Page 17 of Iridescent
Hope is my oldest addiction.
Chapter 4
I’m defective.
There is no other explanation left.
Some desolate part of me had known from the beginning that this would end the same way.
Yet I let myself believe the treacherous little gospel my body preached these past few weeks.
Hope is a cruel thing when it’s all you have left. It slides under your skin, turning every flutter and twinge into a promise. It lets you build a future out of symptoms, procedures, and maybes—then rips it out of your hands.
I stared at the single blue line until it blurred. Nothing made sense, no matter how long I looked. The symptoms were there. This cycle had felt different from every other time.
Still…
Now I know better.
Nothing I do willever be enough.
The nurse came less than an hour later. I sat through the blood draw with my sleeve rolled up and my body emptied of its last foolish argument.
She was kind.
Too kind.
Her gentleness scraped against what little composure I had left, and I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
After she left, the waiting resumed its old shape.
By late morning, the clinic called.
I answered in the bathroom because Xavier was still asleep, and I couldn’t bear to hear my devastation spoken aloud in the same house where we once laughed about names for children we hadn’t yet managed to bring into the world.
“We got your results,” the nurse said gently.
I closed my eyes, already knowing.
“I’m so sorry, Yara. It’s negative.”
My heart sank past every depth I thought grief had already carved out of me.
I did not ask her to repeat it. I did not list the symptoms, explain the nausea, or tell her how different this cycle had felt. I had done that before—begged reality for a loophole by presenting evidence it had never agreed to honor.
The answer never changed.
“I know,” I whispered.
She kept speaking after that. Something about hormones. Medication. Progesterone mimicking early pregnancy. A follow-up call. Dr. Moreau wanting to discuss next steps. This not being my fault.
None of it reached me.
All that remained was that word.
Negative.
After the call ended, I stayed on the bathroom floor, the phone loose in my hand and the test beside my knee. The tiles were icy against my skin, but I barely felt them.
