Chapter 3

I got pregnant in our fourth year. It was a total surprise.

When Michael found out, he was excited at first. He hugged me and said, "We're having a baby."

His parents were even more ecstatic. Melissa started waking up at the crack of dawn to prepare nutritious food for me. They were a bit salty, but I knew she was just trying to take care of me.

For a moment there, I actually thought things were looking up.

Then came the afternoon of my sixteenth week. I was at the office when a sudden pain hit my abdomen. It wasn't a sharp cramp; it was a heavy, sinking feeling. I rushed to the restroom and saw bright red blood on my underwear.

I called Michael. It rang six times before he picked up. "What is it?"

"I'm bleeding," I said.

"Huh?" There was no urgency in his voice, none of the panic I'd expected. "Is it a lot?"

"I don't know... can you come? Can you take me to the hospital—" I said.

"I can't get away right now. I'm in a meeting. You just grab a cab. Let me know when you get there." He hung up.

I stood in that bathroom stall, bracing myself against the wall, my legs turning to jelly. The blood wouldn't stop.

I took a cab to the hospital alone. I registered alone, waited in line alone, and went in for the ultrasound alone. The doctor told me it was a threatened miscarriage and that I needed immediate bed rest to save the baby.

I signed the admission papers all by myself.

Michael didn't show up until eight that night. He brought a bottle filled with water. "The meeting ran over. I couldn't get away," he said. "You know how my boss is..."

"It's fine," I replied.

He sat by my bed for 20 minutes, and for 15 of those, he was glued to his phone. Then he told me he had an early meeting the next morning and had to head home.

I said okay.

He left, and I was all alone in the ward. The woman in the next bed had her husband right beside her, peeling an apple.

I watched the peel fall into a plastic bag, coil after coil. She leaned back against her pillow and laughed, telling him he was peeling it too thick and wasting it.

"As long as it tastes good," he said. It's just an apple."

I turned my head toward the window. Outside, the streetlights were a dull orange. The sound of that apple peel hitting the plastic was so faint, but it echoed in my head all night long.

In the end, I didn't lose the baby. On the day I was discharged, Michael came to pick me up. He said something in the car that stuck with me ever since. "See? It was no big deal. You were just overreacting."

I sat in the passenger seat, the seatbelt tightening across my stomach. I didn't answer. I just stared at the road and kept my hand over my belly.

It wasn't until later that I found out the truth. That afternoon when he "couldn't get away," there was no meeting. His car was parked at the women's and children's hospital. But he wasn't there for me. He was there for Sophia's first prenatal check-up.

I didn't know then. I just thought he was a bit insensitive, a bit thoughtless, and a bit detached. I told myself he was "flawed" but good at heart. After all, nobody's perfect.

I told myself that for seven years. Every time I felt slighted, I'd repeat it like a mantra, like when Melissa complained that my pasta was too salty, and when he forgot our anniversary again.

When I was doing the laundry and found a smear of pink on his collar, I just scrubbed the stain away and moved on to the next shirt. I didn't ask. I didn't bring it up.

I just kept making breakfast, kept handing over my paycheck, and kept smiling when I was facing them.

But that night, coming back late from work and seeing my car with its taillights glowing in the B2 garage, every "nobody's perfect" I'd ever told myself shattered into a million pieces.