Diego swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I… I heal fast. I didn’t need to go back.”
Paola’s grip on his arm tightened. “What is she saying, Diego?”
“She’s saying,” I spoke up, my voice surprisingly steady, “that you were entirely capable of getting me pregnant two months ago.”
Diego’s face turned an ugly shade of red. “No! No, that’s a lie! You’re just trying to cover your tracks!”
Dr. Salinas sighed, a heavy, exhausted sound.
“I wasn’t finished,” she said.
She clicked her mouse, pulling up a different window on the monitor. It was a digital calendar overlaying my ultrasound measurements.
“The gestational age of this fetus is exactly ten weeks and four days,” Dr. Salinas announced.
I did the math in my head.
Ten weeks and four days.
That was exactly two and a half months ago.
That was two weeks before Diego’s scheduled vasectomy.
“Conception occurred roughly two weeks prior to your surgery date,” Dr. Salinas said, looking directly into Diego’s eyes. “This baby was created before you ever stepped foot into the urologist’s office.”
Preview
The color completely drained from Diego’s face.
He stared at the screen, his mouth opening and closing like a fish suffocating on dry land.
“Ten weeks?” he whispered.
I remembered that night.
It was our anniversary.
He had brought home a cheap bottle of wine, apologized for how tight money was, and promised that things would get better once he got his promotion.
We had been intimate for the first time in over a month.
Two weeks later, he supposedly had his procedure.
“So,” Dr. Salinas said, crossing her arms again. “Medically speaking, you are the father. And considering the timeline, your accusations against your wife are not only scientifically baseless, but aggressively cruel.”
I felt a massive weight lift off my chest.
Tears of vindication spilled down my cheeks.
I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t a cheater. My baby was exactly what I thought it was—a product of my marriage.
But the appointment wasn’t over.
Because Dr. Salinas wasn’t done.
“However,” Dr. Salinas said, her tone suddenly shifting from clinical to incredibly tense. “There is something else.”
Diego looked up, a desperate flicker of hope in his eyes. “What? A discrepancy? Is there a mistake?”
“No mistake regarding your wife,” Dr. Salinas said. “But there is a glaring discrepancy regarding you.”
The doctor walked over to the counter and picked up a manila folder.
Because our insurance was linked, and because Dr. Salinas was part of the same massive medical network as Diego’s urologist, she had access to our shared marital medical files.
She opened the folder.
“When Mrs. Laura told me you had a vasectomy two months ago, I was concerned about the timeline. So, before coming into this room, I pulled your file from Dr. Evans’ office to verify the exact date of the procedure.”
Diego froze.
His entire body went rigid.
“You… you looked at my file?” he stammered.
“I did,” she confirmed. “And it made for very interesting reading.”
Paola stepped forward, her perfectly manicured hands on her hips. “This is a violation of privacy! You can’t just read his files!”
“As his wife’s primary OBGYN determining the paternity timeline of a linked medical account, I absolutely can check the procedural dates,” Dr. Salinas fired back, utterly unfazed by Paola’s shrieking.
Dr. Salinas looked at Diego.
“Mr. Diego, Dr. Evans’ notes state that you arrived for your appointment on the morning of October 12th.”
Diego nodded frantically. “Yes! Exactly! I was there!”
“You were in the waiting room,” Dr. Salinas corrected. “But according to the billing department and the surgical notes, you were never put under anesthesia. You never went into the operating room.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
I stopped breathing.
“What?” I whispered.
Dr. Salinas looked at me with deep sympathy.
“Laura, your husband didn’t have a vasectomy.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Preview
“He cancelled the procedure twenty minutes before it was supposed to start,” Dr. Salinas read from the paper. “He told the receptionist he had a sudden, unavoidable work emergency and requested a refund of the surgical copay in cash.”
My mind raced backward in time.
The weekend of October 12th.
Diego had come home looking exhausted.
He had walked with a slight limp.
He had spent three entire days on the living room sofa, complaining about the pain.
I had brought him ice packs.
I had cooked him his favorite meals.
I had tiptoed around the house, keeping the television volume on mute so he could rest and recover from a surgery he never had.
“You faked it?” I asked, my voice trembling with a mixture of shock and rising rage.
Diego backed away toward the door. “Laura, I… it’s a misunderstanding. I was going to reschedule.”
“You sat on my couch with frozen peas between your legs for three days!” I screamed, sitting up on the examination table. “You let me wait on you hand and foot!”
“Why would he lie about that?” Paola suddenly asked, her voice shrill.
She turned to Diego, her eyes wide with confusion. “Diego, why did you lie about having the surgery?”
Diego wouldn’t look at her.
He was sweating profusely.
“And more importantly,” Paola continued, her voice trembling slightly, “what did you do with the two thousand dollar copay refund?”
I stared at Paola.
Then I looked at her wrist.
Gleaming under the fluorescent clinic lights was a heavy, beautiful, diamond-studded tennis bracelet.
The exact same bracelet Diego had claimed was a “cheap imitation” he bought for Paola for her birthday because she was such a “good friend.”
“Oh my god,” I whispered, the final puzzle piece snapping into place.
He didn’t just fake the surgery.
He used our savings—the money we had scraped together for months—to buy jewelry for his mistress.
He had used the weekend of his “recovery” to text her from the couch while I was in the kitchen making him soup.
“Diego…” Paola said, her voice dropping an octave. “You told me you got the vasectomy. You told me you were sterile.”
Diego finally snapped. “Shut up, Paola! Just shut up!”
But Paola wasn’t listening.
Her face had turned the color of ash.
Her hand slowly drifted down to her own flat stomach.
“You told me I didn’t need to worry,” Paola whispered, her eyes wide with sudden, blinding terror. “You told me I could stop taking my pills because you were shooting blanks.”
The entire room seemed to tilt on its axis.
I looked from Paola to Diego, the absolute absurdity of the situation crashing over me.
Dr. Salinas leaned against the counter, her eyebrows raised so high they nearly touched her hairline.
“Well,” Dr. Salinas said softly. “This is certainly a complication.”
“I’m late,” Paola hyperventilated, clutching her designer bag to her chest like a shield. “I’m three weeks late. I thought it was just stress from the divorce drama.”
Diego stared at his mistress as if she had just morphed into a monster.
“You’re… what?” he choked out.
“I’m pregnant, you idiot!” Paola shrieked, entirely abandoning her poised, wealthy-mistress persona. “And I’m married! My husband is going to kill me!”
I burst out laughing.
I couldn’t help it.
