Page 139 of One Secret

He keeps saying "you".

He keeps saying "you" and "she".

'Darcy?!'

I feel large hands taking me by the shoulders and shaking me hard. Curiously, it doesn't hurt.

Nothing hurts anymore.

'Baby, don't you fucking dare. Don't you leave me!'

Not once, I think, as the world fades to inky black. Not once in all these fantasies Cyrus is weaving... did he ever say "us".

* * *

Most people loathe the smell of hospitals. But I kind of like it.

As I sit up on the gurney, bare toes brushing the flagstone floor, I glance around the room, breathing in the familiar scent. L'ospizio di Santa Maria-Eugustina is a private hospital with several wealthy benefactors—the Machellis included. But it's not the shiny, high-tech equipment or crystalline white sheets that catch the wandering eye. It's the arching, majestic ceilings overhead and iron brackets ensconced in the walls. The hospice is built inside a refurbished church and, whilst the building itself is no longer in religious practice, many of the nursing staff are real, genuine nuns from a nearby convent.

It's absolutely nothing like any medical facility I've attended before.

But it still smells like a hospital.

It still reminds me of the times, post-debrief, where I've visited my team, or been visited myself. Times when we were all just thankful to be alive.

Perhaps that's why I've never had a problem with hospitals. In a past life, hospitals weren't for the dead, but for the lucky.

I rest a hand over my lower belly.

This time, I have two reasons to be thankful.

'Well,' I say, with a hand over my stomach. 'If you can fight through two forms of birth control and my chronic adrenaline spikes, I suppose a bullet's just child's play, huh?'

Whilst it's taken nearly a week for me to carry my own weight again, tests have revealed no adverse effects to the pregnancy at all.

'Like mother like daughter,' says a sweet voice from the doorway.

Sister Valentina is an initiate nun, putting her in an odd little headdress and pettifor instead of the full habit. She's also a fully registered nurse, a lover of all things Julia Roberts, and by far my favorite member of the hospice team. She's been assigned to my ward for at least three of her shifts in the last five days. I've been hoping to catch her before being discharged.

I grin at her approach.

'Doc says I'm fit to go,' I announce, even though she has my chart in her hands.

Sister Valentina smiles right back with a nod.

'So I see,' she agrees, before taking up a little white envelope from amidst my notes. 'I've got your discharge papers here, and I printed this out for you if you'd like it?'

I take the envelope from her and peer inside. Gasping, I scramble to pull out the blurry black-and-white image of a sonogram.

I stare at it with trembling hands for what feels like a decade.

Sister Valentina smiles harder.

'How about we get you some shoes?' she suggests.

'Shoes...' I repeat sluggishly, not truly paying attention. My head is on one track and one track only.

That's my baby...

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