Page 6 — The Mass
The additional tests came quickly.
CT imaging wasn’t an option while I was pregnant, so the doctors carefully considered what could be done safely.
There were more scans.
More blood tests.
More specialists.
Every time my phone rang, my stomach tightened.
I stopped sleeping properly.
I would wake up at three in the morning and stare at the ceiling.
Thomas would reach for me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He would pull me closer.
“I’m here.”
But neither of us knew what the future held.
Eventually, we were called into a consultation room.
A specialist placed several images on the table.
“There is a mass on your right kidney.”
I stared at him.
“How large?”
“Large enough that we need to investigate it carefully.”
“How long has it been there?”
He hesitated.
“We can’t know exactly.”
“Years?”
“Possibly.”
My eyes filled with tears.
Then I asked the question that mattered most.
“Is it cancer?”
The room became silent.
“We are concerned that it could be malignant.”
Thomas squeezed my hand.
I looked down at my stomach.
“And Liam?”
“The baby appears healthy.”
I started crying.
Not because I was thinking about myself.
Because I was thinking about what would happen to him if something happened to me.
Then a terrifying thought entered my mind.
“Doctor…”
“Yes?”
“If I hadn’t become pregnant, when would you have found this?”
He looked at me carefully.
“It’s impossible to know.”
“But could it have been found later?”
“Yes.”
“How much later?”
He didn’t answer directly.
“Kidney masses can sometimes remain silent for a long time.”
I understood.
Something could have been growing inside me without pain, without symptoms, without warning.
And I might never have known.
At least not until it was too late.
Thomas looked at me.
Neither of us said anything.
But we were both thinking the same thing.
Maybe this pregnancy had not only brought us Liam.
Maybe it had also brought us to the discovery that could save my life.
Page 7 — Emily
That night, I finally told Thomas something I had never fully explained.
“I keep thinking about Emily.”
He sat beside me.
“I know.”
“No. I mean the dreams.”
He looked at me.
“I don’t think I’ve told you everything.”
I described the dream again.
The hallway.
The baby.
Emily’s voice.
“You have to find him.”
Thomas listened quietly.
Then I told him something else.
Emily had always been healthy.
There had been no warning.
No obvious illness.
No reason for us to believe anything was wrong.
Then one day she complained about a headache.
We thought it was stress.
Then it got worse.
By the time we understood how serious it was, we were already fighting a battle we didn’t know how to win.
She died at fifteen.
That experience changed me forever.
After Emily’s death, I became terrified of silent illnesses.
I checked symptoms online.
I worried about every headache.
Every strange pain.
Every unusual feeling.
But somehow, this mass had been inside me without me knowing.
Thomas took my hand.
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I know.”
“You couldn’t have saved Emily.”
“I know.”
“But you can’t spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for things you couldn’t control.”
I looked at him.
“I just don’t want to leave you.”
He pulled me into his arms.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
For the first time, I realized that we weren’t only waiting for Liam.
We were fighting for the chance to raise him together.
Page 8 — The Final Weeks
The pregnancy became a careful balancing act.
My doctors monitored me constantly.
Liam continued growing.
My kidney mass remained under close observation.
Every appointment brought two questions.
“How is the baby?”
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