“Five documented pregnancies.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“No.”
She turned the papers toward me.
The dates were listed one after another.
I recognized them.
Every one.
The months when I had suddenly become sick.
The nights Luke had insisted I had suffered another miscarriage.
The mornings when he told me not to ask questions.
The doctor continued carefully.
“Based on the records, you were pregnant five times.”
I shook my head.
“Luke told me I wasn’t.”
“He was wrong.”
“No.”
“He wasn’t wrong by accident.”
The room went silent.
The doctor lowered her voice.
“The records indicate that every one of those pregnancies was male.”
My fingers curled around the blanket.
Sons.
The children Luke had screamed about.
The children he had blamed me for not giving him.
The children he claimed my body could never carry.
All of them had been there.
Inside me.
I started crying.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
The tears simply came.
I remembered one pregnancy in particular.
I had been eleven weeks along.
Luke had come home angry after drinking.
He had accused me of hiding money.
When I told him I was pregnant, he had stared at me for several seconds.
Then he said,
“If it’s another girl, I’ll make sure you never get pregnant again.”
Two days later, I was bleeding.
He told me I had miscarried because I had been careless.
I believed him.
For years, I believed him.
The doctor reached for my hand.
“Caroline, there is more.”
I looked at her.
“Your injuries are serious. But the imaging also revealed evidence of repeated trauma.”
My heart stopped.
“What kind?”
“Trauma consistent with injuries that occurred at different points in time.”
The nurse quietly placed another document on the table.
“These are not all from this week.”
I stared at the photographs of medical imaging.
Different dates.
Different injuries.
Different hospitals.
A pattern.
A history.
A record of everything Luke had tried to erase.
Then the doctor said something I never expected.
“Some of the previous records contain inconsistencies.”
“What kind?”
“Several of the doctors who supposedly treated you for infertility were not treating you for infertility at all.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
She turned another page.
“Some of the diagnoses appear to have been entered after the appointments.”
I stared at her.
“After?”
“Yes.”
My voice became barely audible.
“Who entered them?”
The doctor looked at the file.
“An outside billing service.”
I felt a chill move through me.
Luke had always handled my medical paperwork.
He had always said paperwork was too complicated for me.
Insurance.
Appointments.
Prescriptions.
Everything.
I had trusted him.
The doctor continued.
“Someone altered your medical history to make it appear as though you had a chronic fertility disorder.”
I closed my eyes.
Luke hadn’t merely lied to me.
He had built a false medical history around me.
He had made me believe my body was defective.
He had convinced me that every dead baby was my fault.
And now I understood why.
Because if I believed I was infertile, I would never ask why my pregnancies kept ending.
The door opened.
A police officer stood outside.
Behind her was a second officer.
My sister Rebecca was with them.
The moment she saw me, she ran to the bedside.
“Oh, Caroline.”
She grabbed my hand carefully.
I began sobbing.
