The word came out in a low voice, but it did not tremble.
Lucie kept staring at me.
So I said it again.
“No. And I should have said no long before tonight.”
Her eyes slowly filled, not with relief, but with something more complex.
Pain, perhaps.
Because a late answer still carries the consequences of its delay.
I took the blue folder from the chair and placed it on the bed next to her.
“For a moment I thought something horrible,” I said. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.”
He clenched his jaw.
I forced myself not to look away.
“And I let my mother’s words stick in my mind because it was easier than confronting her.”
Lucie turned her face towards the window.
A fine morning line was drawn on her cheek.
“I don’t know what that makes us,” she whispered.
Me neither.
That was the truth.
It is not broken beyond repair.
It’s not safe.
He is not innocent.
Something in between, being in a hospital room, waiting to find out what might survive.
Then my phone vibrated once, even though it was turned off.
A remembered vibration, perhaps.
Or guilt pretending to be sane.
I put my hand in my pocket, took it out, and placed it on the table without turning it on.
Lucie saw the gesture.
This time, she did not nod.
But she didn’t look away either.
After a while, he said, “When we leave here, I don’t want to go back home and find your messages.”
I understood what he was really asking.
It’s not an apartment.
This is not about voicemail.
About whether I would finally come between her and what I had considered harmless.
I looked at my phone.
Then, seeing the slight bruise that my own nails had left on the palm of my hand that same night.
“I’ll call her from here,” I said. “And you won’t have to say a word.”
Lucie closed her eyes again.
His hand slid once over her belly, slowly and with a protective gesture.
The outside corridor was illuminated by the morning light, and somewhere nearby, another machine began to emit a rhythmic, steady beep.
I picked up the phone.
I turned it on.
And before the first message had even finished loading, I already knew that the next words would cost me something.
The first message loaded before I had time to prepare.
Adrien, I know you’re angry, but a mother has the right to protect her child.
I stared at the phrase until the letters stopped looking like words and became something colder.
Lucie didn’t ask what he was saying.
She just stared at my face, and that restraint was worse than any demand.
After that, six messages arrived, each disguised as concern, each with the same poison.
She’s very excited right now.
Don’t let panic decide your future.
A paternity test would protect everyone.
You deserve to have certainty before committing forever.
I read them all.
Not because I wanted to.
Because turning our backs now would just be another version of the same cowardice.
My thumb hovered over the call button.
For years, I responded to my mother with explanations, gentle words, and small concessions.
That morning, in the hospital room, the explanations suddenly seemed like another way of asking Lucie to hold on longer.
I pressed the call button.
My mother answered on the second ring, breathless, as if she had been waiting with the phone in her hand.
“Adrien, finally. Listen to me before I fill your head with tears.”
I closed my eyes.
Lucie’s fingers tightened around the sheet, but she remained silent.
“No,” I said. “You will listen to me.”
The line fell silent.
I could hear my mother’s breathing, offended even before any accusation reached her.
“Lucie is in the hospital,” I said. “The baby is in danger, and your words helped bring me here.”
