Blood had smeared across her clothes, soaking her white top red.
"Here, wash up."
I brought her a basin of water and told her to change so I could scrub the clothes.
"No point. This one's done for."
She drank some water, then sat me down beside her.
"Listen to me." Her expression was dead serious, her eyes fixed on my face. "If you ever end up pregnant before you're married—no matter who the man is—you absolutely cannot just buy pills and try to deal with it on your own. You tell me. I'll take you to a clinic."
I pulled free of her grip, stunned. "What are you saying? I'm still a virgin. Why would you suddenly—"
No. It wasn't sudden at all.
Nathaniel's panic. Vivian's unstoppable bleeding. Layla's warning. The pieces locked together in my head and formed one truth.
Vivian was pregnant. And the baby was Nathaniel's.
In this era, getting pregnant before marriage was the kind of shame that would get you condemned behind your back for the rest of your life.
To keep people from finding out, they hadn't dared go to a hospital. They'd bought pills and tried to handle it themselves.
The result was Vivian hemorrhaging. Nathaniel had no other option. He came to my sister in the dead of night.
Layla had worked at the county health clinic before. Anyone in the neighborhood with a headache or a fever who didn't want to bother with the hospital would come to her.
"So… is Vivian okay?"
"Hard to say. The county hospital couldn't handle it, so they sent her to the city in the middle of the night." Layla paused. "I heard Vivian's father sent people. Not sure if that's true, but there were other people in the car besides Nathaniel."
"Oh…" I set a bowl of rice in front of Layla and went back to my room.
In my previous life, Nathaniel and I never had children.
I'd tried everything—checkups, folk remedies, temples, prayers.
Nathaniel never cared much about it. He said he didn't like kids.
After I pushed and pleaded long enough, he finally gave in and agreed to go to the hospital for an exam.
We hadn't known until the test. Nathaniel's count came back dead—zero motility, zero chance. The doctor said he would never father a child in his life.
"I already told you, stop thinking about having kids."
I suggested IVF, a sperm bank. He refused every option.
I let it go. His ego couldn't take it, and I didn't push.
But now Vivian Bennett was pregnant.
Nathaniel, who supposedly couldn't have children.