Sterile? I Had Children with the Magnate novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Open Tubes
A private doctor finds healthy twins and says nobody tested her for the sterile report; at home she photographs her husband's heir agreement and sees she is to be told after the birth.
Valeria did not go home.
She drove across the city to a small clinic with a green door, where she had made one phone call from the hospital parking lot.
"Come now," the doctor had said. "I'll make room."
The doctor was a gray-haired woman with reading glasses pushed up into her hair.
She had Valeria on the table in ten minutes, with cold gel on her stomach and the screen turned toward them both.
"Fourteen weeks, by your dates," the doctor said. "Let's see what we have."
The probe pressed low and moved.
On the screen, a small shape appeared, and then a second one beside it.
The doctor stopped moving her hand.
"Do you see that?"
"I see a baby," Valeria said.
"You see two."
The room was very quiet.
Then the doctor turned up the sound, and two quick heartbeats filled it, one a little ahead of the other.
Valeria put the back of her hand against her mouth.
She was crying and smiling and did not care which one showed.
"Twins," she whispered.
"Two healthy ones, and both sit well. Whoever told you that you couldn't carry was wrong."
Valeria sat up and wiped the gel off with the paper towel the doctor gave her.
She took the blue folder from her bag and held out the single sheet.
"This is what I was told. Five years ago."
The doctor read it slowly, then turned it over to check the back.
"There are no lab pages attached. No test dates. No imaging. It only says the conclusion."
"What does that mean?"
"It means this is someone's opinion on a letterhead."
She tapped the signature at the bottom.
"This is a clinic director, not your gynecologist. Who sent you there?"
"My husband's mother."
The doctor's mouth went flat.
"Your tubes are open, Valeria. Your last bloodwork is excellent. Nothing on this page matches the body I just scanned."
Valeria folded the sheet in half and put it back in the folder.
"Please keep this between us for now."
"Your records are yours. But tell your husband soon. Two babies is a lot to carry alone."
"I know," Valeria said, and she did not say anything more.
She was home by six.
The house on the hill above the city had a gate, a long drive and a garden that Aurora's staff kept trimmed to the inch.
Rodrigo's car was already in the garage.
He was in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, standing over a pot he did not know how to use.
"I made your soup," he said. "The one with the lime."
The pot was boiling over.
Valeria turned off the flame without a word.
"Vale." He took a breath. "I know what you saw today."
"Tell me."
"Brenda has been my chief of staff for three years. Her husband left her in the spring. My mother felt sorry for her."
"Your mother is paying for her prenatal care."
"Yes. And the hospital mixed up a form. The clerk wrote wife when she should have written employee."
Valeria watched his face while he said it.
It was a good lie, and he told it badly, looking at the soup instead of at her.
"You worry too much," he said. "You always have. Mamá says the stress isn't good for you."
"Mamá says."
"Please don't make it bigger than it is."
She let him put his arms around her.
She stood in them and said nothing, and her hand lay flat on the front of her dress.
"I believe you," she said.
His whole body let go.
He kissed her hair and told her she was the best thing in his life.
Dinner was soup and bread, and he asked her about her art classes and laughed at the right places.
He did not say the name Brenda again.
At ten he went upstairs to shower.
His tablet lay on the arm of the sofa, face up, the way it always did.
Valeria picked it up.
The passcode was her birthday.
It had always been her birthday, and for a moment that was the worst thing she had found all day.
She opened his documents.
One folder was named Family, and inside it was a file dated seven months ago.
*Gestational and Heir Agreement.*
She read the first page standing up.
Rodrigo Escalante and Aurora Escalante, on one side. Brenda Quiroz, on the other.
The next page set out a monthly payment, a private ward and a clinic.
She photographed every page with her phone, one at a time, with the shower running above her.
On page three, a paragraph near the bottom had a line drawn under it by someone's pen.
*The spouse, Valeria Ocampo, is not to be informed until after the delivery, at the family's discretion.*
At the bottom of that page, in blue ink, was her husband's signature.
The shower shut off upstairs.
She put the tablet back exactly where it had been, face up, and sat down on the sofa with her hands in her lap.
When Rodrigo came down in his robe, she smiled at him and asked if he wanted tea.
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