Sterile? I Had Children with the Magnate novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Already Registered
At the hospital desk Valeria learns her husband has a prenatal file with another woman; she finds them in room four and tells no one she is carrying twins.
The clerk at the hospital desk stopped typing and turned her screen a little away.
"Señora, I can't start your prenatal file today," she said.
Valeria Ocampo held out her pink appointment slip again.
"Why not? It's booked for ten o'clock. I've been waiting two weeks."
"Your husband already opened one on this floor. Three weeks ago."
Valeria laughed, because her face did not know what else to do.
"Rodrigo has never been inside this hospital. He doesn't even know I'm here."
The clerk took a breath.
"The file belongs to Rodrigo Escalante. His ID is scanned in, and so is his signature."
"And the patient?"
"A Brenda Quiroz. Eighteen weeks. He registered her as his wife."
There was a line of six women behind Valeria, and all of them had stopped talking.
She opened her bag and put her marriage certificate on the counter, flat, with both hands.
"We have been married five years. Look at the folio. Look at the stamp."
The clerk looked.
"The certificate is real, señora. I'm not saying it isn't."
"Then your system is wrong."
"The system says what he said at the desk. He said wife."
Valeria opened the blue folder she had carried in from the car.
Her mother-in-law had packed it that morning at the breakfast table, kissed her on the cheek and called her a brave girl.
"Bring your history, dear," the older woman had said. "The doctors always want to see it."
Inside was one sheet on Clínica Escalante letterhead, five years old.
It said Valeria could never carry a child.
She pushed it across the counter, because it was the only paper she had that said anything about her body.
"I was told this years ago," she said. "I took three tests last month anyway. They were all positive."
The clerk read the sheet and slid it back.
"This is a summary, señora, it isn't an identification. I can't open anything for you until the other file is corrected."
"Corrected by who?"
"By the person who made it."
On the wall above the desk hung a screen with the day's queue, listed by initials.
Valeria read down it with her slip still in her fist.
It said Q., B. Consultorio 4, 10:30.
It was 10:20.
She put the certificate and the sheet back in the folder and walked past the line of women without saying anything.
Nobody in the line stopped her.
The hallway to the obstetrics rooms was long and quiet and smelled of floor cleaner.
Room four was at the end, and its door stood open by a hand's width.
Valeria stopped there and took out her phone.
She pressed record before she heard a single word.
"Mamá, this is only until the baby is born," Rodrigo said.
It was her husband's voice, low and tired, the one he used on the phone with the board.
"Of course it is, mijo," Aurora answered. Her tone was kind. "Nobody is taking anything from Valeria."
"She'll find out."
"Only if someone tells her. She's sterile, Rodrigo. She will be grateful you still come home at night."
Valeria's hand tightened on the phone until the case creaked.
A chair scraped inside.
"Doña Aurora, I don't feel well," a young woman said.
"Sit, hija. Breathe. Rodrigo, open the window."
Valeria pushed the door open the rest of the way.
Rodrigo stood by the window with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
A woman in a gray blazer sat on the exam table with one hand spread over her belly.
That was Brenda Quiroz, his chief of staff, who had once brought Valeria a coffee at the company Christmas party.
Aurora stood beside her, holding a printed ultrasound by its edges.
All three of them turned.
Brenda looked at Aurora first.
Then she looked at Valeria, and her eyes filled.
"Señora," she said. "I'm so sorry. I thought you knew."
Rodrigo crossed the room, and every bit of color had left his face.
"Vale. What are you doing here?"
His hand was already reaching for her elbow.
"Nothing is what it looks like," he said. "Let me explain at home. Please."
Aurora folded her hands over the ultrasound and smiled warmly.
"Valeria, dear, sit down. You've gone pale. We'll all talk like adults."
Valeria looked at her husband's hand on her arm.
She looked at the printed picture of a child that was not hers.
Under her cardigan, she laid her palm flat against her own stomach, where nobody in that room had any idea a child was growing.
They had spent four years telling her there would never be one.
She could say it now and watch their faces.
She did not.
"I took the wrong stairs," she said. "I was looking for the lab."
She stepped back, out of his reach, and walked down the hall with the phone still recording in her hand.
In the elevator, a message arrived from Rodrigo.
*Whatever you think you saw, it's a misunderstanding. Mamá will explain. Don't worry, love. Dinner tonight?*
Valeria stopped the recording and saved it twice.
Then she typed back: *Of course. I'll be home.*
She told no one about the baby.
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