Chapter 1

The day I gave birth, the pain nearly killed me.

My husband, the professor, was busy discussing with his genius friend exactly when our baby should be born to come out smartest.

The doctor pressed him to sign the consent form.

"The cervix is fully dilated. She has to deliver now."

His friend looked at the fetal monitoring data and suddenly shook her head.

"Wait another six hours."

"A baby born at that time develops optimal intelligence."

I grabbed my husband's hand.

"I can't take it anymore. Let me deliver."

His friend frowned.

"We're deciding the course of this child's entire life. Can you stop thinking only about yourself?"

My husband pulled his hand back and spoke to the doctor.

"Use the suppressant first."

The contractions were forced back down.

But the pain kept dragging me in and out of consciousness.

Six hours later, the heartbeat stopped.

The doctor said the baby hadn't made it.

I looked at my husband, falling apart.

He only glanced at the report.

"Couldn't even last six hours. That means it wasn't good enough to begin with."

His friend nodded, just as calm.

"Survival of the fittest. An inferior child was never worth bringing into the world."

They bent their heads and went on studying the best time for my next conception.

They didn't see me slide off my wedding ring and lay it on the cold, bloodied body of my child.

This husband, this marriage,

I didn't want any of it anymore.

1.

I sat alone in the hospital corridor until night, unable to complete the admission paperwork.

All because Valentine Gilbert had been in a rush to get Joanna Pierce to her review presentation,

and he'd walked off with all my documents and my wallet.

The nurse asked several times where my family had gone.

I kept calling and couldn't get through, so I could only press my lips together and say quietly, "He's busy."

A little after ten at night, Valentine hurried in.

"Sorry."

Seeing me sitting in the empty waiting area, he looked, rarely, a little guilty.

"During the review this afternoon, one of the senior figures in the field kept giving Joanna a hard time."

"I was busy helping her explain her data, and for a while I forgot you were still at the hospital."

I closed my eyes for a moment and said nothing.

The anesthetic had worn off long ago.

My lower abdomen throbbed in waves.

Bracing myself on the edge of the bed, I struggled to stand.

Just as I reached for his arm to steady myself, he suddenly pushed my hand away. "You can't."

Caught off guard, I dropped hard back into the chair.

The incision tore with a jolt of pain, and my face went white in an instant.

He looked at me, guilty and perfectly earnest.

"Joanna ran the numbers for us again."

"The fifth of next month is the most suitable time to conceive. The best conditions for the baby's brain development."

"Joanna says you can't touch me during this period, to keep your postpartum hormones from running too high and throwing off the optimal window."

I stared at him, and for a moment I honestly didn't know what to say.

After a long silence, I asked,

"Our child died today. I'm still bleeding right now."

"And you're discussing with my friend how I should have the next one?"

He explained it to me in earnest.

"Joanna said it was only placental tissue, not really a child. She predicted you'd make a scene over the baby, so she asked me to tell you not to grieve over something that was never alive."

"We're doing this for your sake too. Reviewing this failure so we can avoid it next time."

I looked at him, and my heart went cold, bit by bit.

I used to tell myself he simply didn't understand feelings by nature, that he wasn't cold on purpose.

But in that moment, I suddenly didn't want to make excuses for him anymore.

"Let's get a divorce."

His expression stopped.

"What?"

"I said, I want a divorce."

"I'm not going to hand myself and my children over to you two as lab rats for your super-baby experiments anymore."

His face turned cold at once, and he questioned me, wounded.

"What do you mean? What do you mean, lab rats?"

"Joanna and I did it for you and the baby! How can you say that about us?"

I laughed, and the tears fell anyway.

"You made me hold on for six hours, and a baby that could have been born safely suffocated inside me."

"My baby just died, and I'm still bleeding! And the two of you have already scheduled when I'll get pregnant next?"

"This is for my sake?"

"Enough."

His eyes went red with anger as he looked at me.

"She's one of the best obstetricians in the country."

"People line up begging for her help with a birth plan and never get it."

"She was willing to spend all that time running the numbers for you, and instead of being grateful, you twist it into something this malicious?"

I stared at him blankly as his resentment grew.

"Especially today."

"With the doctors and nurses right there, you cried and carried on insisting on delivering. You made it look like she was deliberately trying to hurt you."

"Do you have any idea how upset that made Joanna? Because of you, she kept losing focus during the review this afternoon, and she got cornered several times!"

So even now.

What he cared about was still whether Joanna was upset.

His phone rang. He glanced down at it.

The coldness on his face faded in an instant.

"Hello?"

I couldn't hear what the other end said.

He immediately picked up his coat.

"The review draft?"

"Okay, wait for me."

"I'll come over now and go through it with you."

He turned and left, and just as the door was about to close,

he suddenly stopped and strode back toward me.

My heart gave a foolish little leap, thinking he'd finally remembered me.

He came back to the bedside.

"I've been very busy lately. I can't come to the hospital to take care of you. Why don't you come home with me to recover?"

I froze, and he went on,

"Once we're back, make a pot of that nourishing soup for Joanna."

"She always gets too nervous to eat before a big presentation. Your soup is the only thing she can manage even a little of."

"It's so late. She's definitely skipped dinner again to keep revising the review draft. Tomorrow's presentation is important. She can't do it on an empty stomach."