The room seemed to lose all atmospheric pressure.
My hands, still resting flat on the cold vinyl mattress, tightened against the sheets.
“A micro-pellet…?” I whispered, my voice sounding as if it were traveling through fifty feet of dark water. “Dr. Salinas… what does that implant do?”
Dr. Salinas looked down at me, her eyes filled with an unbearable, devastating gravity:
“It suppresses the production of normal chorionic hormones in the bloodstream, preventing standard home pregnancy tests from detecting a fetus… while simultaneously inducing localized vascular spasms that typically result in a ‘silent,’ unexplainable miscarriage between weeks eight and twelve.”
Dr. Salinas turned back to Diego:
“Someone has been administering a classified, black-market chemical abortifacient to your wife for the past three months.”
“And the only reason this baby is still alive…”
Dr. Salinas pointed to the strong, pulsing red ribbon of the umbilical artery:
“…is because Laura’s body encapsulated the foreign pellet in a protective layer of fibrous tissue, walling it off from the placenta and saving her child’s life.”
