“Eight months after divorcing me because I “couldn’t give him a family,”

The blood draws.

The consultations.

The night I sat on the bathroom floor and pressed a towel over my mouth because I didn’t want Ryan hearing me sob.

At first, he held me through it.

Then his patience became irritation.

I began noticing the way he looked at pregnant women.

At babies.

At me.

His mother, Patricia, was less subtle.

She once cornered me during Christmas dinner while Ryan was outside.

“You know,” she said, sipping wine, “there are women who recognize when they’re preventing a man from having the life he deserves.”

I stared at her.

She smiled.

“If you love my son, perhaps you should think about that.”

Eventually, Ryan did the thinking for me.

He filed for divorce.

Eight months ago.

His reason was simple.

He wanted children.

I, according to him, could not provide them.

What Ryan never knew was that twelve days before the divorce became final, I woke before sunrise in my empty apartment and became sick.

I assumed it was stress.