Sophie's Point of View
The hospital forms were asking for things Sophie didn't want to write.
She sat in the waiting room outside Lily's room and stared at the clipboard in her hands. The form had blanks for medical history. Father's name. Father's contact information. Father's medical conditions. Father's family history of cardiac disease.
She hadn't written that name in six years.
Sophie gripped the pen so hard her fingers hurt. The form felt heavier than it should. Under father's name, she wrote Theodor Hartley in careful letters like maybe if she wrote it perfectly it would be less real.
It didn't work.
His name sat there on the paper and everything came back. The conference where she'd met him. The way he'd looked at her like she was the only important thing in the world. The way he'd disappeared when she told him she was pregnant. The way she'd raised Lily alone and convinced herself that was better anyway.
That was a lie she'd told herself so many times it almost felt true.
A nurse walked past. Sophie handed her the form without looking at the father's section too long. The nurse took it and didn't comment on the empty spots. She probably saw a lot of forms with missing fathers.
Back in Lily's room, her daughter was asleep. The monitors were still beeping. The IV was still in her arm. She looked small in the hospital bed. Too small. Like she might break.
Sophie sat on the chair next to the bed and held her daughter's hand.
She couldn't lose Lily. She couldn't.
The doctor had said they needed his medical history. She'd said it like it was simple. Like asking Sophie to call the man who'd paid her to get an abortion was just part of the job. Like asking her to reach out to the person who'd broken her most was just standard procedure.
Sophie sat there holding her daughter's hand and knew what she had to do.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket.
His number was still in her contacts. ChicagoTheodore with a business phone number that she'd memorized so long ago that her fingers still knew how to type it. She'd never deleted it. Some part of her, the part she didn't like to acknowledge, had kept it like maybe one day she'd need it.
She'd never wanted to need it.
Sophie's thumb hovered over his name.
She could lie. She could tell the doctor that he was unavailable. That he couldn't be reached. That he was dead. She could make up a story and the doctors would probably accept it and work around it. They had ultrasounds and tests and other ways to figure out what was wrong with Lily.
But what if there was something genetic? What if there was a family history of heart problems that he knew about that could change how they treated her? What if not calling him could hurt Lily's chances of getting better?
Sophie was a lot of things. She was tired. She was scared. She was resentful of the man who'd made her do this alone. But she wasn't the kind of mother who let her pride hurt her daughter.
She pressed his name.
The phone rang. Once. Twice.
He answered on the third ring.
"Yeah?"
His voice was the same. Distracted. Like he was already thinking about the next thing. Like the person on the phone was just an interruption. She hadn't heard that voice in six years and it made her want to scream and cry at the same time.
"Theo?"
The silence on the other end was so complete it felt like the line went dead.
"It's Sophie."
Another silence. Longer this time. Sophie could hear him breathing and she could imagine his face changing. The confusion. The shock. The moment where he placed the name and remembered exactly what he'd done.
"What do you want?"
His voice was hard now. Defensive. Like she was calling to ask for money or ruin his life. Like she had any interest in him at all except for the one reason that mattered.
"It's not about me," Sophie said fast. She needed him to listen. She needed him to care enough to listen. "I wouldn't be calling if it wasn't something serious."
"So you're calling about something serious."
"There's a child," Sophie said. The word child felt weird. Like she was talking about someone else's daughter. Like she was being clinical about the person she loved most in the world. "A daughter. She's seven years old and she's at Children's Hospital right now because she had a medical emergency during school."
She heard him shift. Like he'd moved closer to the phone. Like her words had caught him somehow.
"She collapsed?" he asked.
"She had chest pain. Sharp chest pain and difficulty breathing. They don't know what caused it yet but the doctors are concerned. They're running tests."
"And you're calling me because?"
"Because they need your medical history. They need to know if there's a family history of cardiac problems. They said it could be important. They said it could help them know how to treat her."
Sophie was talking fast now. Her heart was racing and she could feel sweat on her palms and she was saying the thing she'd never wanted to say.
"She might be sick. She might have something wrong with her heart and the doctors need to know if it runs in families and I don't have that information because you left and I'm calling you because my daughter needs you to answer some questions about your medical history."
She stopped. She'd run out of words. She'd said the thing and now she had to wait for him to respond. She had to wait for him to ask questions or refuse or make this harder than it already was.
"What's her name?" he asked.
That wasn't what she expected. She expected him to ask if she was sure he was the father. She expected him to ask for a paternity test. She expected him to ask what she wanted from him. She didn't expect him to ask for the name of a child he'd never met.
"Lily," Sophie whispered. "Her name is Lily."
Another silence. But this one felt different. This one felt like something was breaking on the other end of the line.
"How old?"
"Seven. She'll be eight in March."
She could do the math. She could figure out exactly when Lily was conceived. She could probably place the exact moment that happened because Sophie would never forget the week Theo had made her feel like she mattered.
"I need to get information from my doctor," Theo said. His voice was different now. Less controlled. "How do I reach you?"
She gave him her number. Not the number she'd called from. A different number. A number she'd had for five years that didn't connect to him in any way.
"I'm calling my doctor right now," Theo said. "I'm sending you the information within thirty minutes. What else do you need?"
"That's all. Just the medical history."
"I'll send it."
He was about to hang up. She could feel him pulling away. She could feel the moment ending. And some crazy part of her that didn't make sense needed him to know something.
"She's brave," Sophie said quietly. "Whatever happens, she's the bravest person I know."
There was a sound on the other end. Like he'd sucked in a breath or made a noise he couldn't take back. Then he said something that changed everything.
"I'm coming to Chicago."
"What?"
"I'm coming to the hospital. I'm coming right now."
"Theo, you don't have to—"
"I do. I'm booking a flight. I'll be there in six hours."
"You don't have to come. I just needed the medical history—"
"I'm coming," he said and his voice was final. "I'm coming and I'm going to be there for my daughter. Text me her hospital room number."
Then he hung up.
Sophie sat in the waiting room holding her dead phone and realized that in one phone call, everything had changed. The careful world she'd built where Theo Hartley didn't exist had just collapsed.
He was coming.
He was actually coming.
And she had no idea what was going to happen when he showed up at that hospital and saw the daughter he'd never known existed.