Rejected by my family, she hid her pregnancy and vanished. Fate played a cruel trick when I became the one to perform her emergency surgery. The moment the child was born, I realized the devastating price I had paid for my past silence.
He was called in for a high-risk delivery. Upon arrival, the patient turned out to be his ex-girlfriend.
Viana, 35, had been hiding two things for months: her pregnancy and her fear. She did so with fierce discipline, as if silence were a wall capable of keeping away everyone who could hurt her. Especially Ricardo.
In the bathroom of her cabin, the steamy mirror reflected a version of herself she barely recognized: a thinner face, deeper-set eyes, and an enormous belly that moved with insistent little kicks. Jack rested both hands on her stomach and felt the baby turn, as if claiming space in the world. “You’re going to be born soon, my love,” she whispered, swallowing the lump in her throat. “And you’re going to know only your mother’s love. That will be enough.”
But in her head, the question was a nagging fly: Would it really be enough?
Jack had built her company from scratch. No inheritances, no influential last names, no godfathers. She had won contracts, survived others’ bankruptcies, and faced “no’s” that would have broken others. Even so, nothing prepared her for a high-risk pregnancy carried in secret, far from big hospitals, far from any prying eyes.
Her relationship with Ricardo had ended in the worst way: in an elegant living room, under the shadow of his mother, Eleonora —a woman with a thin smile and poisonous words.
“Women like you always appear, dear,” Eleonora had said without pretense. “You won’t be the first or the last to try to take advantage of my son.” Take advantage. The insult burned more than any rejection. Jack didn’t need anyone’s money. But Ricardo… Ricardo didn’t defend her. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t stop his mother. He just kept silent, as if love were something negotiated with obedience. “If that’s how you see me, Ricardo… then you don’t need me in your life,” Jack said that night, her voice steady but her heart in tatters. He didn’t follow her.
Two weeks later, the pregnancy test came back positive.
Jack locked herself in the cabin she had bought as a refuge, which soon became a prison. Her check-ups were discreet, with a doctor from a neighboring town, Dr. Salazar, who always repeated the same thing: “Placenta previa. High blood pressure. You can’t be far from an operating room, Jack. Any complication… is a matter of minutes.”
But she, stubborn, chose solitude over humiliation. She imagined magazine headlines: “Pregnant businesswoman abandoned by Dr. Castañeda.” She imagined the whispers: “See? She was a gold digger after all.” And Eleonora’s voice, like a knife.
Her assistant, Clara, was the only one who knew the truth. “Ma’am, you have to rest,” she insisted every day, looking at her with a mix of affection and panic. “And how can I rest if every kick reminds me of everything I lost?” Jack responded, not wanting to sound harsh. She had even named the baby: Arturo. A strong name for a boy who, she believed, was going to need strength from his very first breath.
Meanwhile, Ricardo shut himself in his office inside the family mansion, with a glass of whiskey that tasted like nothing. Months had passed since Jack disappeared, and the void was still there, suffocating. “Why don’t you go look for her?” his brother Marcelo asked one afternoon. “You love her, Ricardo. It’s obvious.” Ricardo let out a bitter laugh. “My mom was right… maybe she just wanted to get into the family.” But the phrase sounded false even to him. Jack never showed interest in his name, nor his house, nor his contacts. She shined on her own. And he knew it.
Then the question that haunted him bit him again: Why didn’t I defend her? The answer was shameful: fear. Fear of facing Eleonora. Fear of breaking the mold of the “perfect son.” Fear of admitting that his mother was wrong and his heart was not. Ricardo tried to find her later, when reason finally won over pride. But Jack had vanished: her company was in the hands of directors, her phone off, her apartment empty. It was as if she had decided to erase him from her life with surgical precision. Better this way, he told himself. She deserves someone better. And yet, at night, he dreamed of Jack’s laugh and woke up feeling he had lost something no money could buy.
The early morning everything exploded, the air was heavy and hot. Jack walked down the hallway of the cabin, one hand on her back, the other on her belly. The false contractions of previous weeks had been a warning; tonight the sensation was different: sharp, cruel, as if something were breaking inside. “Clara…” she managed to say, but the pain doubled her over. She felt a warmth running down her legs. She looked down. Blood. A lot of blood. “No… no… Arturo, no…” she stammered, trembling. Clara appeared running with the phone in her hand. She went pale. “My God! I’m calling an ambulance!” Jack tried to breathe, to hold onto the wall, but the world began to turn gray. “Hold on, my son…”