I looked up at Marcus, my whole understanding of the last hour rearranging itself completely.
“She knew,” I said. “You both knew this whole time.”
⸻
“Two years ago,” Marcus said, “before we were even officially engaged, her cardiologist ran a full workup and told us plainly that a pregnancy could put serious strain on her heart. Possibly fatal strain, depending on how her body responded once labor actually started.”
⸻
“And you let her try anyway,” I said, something rising in my chest that I couldn’t fully separate into anger or grief yet.
“I didn’t let her do anything,” Marcus said. “Nadia decided. I stood beside that decision because it was hers to make, the same way it would have been anyone else’s to make about their own body and their own life.”
⸻
I made myself keep reading the letter, my hands shaking almost as badly as his had been.
⸻
I know Mom and Dad would have tried to talk me out of it. I know you probably would have too, Elise, out of love, the same way you’ve protected me my whole life. That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. I needed this decision to actually be mine, completely, without everyone I love trying to keep me safe from something I understood clearly and chose anyway.
⸻
I’ve spent twenty-eight years having people assume things about what I can and can’t handle because of an extra chromosome nobody asked my opinion about. I wanted, at least once, to make the biggest decision of my own life without anyone stepping in to protect me from it.
⸻
Marcus married me knowing exactly what this might eventually cost both of us. That’s not a secret he was hiding from you out of guilt. That’s the truest thing I know about how much he actually loves me — enough to stand beside a choice that terrified him, because it was mine to make.
⸻
If I don’t wake up, please don’t let this turn into anger at him. Let it turn into raising my babies exactly the way you helped raise me — like nothing about them is less than anyone else in this family, no matter what any doctor’s chart ever says about them.
I love you. I chose this. Please believe both of those things at once.
Nadia
⸻
