Lila hopped up from the exam table and paced throughout the room again, her stomach whirling. “Could it be a false positive?”
“Yes, but that’s—”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“It’s a collection of cells, and barely that. It’ll be months before we know the baby’s sex.”
“Is it…”
“Calm down, child.”
“No. Senator La Roux’s dead. He died this morning,” she confessed, not giving any further details than that. The man who had beaten her, the man who had tried to murder her, had left something of his behind.
Inside her.
It was more nauseating than a tranq dart.
“Do you want to keep the baby?” Helen asked gently. “You might lose it anyway. Many miscarriages happen in the first few weeks of pregnancy. Most women never even know they’re pregnant before it’s gone.”
Lila stopped. “I don’t know,” she said, barely conscious of the words that had just come out of her mouth, for another thought had entered her mind.
La Roux hadn’t been the only one who had been inside her lately. Tristan had gotten there first. They’d been having sex for weeks before she’d had the operation, including the night before. “What if someone else had been in the picture before Dr. Rubio reversed my CUT? I had a very long vacation.”
“I didn’t realize you had a lover.”
“I don’t. He didn’t like the idea of sharing.”
“I see. Sperm can live in a woman’s body for up to five days. Light a match and toss it into a bucket of gasoline, Elizabeth. That’s the equivalent of what Dr. Rubio did to you. Whether you had sex before or after the procedure, it makes little difference. The father is anyone’s guess, at least until I can do a paternity test.”
“Don’t call me Elizabeth. That’s what people call me when I’ve done something wrong.”
Helen cupped her cheeks. “Child, you did nothing wrong. It’s a baby.”
Lila turned her head away.
“There are pills I could prescribe for you.”
Lila ignored the doctor as she prattled on. She didn’t think of the baby. She couldn’t think of the baby. All she could think about was La Roux’s hands around her throat, killing her as a baby had killed her grandmother while she pushed.
Helen touched her shoulder, startling her. “Lila, if you change your mind, I can prescribe something that will make this all go away. If you wait too late for pills, then I can schedule an abortion. I won’t do any of that today, not when you’re this upset, but I promise you, I will help you if that’s what you decide. No one will never learn of it.”
Lila nodded and pulled away, tugging her scarf around her neck. “Senator Dubois will never have the children he desperately wants, and I will have a child that I never wanted. At the risk of sounding, like a petulant little girl, life is not fair.”
“It rarely is.”
Lila eyed the darkened computer in the back of the room. Helen hadn’t written a damn thing down during the entire visit.
“The lab has already lost your sample.” Helen dropped the X-rays into the trash, the glossy photos unmarked by a patient number or her name.
Lila nodded, still too stunned to say much. “I’m grateful for any discretion you have to offer, though I’m sure someone else in the department will pick up the slack.”
“Then they will not work here for long, not if I have anything to do with it.”
Lila slid her sunglasses back onto her face. “I fear you’ll be too short-staffed to make that decision easily. By the end of the day, Dr. Rubio will no longer work at this clinic—or anywhere else, if I can help it.”
Helen smiled. “I’ll try to temper my disappointment.”
Chapter 28