered bad news with compassionate efficiency. I was not supposed to be the woman whose hands trembled as she gripped the armrests of the patient chair.

"How long?" My voice came out steady. Professional. A small victory.

David's pause told me everything. "Without aggressive treatment, perhaps six months. With treatment—" He stopped, his eyes dropping to the file that contained my death sentence in neat, typed rows. "The pregnancy complicates things significantly."

I needed Callahan. The thought arrived with desperate urgency, shoving aside the medical statistics trying to calculate my expiration date. My husband would know what to say, how to hold me, how to make the world stop tilting on its axis. I fumbled for my phone, my fingers clumsy and cold.

The call went straight to voicemail. His voice—warm, familiar, alive—instructed me to leave a message.

I tried again. Voicemail.

Again. Voicemail.

"Isla?" David leaned forward, concern creasing his features. "Is there someone I can call for you? You shouldn't be alone right now."

But I was alone. Sitting in this office that smelled of antiseptic and old coffee, carrying death in my stomach alongside something that might have been hope in a different life. The irony tasted like copper on my tongue.

Then I remembered. The baby supplies. Callahan's text from this morning, punctuated with irritation: *Don't forget to pick up the custom gift basket for Eloise's party. 3 PM sharp. Don't be late.*

Eloise's Sip and See celebration. Three months since I'd delivered her baby in the same hospital where I was now receiving my death sentence. Three months since Callahan had held my hand in the delivery room and sworn he never wanted children, that I was enough, that we were enough.

I stood, my scrubs still damp from the earlier rain, my oversized cardigan hanging