Marcus refused to leave. “I have a right to know if that’s my son in there.”
Dr. Okoro’s expression shifted, something careful and deliberately neutral settling over his features. “Mr. Coleman, I understand this is difficult, but I need to speak with my patient privately, and I’d strongly encourage you to consider a paternity test once the baby is born, given the timeline discrepancy we’re looking at today.”
“Timeline discrepancy,” Marcus repeated, the words apparently landing somewhere new and cold in his chest. “You’re telling me this baby was conceived earlier than Whitney told me.”
“I’m telling you the measurements suggest that possibility,” Dr. Okoro said. “I’d rather not speculate beyond the medical facts in front of me.”
Yvette, standing near the door, did the math out loud before anyone could stop her, the way people sometimes do when shock overrides tact entirely.
“Marcus,” she said slowly, “didn’t you have that reversal surgery back in the spring? Wasn’t that only — what, three months ago?”
The room went silent in a completely different way than it had a moment before.
“Twelve weeks ago,” Marcus said, his voice gone flat and strange. “The surgery was twelve weeks ago. Dr. Feldman said it could take up to eight weeks after that for anything to even be viable again.”
He turned to look at Whitney, and whatever remained of his glowing pride from twenty minutes earlier had drained completely out of his face.
“If this baby is twenty-six, twenty-seven weeks along,” he said slowly, working through it the way a man works through a math problem he desperately doesn’t want to solve correctly, “that means conception happened almost seven months ago. My surgery was three months ago. Whitney.” His voice cracked on her name. “That’s not possible. That baby isn’t mine.”
