"I'm fine—" Silvia gags and spits blood into the sink as a single birthday candle trembles on a tiny cupcake.
"Nurse, please," she says through the rag in her hand. Her voice is steady. The cake trembles again when Noah trips and giggles in the doorway.
"Noah, stay," a nurse's voice snaps from the hallway. Lynx's assistant stands in the doorway with a tablet. He watches without expression.
"Sil, you're pale." The nurse pushes the door open and moves closer. "You need to sit."
"I said I'm fine." Silvia steadies herself against the marble counter. She breathes through it and feels the baby, a faint flutter low and private. She presses her palm there. The flutter answers like proof.
"Dr. Zhao is on line two," the nurse says. "He called back."
Silvia's fingers don't leave the spot on her belly. "Patch him through."
The hallway light bleeds in. The candle wax drips slow. Noah tugs his shirt and looks at his mother like a question.
"Silvia." Dr. Peter Zhao's voice is clipped; it always is when he's about to break bad news. "I have the pathology."
"Tell me." She doesn't want details. She wants a single answer she can use.
"We found multiple spots," he says. "It's advanced. We can try to shrink it with chemo, but it won't cure. The drugs will risk the pregnancy."
Silvia closes her eyes for one clean beat. That beat holds a
