Chapter 4: Only One Chance

The emergency doctor was a tall woman with tired eyes and an English accent she had learned from television.

She put a cold gel on my stomach and a probe over it.

On the screen there was a dark shape with a small light blinking in it.

"Here," she said. "This is the heart."

I stopped breathing.

"It is strong. Very strong, for eight weeks."

I put my hand over my mouth and I laughed and cried at the same time.

Jakub stood against the wall of the little room with his arms folded and his eyes on the floor.

He had not left since the taxi.

"The bleeding?" he asked her in English.

"A small tear at the edge. It will close, if she rests." She turned the screen toward me. "But there is something else I must show you."

She pointed to the pale lining around the baby.

"This should be thick and smooth. Yours is thin, and there is scarring here and here."

"What does that mean?"

"It means this pregnancy is a gift, Freya. At your age, with this womb, I would not promise you another."

The room was very quiet.

"Have you taken strong tablets, for a long time?" she said. "Medicines for the womb?"

"Only morning-after pills."

"How many?"

"Twice a month. For two years."

The doctor's face changed.

"Twice a month is a lot," she said. "But those pills do not scar. I have never seen it from those pills."

"Then what did this?"

"I do not know. Do you have the bottle?"

I did.

I had put it in my bag a week before, because Brecken liked me to take a pill after every night, and I never knew when I would need one.

I dug it out from under my passport and handed it to her.

It was a white plastic bottle with a printed label and a pharmacy sticker.

She turned it over, shook out one tablet and held it under the lamp.

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