The rhythmic *tum-tum, tum-tum* of the heartbeat seemed to go down an octave, vibrating through the metal frame of the bed.
Diego stared at the yellow letters.
It frowned. He opened his lips and then closed them again.
“Seventeen... weeks?” Diego muttered, looking from the screen at the doctor’s plate and then the calendar hanging on the bulletin board by the sink. That... that's a software failure. It's impossible. November? He didn't test positive until two weeks ago! He showed me the test two weeks ago!
“Pregnancy tests detect human chorionic gonadotropin in the urine,” Dr. said. Salines with clinical objectivity, while sliding the transducer on my skin to show the profile of a fully formed miniature spine, with tiny interlocking vertebrae illuminated with a white sharpness like chalk. “In cases of cryptic implantation, irregular luteal bleeding, or atypical release of placental hormones, a patient may carry a viable pregnancy for months without standard urinary concentrations being recorded in conventional immunoassays.”
The Dr. Salinas turned the monitor thirty degrees towards Paula.
“Seventeen weeks and two days means conception occurred the first week of November,” said Dr. Salinas, with a frigid and authoritarian tone of voice. “Precisely two and a half months *before* the date you claim to have undergone a vasectomy.”
Paula took half a step back, and her hand, with perfectly maintained nails, slipped from Diego’s sleeve.
Diego’s face did not pale; he blushed with an ugly, mottled crimson that stretched from under his shirt’s starchy neck. He pounced on the console, hitting the plastic case of the monitor with his fingers.
