The Mistress Brought a Sonogram to a Dying Woman

Sienna slid the sonogram across the hospital table and waited for me to break.

Four years of marriage, and this was how Theo's mistress announced she'd won.

She told me the baby was due in spring, her hand spread over a belly that wasn't showing yet.

I looked at the grainy black-and-white print and felt nothing move in my chest.

Not jealousy. Not the old, familiar rage I'd swallowed for the last four women who'd sat where she sat.

I'd handled all of them. Quietly. Cleanly. I never once lost.

But that morning my own scan had come back with three names on it, and only one of them lets you live past Christmas.

So I smiled at her and said congratulations.

She blinked. She'd rehearsed for tears, for screaming, for a wife clawing to keep her husband.

She had not rehearsed for a woman who no longer cared.

"You should keep him," I said, sliding her sonogram back. "I won't be using him much longer."

What she didn't know: I'd built half the drugs in her boyfriend's company with my own hands, unsigned.

What I didn't know yet: the sample number on my death sentence was off by a single digit.

Someone wanted me gone before I figured out which one.

***

My index finger pressed hard against the triplicate diagnosis report, hiding the words Stomach Cancer beneath my nail.

"Spring," Sienna said, dropping onto the hard plastic chair beside me.

She placed a steaming paper cup of hot cocoa on the empty seat between us. Then she slid a glossy black-and-white square directly onto my lap.

"The baby is due in the spring," she added, her voice bright enough to cut through the sterile quiet of the oncology ward.

I looked down at the ultrasound photo. A tiny, curled shape floated in the static.

"So," Sienna continued, leaning closer to inspect my face. "When are you moving out of the Calloway house?"

"You came all the way to the hospital to ask me about real estate?" I asked.

"I came to give you a reality check," Sienna replied. "Theo wants to start remodeling the master bedroom. He can't exactly do that with your cheap clothes still hanging in the closet."

I kept my eyes on the glossy paper. Four years. I had bled for the Calloway family company for four years, finishing seventeen uncredited clinical projects. The final one had left me coughing blood into a hospital sink just last week.

Theo's only text that night had been: "Is the project submitted?"

"Did Theo send you to ask me that?" I asked, my voice completely flat.

"Theo is busy preparing the nursery," Sienna replied, crossing her legs. "He doesn't want the stress of a messy eviction affecting my pregnancy. You need to pack your things, Lena."

"He has time to prepare a nursery, but no time to return the one point eight million he pulled from my lake-view apartment?"

Sienna rolled her eyes. "That was an investment for the family. Our family. You're just being bitter because you couldn't give him what he needed."

"Bitter," I repeated.

"Yes, bitter," she snapped. "You've been holding him back. He told me how you just sit around, complaining about being tired, while he runs a massive company."

"He said you were practically begging him to take that money," Sienna lied, tracing the rim of her coffee cup. "He told me you wanted him to succeed so badly, you offered the deed yourself."

"He forged my signature," I stated.

"Prove it," Sienna challenged, her smile widening. "Theo has the best lawyers in the city. You have nothing."

Heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor, sharp and demanding. Margaret Calloway stopped right in front of us, her designer handbag clutched tight against her chest. She didn't even glance at the oncology sign on the wall behind me.

"Still sitting around?" Margaret asked, her tone loud enough to draw stares from the nurses' station.

She gestured toward the ultrasound on my lap, then glared directly into my eyes.

"A woman who can't produce a child in four years is just taking up space," Margaret announced to the room. "You should have packed your bags and left on your own accord."

Patients in the waiting room turned their heads. The public humiliation was a familiar weapon. This was the third time this month my mother-in-law had announced my barrenness to a room full of strangers.

"Keep your voice down, Margaret," I said softly.

"Don't you dare tell me what to do!" Margaret stepped closer, looming over me. "Everyone needs to see what a fraud you are. You married my son under false pretenses. You promised us a family, and instead, you gave us nothing but excuses."

"Look at you," Margaret sneered. "Pale, thin, exhausted. You don't even look like a wife anymore. You look like a patient."

The irony of her statement hung in the air, right over the hidden words beneath my thumb.

"She's just being stubborn, Mrs. Calloway," Sienna chimed in, playing the peacemaker perfectly. "I even brought her hot cocoa to keep things civil."

Margaret scoffed. "Civil? She doesn't deserve civil. She deserves to be thrown out with the trash. My son needs an heir, not a useless leech."

"Theo deserves a real woman," Sienna added, placing a protective hand over her flat stomach. "Not someone who drags him down."

"Is that why you're here, Margaret?" I asked. "To act as backup for your son's mistress?"

"She is not a mistress!" Margaret shouted. "She is the mother of my future grandchild. You are the mistake that we are finally correcting."

They waited. Sienna shifted her weight on the plastic chair, bracing herself. She had clearly rehearsed for a fight. She expected a scream, a slap, or a tearful breakdown.

I didn't give her one.

I picked up the glossy ultrasound photo by the very edge and let it drop onto the empty chair next to the cocoa.

Then, I pushed the paper cup an inch toward Sienna.

"Congratulations," I said.

Sienna blinked. Her rehearsed smirk faltered. "What?"

"Keep him," I told her, my tone entirely even. "I won't be using him much longer anyway."

Margaret's jaw dropped. The older woman took a step forward, her face flushing red. "Excuse me? How dare you speak about my son that way!"

"You heard me," I said, standing up from the bench. "You want the space? It's yours. Take him. Take the house."

Sienna stared at me, completely derailed by the apathy. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. This wasn't the hysterical wife she had prepared to destroy.

"You think you can just walk away from us?" Margaret demanded, her voice rising another octave. "After everything we've provided for you?"

"You provided me with unpaid labor and a stolen apartment," I answered. "Consider us even."

"You are a disgrace!" Margaret shouted, pointing a manicured finger at my face. "Theo will serve you the divorce papers by tonight!"

"Tell him to mail them," I said.

I didn't look at them again. I picked up my diagnosis report from the bench.

As I folded the thick paper in half to slide it into my purse, my thumb brushed the top right corner.

A string of digits sat neatly beneath the barcode.

I froze.

I had memorized my patient ID the day I was admitted to the ward.

The number printed on this paper ended in a seven.

My actual ID ended in an eight.