On a quiet cul-de-sac outside Houston, in a beige two-story house that looked just like every other beige two-story house on the block, Ruby Allen sat with a white plastic stick in her shaking hand and realized her life might finally be changing—or falling apart for good.

The second pink line hadn’t appeared yet.

Her heart pounded so hard she could hear it in her ears. The bathroom was too bright, the overhead light unforgiving on the pale tiles and her own drawn face in the mirror. Outside, someone’s sprinkler hissed on the manicured suburban lawn, and the faint hum of the interstate floated in through the closed window, the sound of American life going relentlessly forward.

“Jacob, what should we do now?” she had asked an hour earlier, her voice small, clutching the unopened box of tests like it was something radioactive.

He hadn’t looked at the box for long.

“Ruby, I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know anymore.” His shoulders had slumped, dark circles under his eyes after another long day at Houston Presbyterian’s vascular surgery unit. “I’ve had a rough day at work. I need to get some air.”

He’d kissed her forehead out of habit, not passion, grabbed his keys, and left, closing the front door carefully behind him.

It was a small gesture—careful, always quiet, always controlled—but to Ruby it sounded like the soft click of something inside him shutting down. There had been a time when Jacob would never have stepped outside without asking if she wanted to come along, when their lives were glued together by amusement, curiosity, and the constant exchange of secrets.

Now, his walks without her had become routine.

She watched him from the front window as he crossed the lawn, his tall figure moving toward the neighborhood sidewalk, hands thrust into his pockets. The sinking Texas sun cast long shadows over the asphalt. He didn’t look back.

Ruby sank down into the living room armchair like someone had cut the strings holding her upright.

She understood it was hard for him. Being a surgeon, seeing people fight for their lives every day, then coming home to a wife who floated in a fog of sadness—that wore on a man. She got it.

But it wasn’t easier for her.

They had been together ten years. Ten years of birthdays and holidays and new jobs and late-night tacos and Netflix and whispered plans under cheap IKEA blankets. Ten years in which the absence of a child—of tiny sneakers in the hallway, of a high chair at the table—had stretched into a silent, screaming problem that pressed on every corner of their marriage.

They had met at the end of college in Austin—a barbecue, a mutual friend, sticky summer heat. Ruby had studied marketing; Jacob had been pre-med, already thinking about residencies and matching programs. She’d noticed him immediately across the yard: tall, lean, a little too serious for twenty-two, with eyes that focused on you like you were the only person in the world.

They fell fast. The way people in their early twenties always think it will feel forever.

Six months later, they stood in front of a judge at a small county courthouse with rubber plants in the corner and fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, right hands raised, promising to love each other “until death do you part.” Jacob’s parents flew in from Ohio. Ruby’s mother cried into a tissue and her father tried not to.

Life at the start was a scrappy American dream in miniature. Jacob was just beginning his residency at a Houston hospital. Ruby scored a job in the marketing department of a big construction company that put up luxury condos all over Texas. They lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with a view of a parking lot, counted every dollar, and kept big plans pinned to the fridge with magnets: pay off student loans, buy a house, travel to Europe, maybe move to New York or California someday.

Children were on the list, but far down.

That’s why Ruby’s first missed period felt less like a miracle and more like an earthquake.

They hadn’t been trying. She wasn’t ready. He wasn’t either. Their savings account was thin, their schedules insane. Jacob’s residency shifts ran fifty, sixty, seventy hours. Ruby was clawing her way up from junior assistant to someone whose opinion mattered.

“We can’t do this now,” Jacob had said, hands pressed to his temples, sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of medical textbooks spread out. “We barely sleep. We’re drowning in debt. How are we supposed to give a child the life they deserve?”

“It’s too early,” Ruby echoed, though a tiny part of her embraced the idea of a crib in the corner of their bedroom.

After long, painful talks that went late into the night, they made a choice. They went to a reputable clinic, signed a stack of forms, and Ruby underwent a procedure that the doctor assured them was safe and routine.

“You’ll be able to get pregnant again in the future,” the physician had said. “Right now this is the right decision for you both. You’re young and healthy. Don’t worry.”

They believed him.

They went back to work. They pushed down the ache that woke Ruby some nights, the ghost of a life that might have been, and told themselves they’d try again when it was the right time.

Years rolled by in a blur of hard work and small victories.

Seven years later, things finally looked like the postcard they had pinned on their mental vision board. Jacob was no longer an exhausted resident but a respected vascular surgeon at a private clinic in Houston’s medical district, known for his steady hands and calm voice in the OR. Ruby had thrived at her company and, restless and ambitious, was preparing to launch her own interior design firm, specializing in high-end remodels in the city’s endless sprawl of suburbs.

They had bought a three-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood with good schools. They owned two decent cars. They’d paid down most of their loans. There was money in the bank, a 401(k), even a “Paris someday” fund in an online savings account.

They were ready.

Ruby came off the pill. They circled dates, bought ovulation tests, made love on schedule and off schedule just to feel less like lab rats.

Month after month, nothing happened.

At first, they shrugged it off. People took time to conceive. Stress was a factor. They downloaded apps, drank herbal teas that smelled like lawn clippings, joked about Jacob needing to stop wearing tight scrubs.

When nothing happened after more than a year, Ruby’s jokes dried up.

They made an appointment at a fertility clinic. They sat side by side in a quiet waiting room with soft music and glossy magazines about parenting in America laid out in neat stacks. Couples came and went: some nervous, some hopeful, some already holding babies.

After weeks of blood work, ultrasounds, semen analyses, and tests Ruby didn’t want to think about, they sat in the doctor’s office, facing the man in the white coat like defendants waiting for a verdict.

“Ruby,” the doctor said gently, flipping through her chart, “with your overall health profile, I wish I had better news. You are young, you’re otherwise healthy, but based on your uterine lining, some scarring we can see, and your hormonal markers, your chances of conceiving naturally and carrying to term are very low.”

Ruby’s ears roared.

“How?” she managed. “Why? I’ve never had any major problems. I exercise, I eat well…”

“You had a termination in your early twenties, correct?” the doctor asked, glancing up briefly, his voice purely clinical.

She nodded, her throat tight.

“Most of the time,” he continued, “that kind of procedure does not lead to long-term issues. But in some cases, there can be subtle damage—changes that don’t show up right away. It’s no one’s fault. Sometimes the body heals in ways we can’t fully predict.”

He used more medical words after that, pointing at dull gray images on a screen, outlining options: IVF with low odds, surrogacy, adoption.

Ruby heard only one thing: very little chance.

Jacob and Ruby walked out of the clinic in silence, the bright Texas sun almost mocking. The parking lot shimmered with heat. Cars glinted in the glare. Somewhere, a child laughed, the sound cutting into her like glass.

They didn’t talk about it for months. They moved through their lives carefully, like people stepping around a crater in the living room floor.

Then, one evening a year later, Ruby broke.

“I can’t live like this,” she whispered at the kitchen table, twisting a napkin between her fingers. “I can’t wake up every day and pretend I’m okay with… nothing.”

“We’re not doing nothing,” Jacob said, tired. “We’re working. We’re building our business. We’re—”

“I want a child,” she blurted, startling them both. “I want someone to tuck in. Someone to share Christmas with. It doesn’t have to be biologically mine. Maybe we should… adopt.”

The word felt large and heavy, but also like a rope thrown across a chasm.

Jacob stared at his coffee for a long time. He had seen children in hospital beds, tiny bodies hooked to beeping machines. The idea of taking responsibility for one scared him in a way surgery never had.

But he loved Ruby. And he was tired of coming home to her shuttered eyes and forced smiles.

“Okay,” he said finally. “If that’s what you want, we’ll look into it. Together.”

They went through American adoption websites, scrolled through catalogs of faces that should never have been in catalogs: newborns sleeping in hospital bassinets, toddlers gripping stuffed animals, older kids trying to look brave.

At first Ruby felt something like hope. Then, one evening, staring at a picture of a baby boy with big dark eyes, she began to sob so hard she couldn’t breathe.

“What’s wrong?” Jacob asked, frightened.

“I can’t,” she choked. “I can’t do it. I thought I could, but every time I look at their faces, all I can think is that I’ll never see my own child’s eyes in them. I’m a horrible person. I can’t take someone else’s baby and pretend he’s mine.”

“You’re not horrible,” Jacob said, rubbing her back.

“Yes I am,” she cried. “I can’t be a real mother even this way. You need to leave me. Find someone who can give you a child. You deserve that. You deserve a normal family, not a broken woman.”

“Ruby, stop.” His voice sharpened. “We made the decision to end that pregnancy together. We live with it together. I’m not walking out just because things got hard.”

“You should!” she insisted, obsessed. “Why do you need a wife like me? You could find someone else—someone younger, healthier, who can give you a baby.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he snapped. “Let’s close this topic, okay? Enough.”

But it was never enough for Ruby.

She grew quieter. Her laughter—the deep, easy kind that used to roll out of her at his dumbest jokes—disappeared. She quit going out with friends. The spark that had drawn him in from across a college backyard dimmed until she was a pale outline of the girl he’d married.

Jacob tried to be patient. He went to couple’s therapy with her. He suggested trips, new hobbies, anything to shift her focus. Sometimes she rallied, but the darkness always seeped back.

Eventually, his own nerves began to fray. After another night of Ruby pleading with him to divorce her “for his own good,” Jacob found himself thinking thoughts he’d never thought before.

What if I did leave? Not vanish, not abandon her, but… step away. Shake her up. Show her that this constant talk of him leaving wasn’t a game.

He hated himself for considering it.

One heavy, humid Friday evening, with a thunderstorm crawling over Houston and the air thick enough to chew, Ruby asked the question again: “Jacob, what should we do now?”

He looked at the unopened pregnancy test box on the coffee table—the one she kept in the house like a relic, as if enough tests would conjure a miracle—and felt something inside him clench.

“Ruby, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m exhausted. Today was a hard day at the hospital. I need to clear my head. I’m going to get some air.”

And he left.

He walked without direction, his feet carrying him past the identical lawns and palm trees, the American flags flapping on porches. The sky was bruised purple. The air smelled like wet asphalt and fried food from the drive-thru two blocks over.

He thought about Ruby, hunched in that armchair, drowning in guilt over something they’d chosen together. He thought about the small ultrasound images he’d saved in a folder on his computer, of patients’ arteries and veins, things he could fix with a scalpel and skill. He thought about the one thing he couldn’t fix: his wife’s grief.

Do I still love her? he asked himself, for the first time putting the words together.

Yes. God, yes. Love throbbed in him like a second pulse.

But did he want to live the rest of his life in a house where sorrow sat at the dinner table every night?

He had no idea how long he walked before his feet took him toward the big indoor mall just off the interstate—a place of climate-controlled light, chain stores, and escape. It was where suburban families went on weekends and teenagers loitered near the food court.

He pushed through the revolving doors and was greeted by cool air and the scent of pretzels and coffee. On the second floor, there was a Starbucks-like café with soft chairs and a view of the atrium. He headed toward the escalator.

“Dr. Allen?” a female voice called behind him, surprised and bright. “Jacob?”

He turned.

Amanda, one of the newer nurses at the clinic, hurried toward him, out of uniform in jeans and a fitted green top that made her eyes look even lighter. At the hospital she wore white scrubs and an expression of professional competence that bordered on flirtatious. Here, she looked like any other attractive American woman in her early thirties, hair loose around her shoulders, lipstick perfectly applied.

“Amanda,” he said, managing a small smile. “Didn’t recognize you without your badge.”

“Same,” she laughed. “We’re all ghosts without our scrubs, right? There’s a good coffee place upstairs.” She gestured toward the café. “Have you eaten? I was just going to grab something. We could… sit, talk.” Her smile lingered a little longer than necessary. She’d been sending him signals at work—lingering touches when handing him charts, compliments on his surgical skills, innuendo disguised as workplace banter.

He knew them. He just pretended not to.

Tonight, with his home life caught in a fog, the idea of being with someone who didn’t see him as the villain in her own life story felt dangerously tempting.

“That sounds nice,” he heard himself say. “I could use some caffeine.”

They had barely taken three steps when a commotion broke out near the first-floor fountain.

“Help!” someone shouted. “Somebody help her! This woman’s in trouble!”

Jacob’s head snapped toward the sound. A small crowd was already forming around a figure crumpled on the polished tile. He could see flashes of a long skirt, gray hair.

He moved instinctively.

Amanda’s hand clamped on his arm. “Come on,” she said, tugging him toward the escalator. “Security will handle it. There’s probably a nurse on duty somewhere. We’re off the clock.”

“How can you say that?” Jacob stared at her. “You’re a nurse. I’m a surgeon. If someone’s in trouble—”

“She’s here every day trying to tell fortunes and begging people for money,” Amanda snapped quietly. “She’s basically homeless. They’re always pulling some stunt. I’m not touching that. I’m here to relax, not to rescue every stranger who can’t take care of themselves.”

Her words hit him like ice water.

He pulled his arm free. “You don’t get to choose who you treat as human based on their clothes,” he said, sharply enough that a couple of shoppers glanced over. “You can go upstairs if you want. I have to see what’s happening.”

He didn’t wait for her answer.

He hurried toward the circle of people. “I’m a doctor,” he called. “Let me through.”

The crowd parted.

An elderly woman lay on her side on the tile, her eyes squeezed shut, hands clawing at her throat. Jacob recognized her vaguely—a familiar presence near the entrance, always with a plastic chair and a cardboard sign offering “Tarot. Palm. Advice. Five dollars.” Some people dropped coins in her cup. Others averted their eyes and walked faster.

She was maybe in her late seventies, face lined deeply, clothes patched and faded, a scarf wrapped around her hair. A paper bag lay spilled beside her, oranges rolling away and a small packet of nuts scattered.

She wasn’t breathing properly. Her color was turning frighteningly pale.

“Ma’am,” Jacob said, dropping to his knees, “I’m Dr. Allen. I’m going to help you, okay?”

Her eyes were panicked, unfocused.

“She was eating,” a teenage boy said, wringing his hands. “Then she started choking. I… I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay,” Jacob said. “You did the right thing by calling for help.”

He tilted the woman, swept his fingers quickly to check her airway. Something blocked it. Classic choking. She was limp now, on the edge of losing consciousness completely.

He glanced up. “I need someone to help me lift her.”

A young man in a Houston Astros hoodie stepped forward immediately. “Got you,” he said.

Amanda stood a few feet away, arms crossed, nose wrinkled, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. Jacob felt a flash of disgust.

He and the young man hauled the woman up, bracing her with her back to Jacob’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her stomach, placed his fist just above her navel, and performed abdominal thrusts.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Come on…”

On the third thrust, something hard shot out of her mouth—a whole nut from the scattered packet—skittering across the shiny floor.

The woman sucked in a ragged breath, then another. Her chest heaved. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“You’re okay,” Jacob said, gently easing her down onto a nearby bench someone had dragged over. His own heart hammered. “It’s over. That must have hurt. Your throat will be sore, but you’re breathing now. That’s all that matters.”

He rubbed her back lightly, feeling how fragile her bones were beneath the fabric of her coat. Up close, he smelled stale perfume and something like incense.

From behind him, Amanda’s voice hissed, “Can we go now? She’s fine. People like her never die, they just hang around forever making scenes.”

Jacob turned to her slowly.

At the clinic, everyone knew about his family situation. They knew about the infertility, the couple of failed IVF cycles, the rumors that he and Ruby were on the rocks. Amanda had clearly hoped that soon he’d be “free,” that the handsome, successful surgeon with a broken heart would need comfort.

Looking at her now, at the contempt twisting her lips as she gazed at the old woman he had just pulled back from the edge of death, Jacob felt only revulsion.

“Amanda,” he said, his voice low but firm enough that a couple of bystanders looked over, “when I get back to the hospital, I’m going to ask the chief physician to review your position. I have serious concerns about your suitability for this work.”

“What?” she sputtered. “Because of her?” She jabbed a finger toward the old woman. “She’s a tramp, Jacob. You’re going to risk my career over some stranger who spends her day hustling people?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. It was written on his face.

Amanda flushed, spun on her heel, and walked away fast, her wedge heels clicking angrily on the tile.

Jacob turned back to the woman, who was watching him with wide, dark eyes, her hand gripping his wrist like an anchor.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her English slightly accented, the words raspy. “Thank you, Doctor. I thought… that was it. I saw a dark tunnel. But you pulled me back.”

“Just breathe,” he said again. “Slow, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Do you have anyone to call? Family? A friend?”

She shook her head. “No. I have the people who walk past me,” she said with a faint smile. “Sometimes they stop. Today, you stopped.”

She tugged on his sleeve. “Sit with me a moment. Please.”

He hesitated. He’d intended to grab coffee and brood; now he was sitting on a mall bench holding hands with a woman who smelled like old roses and cigarettes.

But he sat.

“Let me pay you, at least,” she said, fumbling with the small bag at her feet that had spilled earlier. “I have some dollars. Not much. But you saved my life. You should be paid.”

“That’s not necessary,” he said quickly. “I’m a doctor. This is what I do. I didn’t do it for money.”

She smiled at that. “Good. Because I don’t have enough anyway.”

He almost laughed. Almost.

“You can stay with me a moment,” she said. “Humor an old woman, hmm? Besides, you look…” She tilted her head, studying his face. “Lost.”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically.

“You don’t believe in fortune-telling,” she remarked, catching the skeptical twist at the corner of his mouth.

“I believe in science,” Jacob replied.

“And yet here you sit, holding hands with a woman whose sign you never looked at twice before.” Her voice held no accusation, only observation. “Listen, then. Not as a doctor. As a man.”

Before he could protest, she lifted his hand in both of hers. Her fingers were cold and bony. Her eyes, though clouded with age, were oddly sharp.

“Why did you leave your wife alone tonight?” she asked quietly. “You started doing that more and more. You go to the mall. You walk around your American streets alone. You take coffee alone. You drive around in your nice car alone. You stopped asking her to come with you, even when she wanted to.”

Jacob’s skin prickled.

“That’s… none of your business,” he said. “And how could you know that anyway?”

“You think only of your own exhaustion,” she went on, ignoring his protest. “Your own darkness. But you are not the only one drowning in it. She suffers too. More than you realize. More than she can tell you. She feels guilty,” the old woman said, her voice softening. “She blames herself for everything. She thinks she ruined your life, your chance at a family. She feels so bad that not long ago, she almost did something to end her pain.”

The mall air felt suddenly frigid.

Jacob thought back to a day weeks earlier when he had come home and found the bathroom door closed, the exhaust fan humming. When he’d opened it, Ruby had been kneeling over the toilet, shaking, vomiting, her skin clammy.

“We need to go to the ER,” he’d said immediately. “You might have food poisoning, or worse. Let me—”

“It’s just something bad I ate,” she’d insisted, flushing, wiping her mouth. “I’m fine. Don’t make a fuss.”

He’d been tired. There had been a post-op note to write. He’d let it go.

Now, a horrifying montage flashed through his mind: pills in the cabinet, a glass of water, Ruby’s white face. Had she…?

A wave of shame washed over him, hot and choking. He prided himself on reading subtle changes in a patient’s vascular system from the tiniest shifts on a monitor, but he hadn’t truly seen his own wife’s suffering.

“How do you know that?” he whispered.

The woman shrugged slightly. “I see things. You can call it fortune-telling, intuition, the grace of God, whatever fits in your American brain. It doesn’t matter.”

He stood abruptly. “I should go,” he said, his voice tight. “I—thank you. For your… insight. I… really should go.”

She tightened her grip on his hand with surprising strength.

“Go home,” she said. “Now. As fast as you can. There’s something waiting for you there. Something you and your wife have wanted for many years. She doesn’t know yet. But you will.” Her eyes shone. “Even a small chance is still a chance, Doctor. Don’t waste it.”

He stared at her. Every rational part of his brain screamed that this was nonsense—magical thinking, desperate hope. He didn’t believe in omens. He believed in lab results, not prophecies.

And yet.

The memory of Ruby on the bathroom floor burned in his mind. The way he’d left the house without a real plan haunted his steps. The old woman’s words reached past his logic and grabbed his heart.

Without another word, Jacob squeezed the woman’s hand gently, murmured, “Thank you,” and walked away, his strides lengthening.

He didn’t stop for coffee.

He jogged down the escalator, out of the overheated mall, into the thick Houston night. The sky had cracked open, releasing a light rain that streaked the pavement. He ran the last block to their house, his breath coming fast, his surgeon’s legs unused to this kind of sprint.

He fumbled with his keys at the front door, throat tight, a dozen worst-case scenarios exploding in his mind. What if he was too late? What if—

“Ruby!” he called as he burst inside. “Ruby, where are you?”

Silence.

The living room was empty, the TV off. The kitchen light glowed, but no one stood at the counter.

His gaze snagged on the bathroom door down the hall. It was slightly ajar, a sliver of light shining through—exactly like that day.

A cold dread slid down his spine. He rushed over and pushed the door open with more force than intended, the door banging loudly against the wall.

Ruby sat on the edge of the bathtub, fully dressed, her elbows on her knees, something small and white clutched in her hands. Her head snapped up.

Her eyes were red, but not from fresh tears. Her face was pale but not devastated. There was something else there, faint and unfamiliar: shock. Fear. Something like cautious hope.

Jacob dropped to his knees on the bathmat in front of her, his heart pounding.

“Ruby,” he gasped, words tumbling out. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own frustration, I didn’t see how badly you were hurting. The things that woman at the mall said… I should have realized earlier, I should have paid more attention. We’re going to fix this. We’re going to be okay. Just… please tell me what’s wrong. What’s going on?”

Ruby stared at him for a second, then blinked as if remembering she was supposed to respond. A weak smile tugged at her lips.

“I’m… not sure how to say this,” she said slowly. “I was sitting here alone after you left, feeling sorry for myself as usual, thinking that you might not come back one day. And then I realized I’m almost a month late.”

The words hit him like a bolt.

“I thought it was stress,” she rushed on. “Or maybe I miscounted. But I went to the cabinet and found the old test box. I almost threw it away last week, remember? Something stopped me. So I took a test.”

She held the plastic stick out to him with trembling fingers, like a peace offering or a bomb.

He knew what a pregnancy test looked like. In their years of trying, he’d seen more negatives than he could count. One line. Repeat. One line. Repeat. Each time, hope dying a little more.

This time, there were two lines.

They stared up at him—faint, but unmistakable.

Jacob’s breath left his body in a rush. His hands shook so badly he almost dropped the test. He closed his eyes, counted to five, and opened them again.

The second line was still there.

“I… I don’t know if it’s real,” Ruby whispered. “Maybe it’s faulty. Maybe I did it wrong. My brain keeps telling me not to believe it. That my body can’t do this. That I don’t deserve—”

“It’s real,” Jacob said hoarsely. “It could still be early, and we’ll need to confirm it, and there are a million things that can go wrong, but Ruby, this…” He looked up at her, his eyes burning. “This is real.”

He laughed then, a kind of broken, wild laugh he hadn’t made since college.

“A fortune-teller told me tonight,” he said, half hysterical, half giddy. “At the mall. She said there was a surprise waiting at home. That you didn’t know yet, but I would. I thought she was completely out of her mind. I almost didn’t come back. Imagine that. I almost… I’m such an idiot. I could have lost you. I could have missed this.”

Ruby’s lower lip trembled. “You went to a fortune-teller?” she managed.

“I went to get coffee,” he said, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand and laughing again. “I ended up doing the Heimlich on her. Long story.”

She laughed too then, a watery, disbelieving sound. Her shoulders shook, and he reached up to pull her into a hug, kneeling there on the bathroom tile, both of them clinging like they were afraid the other might vanish.

In the days that followed, the test was confirmed by blood work. Ruby’s OB-GYN—a kind, middle-aged woman who’d seen miracles and heartbreak in equal measure—smiled when the results came in.

“It’s early,” she said, “but everything looks good so far. We’ll monitor you closely. You’ll be my VIP.”

Ruby clutched Jacob’s hand so tightly his fingers ached. He didn’t complain.

The next morning at the clinic, Jacob walked down the polished corridors with a lightness that made his colleagues stare.

He cracked jokes in the break room. He hummed a few bars of an old song between cases. In the OR, his concentration was sharper than ever, his movements precise, the way they always were when he needed to remind fate that he still had some control in this world.

He performed two particularly difficult procedures that day, threading catheters through delicate veins, repairing aneurysms that had looked hopeless on the scans. After the second surgery, the chief of surgery—an older man with a reputation for being stingy with praise—actually clapped him on the back.

“Allen,” he said gruffly, “that was textbook. I couldn’t have done it better myself. I’ve been thinking… I want you to take over as head of the vascular department. It’s time.”

Jacob’s heart soared.

He thought briefly of the old woman’s words about “a surprise you and your wife have been waiting for.” Apparently the universe had decided to give them two.

“Thank you, sir,” Jacob said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I won’t let you down. I’ll do everything I can to make sure this department thrives.”

That evening, the staff gathered in the doctors’ lounge with takeout containers and a grocery-store sheet cake someone had run out to get. They raised plastic cups of soda and sparkling water. No one dared serve actual champagne on hospital grounds.

“To Dr. Allen,” one of the senior nurses said. “Our new chief vascular wizard.”

Everyone laughed and cheered.

Amanda was there, hovering at the edge of the group, her expression bright but tight. She’d heard about his promotion. She’d also heard—gossip traveled fast in American hospitals—that Ruby was finally pregnant.

“Congratulations,” she said when she finally worked up the nerve to step forward, her smile stretching a little too wide. “I always knew you’d be chief someday.”

“Thanks,” Jacob replied, his tone polite but cool.

“Looks like everything’s working out for you,” she added with a soft, almost wistful laugh. “New title. New salary. New baby. New life.”

He studied her for a moment, remembering her words at the mall, the curl of her lip as she called the old woman a tramp, the way she’d tried to tug him away from someone dying.

Jacob cleared his throat and turned toward the room.

“Sorry to interrupt the celebration,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “I just want to ask you all something. A quick hypothetical.”

The chatter quieted. Plastic cups paused halfway to lips. Eyes turned toward him.

“If you were out in public,” he said, “in the parking lot, at the grocery store, here at the hospital, wherever, and you saw someone collapse. Even if they were poorly dressed, even if they looked like they might be homeless, would you help them?”

There were puzzled looks, but also nods.

“Of course,” said one of the techs.

“Obviously,” another nurse said.

“We’re in medicine,” someone else added, shrugging. “That’s literally our job.”

Jacob nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought.”

He turned his gaze to Amanda.

“And that’s why I’ve asked the chief to begin the process of terminating your employment, Amanda,” he said clearly. “Effective immediately, you are no longer part of this clinic’s staff.”

A ripple of shock ran through the room.

Amanda’s face went white, then red. “What?” she gasped. “You can’t do that. You can’t fire me in front of everyone. This is humiliation. On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that when a woman choked in the mall yesterday,” Jacob said, his voice level, “you tried to drag me away from helping her because you didn’t want to ‘deal with homeless people.’ On the grounds that you refused to assist me while one of our fellow human beings couldn’t breathe.”

He looked around, letting his words sink in.

“If we only help patients in private rooms with good insurance, we’re not healers. We’re salespeople. I won’t have that in my department.”

The room was so quiet you could have heard a monitor beep in another wing.

Amanda’s mouth opened and closed. She looked around wildly for support. None came.

“You can discuss the details with HR,” Jacob finished. “They’re waiting for you. For now, I’m asking you to leave the floor.”

For a heartbeat, he thought she might explode. Instead, she straightened, lifted her chin, and walked out, heels echoing down the hallway one last time.

The door swung shut behind her.

A murmur rose in the room. Some people nodded to themselves, thinking about the patients who came in without insurance, the ones who wore the same clothes for days. The line between “us” and “them” shifted a little.

Later that night, Jacob drove home along the interstate, Houston’s skyline glittering in the distance, red taillights stretching like a ribbon ahead of him. His hands rested lightly on the steering wheel. On the passenger seat lay a crumpled napkin from the hospital’s break room, covered in tiny hearts Ruby had absentmindedly drawn the night before while talking about baby names.

When he walked through the door, the house smelled like garlic and basil. Ruby was in the kitchen in an oversized T-shirt and leggings, stirring pasta in a pot. Her dark hair was pulled back, her face still a little pale from morning sickness but radiant in a way Jacob hadn’t seen in years.

“Hey, Chief,” she teased, turning as he walked in. “Did they make you a fancy sign on the door yet?”

“Give them time,” he said, setting his keys on the counter.

He walked up behind her and slid his arms around her waist, resting his hands carefully on her lower belly.

“How are my two favorite people?” he murmured into her hair.

“Tired,” she said honestly. “Hungry every ten minutes. Crying at commercials. But… happy. Terrified. But happy.”

He smiled against her shoulder. “That makes three of us.”

She turned in his arms, searching his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked quietly. “Because if this doesn’t… if something happens… I don’t know if I can survive another—”

He pressed a finger gently to her lips.

“We’re going to take it day by day,” he said. “We’re going to love this baby every second, no matter what happens. We’re going to let people help us. We’re going to stop pretending we can carry everything alone.”

Her eyes filled. “And if I… if I get scared again?”

“Then we talk,” he said. “We get help. We don’t hide things in the bathroom anymore.” His voice softened. “I should have seen you sooner, Ruby. I should have realized you were closer to the edge than you let on. That’s on me. But I’m not leaving. Not ever. Not for walks, not for fantasy lives with other women. You’re my wife. This—” He squeezed her gently. “—is our family. However it looks, however it comes.”

She rested her forehead against his. “Do you really believe that old woman?” she whispered. “The one at the mall?”

“I believe she scared me enough to run home,” he admitted. “I believe she said things I needed to hear. And I believe that sometimes miracles show up wearing thrift-store coats in Houston malls.”

Ruby laughed through her tears.

“Maybe we should invite her to the baby shower,” she said.

“Absolutely,” he grinned. “If she doesn’t already know, she’ll sense the cake.”

They stood there in their American kitchen, surrounded by the hum of the fridge and the sound of distant traffic, holding each other while the pasta boiled and the future, fragile and bright, unfurled ahead of them like a road no one—not Jacob, not Ruby, not any fortune-teller—could fully predict.

For the first time in a very long time, neither of them felt cursed.

They felt… chosen.

Not by fate, not by some mysterious force, but by each other, over and over again—even when life had tried its best to pull them apart.