Chapter 2 - The Seed of Doubt
I slammed the front door shut and locked the heavy deadbolt, trying to ignore my mother's venomous words.
She was only trying to poison my mind because she had lost her control over my life.
I walked back into the kitchen and found Anna sitting on the floor, breathing heavily with her eyes squeezed shut.
"Anna, what is wrong?" I asked in a panic, dropping to my knees beside her.
"The baby is coming," she whispered through clenched teeth, gripping my hand with incredible force.
I rushed her to the bedroom, prepared to call an ambulance, but the sharp pains slowly began to fade away.
It was only Braxton Hicks contractions, brought on by the severe stress and physical trauma she had just endured.
I stayed awake for the rest of the night, watching her chest rise and fall as she finally fell into a peaceful sleep.
But as I sat in the dark, my mother's terrifying accusation echoed relentlessly inside my head.
When the sun came up, I quietly walked into the guest bedroom where my mother had been living for the past six months.
The room was a mess of discarded clothes and empty hangers, but I noticed a loose floorboard near the closet.
I pried the wooden board up with a screwdriver and found a thick manila envelope hidden in the dust.
My hands trembled as I opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of official medical documents.
They were from a prominent fertility clinic in the city, dated exactly one month before Anna announced her pregnancy.
The name on the top of the patient file was mine.
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I read the final diagnosis paragraph and felt the air completely vanish from my lungs.
According to the official laboratory results signed by a leading specialist, I was completely and irreversibly sterile.
