I clutched my appointment slip, glancing at the posters for prenatal classes and fertility testing lining the waiting room walls of the women’s health clinic.
The familiar knot of nervous excitement twisted in my stomach. After everything I’d been through, this appointment felt like stepping into a new chapter.
I was scrolling through my phone when a voice I hadn’t heard in years sliced through the room like a rusty knife:
“Look who’s here! I guess you finally decided to get yourself tested.”
I froze. My stomach dropped straight through the floor. That voice, and speaking with that particular brand of cruel satisfaction that used to echo through our kitchen during those awful arguments.
I lifted my eyes and saw Chris, my ex-husband, grinning like he’d been rehearsing for this moment his entire life.
“My new wife already gave me two kids — something you couldn’t do for ten years!”
A woman stepped out from behind him then. She was about eight months pregnant, judging by the size of her belly.
“Here she is!” His chest puffed out like a rooster in a henhouse as he leaned over to place a hand on the woman’s belly. “This is Liza, my wife! We’re expecting our third!”
He smirked cruelly at me, like he’d just hit me exactly where it hurt.
He thought he could humiliate me, but he had no idea how spectacularly that plan would backfire.
That smug smile yanked me back a decade.
I was 18 when he noticed me, the shy girl who thought being chosen by the most popular boy in class meant I’d won the lottery.
Eighteen and naïve enough to think love was like those “Love Is…” mugs from my grandma’s kitchen; just holding hands and smiling forever. Nobody warned me about the arguments over empty nurseries.
We married right out of high school, and all my rose-tinted views of living happily ever after shattered soon afterward.
Chris didn’t want a partner; he wanted a housekeeper who made babies on command. Every quiet dinner turned into a trial, every holiday into another reminder that the nursery was still empty.
The walls of that house seemed to close in a little more each month.
He made each negative test feel like proof that I wasn’t enough of a woman.
“If you could just do your part,” he’d mutter during those terrible dinners where the only sound was silverware scraping against plates. His eyes were sharp with blame that cut deeper than any scream ever could. “What’s wrong with you?”
Those four words became the soundtrack of my 20s, playing on repeat every time I passed a playground, every time a friend announced another pregnancy.
The worst part? I believed him.
For years, I lived with that ache, crying over each negative test because I wanted that baby, too. But to him, my pain was proof I was just a faulty piece of equipment.
His words carved me down until I felt less than human.
After years of that constant bitterness, I started reaching for something of my own.
I started taking college classes at night. Somewhere in the darkness of his constant blame, I’d latched onto a dream of getting a job and building a life outside the walls of our silent house.
“Selfish,” he called me when I mentioned wanting to take a psychology course. “You’re supposed to be focused on giving me a family. Next thing you know, your classes will conflict with your ovulation schedule. Then what?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, but I signed up for the class anyway.
We’d been married eight years at that point. It took another two years of being villainized before I reached my breaking point.
I felt ten pounds lighter when I finally signed those divorce papers with shaking hands. Walking out of that lawyer’s office felt like learning to breathe again.
Now, Chris was back and seemed prepared to pick up right where he left off with humiliating me and making me feel worthless.
But this time, I had a secret weapon.
As I was struggling to regain my composure, a familiar hand, warm and grounding, touched my shoulder.
“Honey, who is this?” my husband asked, holding a water bottle and coffee from the clinic café. His voice carried the protective edge I’d learned to love. Concern clouded his face when he saw my expression.
Chris took one look at him, and his expression went from confusion and disbelief to something that looked like panic.
Josh, my current husband, was six-foot-three, built like he still played college football, and had the kind of quiet confidence that came from never having to prove anything to anyone.