The sickness was not just a physical affliction; it was a state of being. It was the queasy roil in my stomach that mirrored the constant, low-grade anxiety in my soul. It was the metallic taste in my mouth that was the flavor of my new reality. It was the profound, bone-deep exhaustion that felt less like sleepiness and more like a spiritual draining.
The days bled into one another, a monotonous tapestry woven with threads of nausea and silence. The penthouse, once a stage for our carefully constructed performances, had become a sickroom and a war room, the boundaries between the two blurring into a grim, gray haze.
My body was no longer my own. It was a territory under occupation, its rhythms and desires suddenly foreign and demanding. The morning sickness was a cruel misnomer; it was an all-day vigil, a constant threat that lurked just beneath the surface. The scent of Alexander's coffee, once a comforting morning ritual, now sent me fleeing to the bathroom. The sight of the rich, elaborate meals Mariela prepared with such care made my stomach clench in violent protest. I existed on a diet of dry crackers, bland broth, and sips of ginger tea, my world shrinking to the management of my own rebellious body.
And through it all, Alexander was a ghost.
He was there, a constant, brooding presence in the periphery of my life, but he was untouchable. He slept beside me, a rigid, silent form in the vast bed, the space between us a frozen no-man's-land. He worked from his office, the low murmur of his voice a constant reminder of the world he was still actively engaged with, a world from which I was now utterly excluded.
He was providing for me, just as he had promised. Dr. Evans came for weekly check-ins. A nutritionist delivered meticulously planned menus, which I mostly ignored. A prenatal yoga instructor arrived twice a week, her serene smile a stark contrast to the turmoil inside me. He was managing my "care" with the same detached efficiency he managed his corporate acquisitions.
But he never asked me how I felt. Not really. He would observe my pale face over our silent, strained dinners, me pushing food around my plate, him eating with focused precision.
"You need to eat more," he would state, his tone that of a CEO reviewing a disappointing quarterly report.
"I can't," I'd whisper, my voice thin.
"The nutritionist said the protein is essential for the baby's development."
The baby. Always the baby. A project. An outcome. Never our child.
One afternoon, the sickness was particularly vicious. A wave of dizziness and nausea had sent me stumbling from the terrace, where I had been trying to find solace in the struggling new plants, to the living room sofa. I lay there, curled in a ball, a cold sweat beading on my forehead, praying for the world to stop spinning.
I heard his footsteps approach. I kept my eyes closed, feigning sleep, unable to bear another clinical assessment of my condition.
He stopped beside the sofa. I could feel his gaze on me. The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Then, I felt his touch. Not on my shoulder, or my arm. His fingers, cool and gentle, brushed the damp hair from my forehead. The gesture was so unexpected, so tender, that a traitorous tear escaped from beneath my closed eyelid and traced a hot path down my temple.
His hand stilled.
I held my breath, my entire being focused on that single point of contact. It was the first time he had touched me without purpose, without strategy, in weeks. It was a thread, thin and fragile, connecting me to the man I had fallen in love with.
The moment shattered with the sound of his phone buzzing on the stone desk. He pulled his hand away as if burned.
"Vance," he answered, his voice all business once more, and walked away, the conversation already pulling him back into his world of mergers and acquisitions.
The tear dried on my cheek, leaving behind a cold, lonely sting. The brief, fleeting connection was gone, and the sickness inside me both physical and emotional felt more profound than ever.
The worst of it was the loneliness. I was trapped in a beautiful, silent fortress with the father of my child, yet I had never felt more isolated. I missed the easy camaraderie we had built. I missed the way he would look at me when I was sketching, a quiet appreciation in his eyes. I missed the weight of his arm around me as we slept.
Now, the only thing that passed between us was the weight of our unspoken secret. It was a third presence in the penthouse, a monstrous, growing thing that fed on our silence and our fear. I was sick with the pregnancy, and I was sick with grief for the man sleeping beside me, a man who was so close, yet had never been further away.
He was protecting his empire. He was securing our future, as he saw it. But in his single-minded focus on controlling the external threat, he was letting the life inside me and the woman carrying it wither from neglect. The sickness was in my body, but the true malady, the one that left me cold and trembling in the middle of the night, was the chilling realization that I could be carrying his child and still be losing him completely.