Chapter 12: Silent Screens
The speculum was a shock of cold that made Catalina gasp, her fingernails biting crescent moons into Dominic’s palm. She stared at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling, a damp, cold sweat filming her skin. The hospital gown was rough, sterile, feeling more like a surrender than a garment.Dr. Vance’s face was a mask of detached concentration beneath his surgical lamp. “Try to relax for me, Catalina. This won’t take long.” His voice was even, practiced. It offered no comfort.
Dominic stood beside the exam table, her hand crushed in his. He had refused to wait outside. His presence was a solid wall she could lean against, but the sight of him—his face a grimace of shared pain, his eyes fixed on the floor as if to grant her a shred of privacy—was almost worse. He was witnessing the unmaking of everything.
A sound, a wet, mechanical whir, came from between her legs as Vance adjusted the instrument. Her body clenched in a useless, automatic rejection. “Easy,” the doctor murmured.
Then, the sound she’d been dreading filled the small room: the hissing static of the ultrasound machine powering on. The portable cart was wheeled closer. The monitor flickered to life, a deep blue void.
“The transvaginal probe will give us the clearest picture,” Vance explained, his tone utterly clinical. He applied gel to a long, wand-like transducer. The sight of it, purposeful and intrusive, sent a fresh wave of nausea through her.
“Dom,” she whispered, her voice a thin thread.
“I’m right here.” His thumb stroked the back of her hand, a rough, rhythmic motion. “Just look at me.”
She forced her eyes to his. His gaze was fierce, willing his strength into her. The probe pressed against her, then in, a deep, blunt invasion. She bit her lip hard enough to taste copper. Dominic’s hand tightened impossibly more.
On the screen, grey shapes swam into focus. Shadows and textures that meant nothing to her. Vance moved the probe minutely. A clicking sound accompanied each adjustment. The silence in the room, save for the machine’s faint hum, was a physical pressure.He searched.
The image stabilized, showing a familiar, ghostly outline. A small, empty sac. It was there. But it was still. Vacant.
Vance increased the gain. White specks of noise danced across the screen. He tilted the probe, angling it. The click-click-click of the machine’s tracker ball was impossibly loud. He moved it again, sweeping slowly through her uterus.
Her own heart was pounding in her ears, a frantic, living drumbeat against the silence from the speakers where a faster, tinier rhythm should have been.
“Come on,” Dominic breathed, a low, desperate command to no one. His eyes had flicked to the screen, to that quiet, grey void.
Vance’s movements became slower, more deliberate. Methodical. A final sweep. He stopped. His shoulders dropped, a subtle, professional sigh. He withdrew the probe, the release a cold, slick sensation. He clicked the machine off. The blue screen went black.
The silence now was absolute.
Vance turned away, peeling off his gloves with a snap. He busied himself with the instruments, his back to them for a moment, gathering words. He finally turned, wiping his hands on a towel. His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes held a practiced, weary kindness that felt like a verdict.
“Catalina,” he began. He paused, letting his own breath out slowly. “The gestational sac is present. It measures appropriately for seven weeks. However…” He glanced at the blank screen. “I cannot locate cardiac activity. The findings are consistent with a first-trimester miscarriage. A spontaneous abortion.”
The words hung in the antiseptic air. They were clean, clinical terms for a cataclysm.
Catalina felt the meaning detonate in her chest, a silent bomb that hollowed her out. There was no surge of emotion, not at first. It was a sudden, total numbness, as if every nerve ending had shorted out at once. She heard a low, vibrating sound, like a growl from a wounded animal, and realized it was coming from Dominic. His grip on her hand had gone rigid, a pressure that was now beyond pain.
“You’re sure?” Dominic’s voice was shredded, raw.
“The imaging is definitive,” Vance said, gently but without ambiguity. “I am very sorry.”
“What happens now?” Catalina heard herself ask. The voice sounded distant, someone else’s.
“Given the stage, your body will likely complete the process on its own. The bleeding you’re experiencing is the beginning. It could take a few hours, or a couple of days. There may be cramping, similar to a heavy period. We can manage pain if needed. Alternatively, we can discuss a minor procedure, a D&C, to expedite things if the process is incomplete or if you prefer not to wait.”
Procedure. Expedite.Manage. The language was so orderly. It made the chaos inside her feel monstrous, out of place.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“That’s perfectly reasonable,” Vance nodded. “Rest is key. I’ll give you some literature and a number to call if the bleeding becomes exceptionally heavy, or if you develop a fever. Follow-up in a week or two is advisable.” He looked at Dominic, then back at her. “Take care of each other.”
It was a dismissal. The crisis was medically over.
The crisis was medically over. The words echoed in the quiet of the exam room, a hollow technicality. Vance offered a final, sympathetic nod before slipping out, leaving them in the stark white silence. The crinkling paper under Catalina protested as she shifted, a sound absurdly loud. She stared at the ceiling, the numbness beginning to thaw into a deep, cellular ache.
Dominic finally released her hand. His palm was imprinted with her nail marks, small half-moons bleeding pale. He didn't seem to notice. He was looking at the dark, quiet screen of the ultrasound machine.
“Get dressed,” he said, his voice thick. He gathered her clothes from the chair, his movements stiff. He held out the bundle—her yoga pants, now a horrifying testament hidden inside-out—and her shirt. She took them, her fingers clumsy.
She swung her legs over the side of the table, the paper tearing. The floor was cold. The bleeding had slowed to a dull, persistent seep, a constant physical reminder of the vacancy inside her. She dressed mechanically, avoiding looking at the stains. Each motion felt disconnected, like puppeting a body that was no longer hers. Dominic kept his back to her, offering a shred of modesty she no longer felt she deserved.
When she finished, she stood waiting, her arms wrapped around herself. He turned, his eyes scanning her face. He saw the void there, the shock hardening into something worse. He reached for her jacket, helped her slide her arms into the sleeves. It was a small, careful gesture that almost broke her.
“Let’s go,” he said. He guided her out, a hand on her lower back. The hallway outside was bright, impersonal. A nurse glanced up from a desk, her expression sliding quickly from curiosity to professional pity before she looked away. Each step towards the exit felt like wading through deep water.
Mia was waiting in the dim reception area, slumped in a plastic chair. She sprang up when she saw them, her face crumpling at the sight of Catalina’s shuttered expression. “Cat…”
“It’s gone,” Catalina said. Three flat syllables. The finality of it hung there.
Mia’s hand flew to her mouth. She stepped forward, wrapping her arms around her sister. Catalina stood rigid within the embrace, her own arms hanging at her sides. Mia’s shoulders shook with a silent sob. Over Catalina’s head, Mia’s desperate, questioning eyes found Dominic’s. He gave a single, grim shake of his head.
The drive back was a silent eclipse.
The drive back was a silent eclipse. The Charger’s engine, usually a bass note of power, felt muted and far away. Streetlights strobed across Catalina’s face, illuminating a stark emptiness. She watched the city pass, her fingers absently tracing a tear in the vinyl of the passenger seat.
Dominic’s hands were locked at ten and two on the wheel, his knuckles white. Each stoplight was an eternity. He could feel the heat of her silence beside him, a new, terrible distance measured in inches. The ultrasound photo was still in his jacket pocket, directly over his heart. It felt like a fossil now, a relic from a timeline that had collapsed.
Mia followed in her own car, her headlights a constant presence in his rearview. A chaperone to a disaster. He couldn’t think about Brian. That problem was a mountain shrouded in a different kind of storm, distant and impossible.
They pulled up to the bungalow. The unpacked boxes on the porch looked accusatory in the porch light’s yellow glare. A life interrupted. He killed the engine. The sudden quiet was a weight.
“I don’t want to go in,” Catalina said, her voice raspy from disuse. She was staring at the front door.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere else.”
He nodded, turned the key. The engine rumbled back to life. He pulled away from the curb, catching Mia’s confused flash of high beams in the mirror. He took a left instead of a right, heading for the hills, for the snaking ribbons of asphalt where the city lights dissolved into black.
She didn’t ask where. She rolled her window down, letting the cold night air blast in. It smelled of sage and asphalt. He drove, not racing, just moving with a steady, purposeful pressure through the curves. The familiar g-forces pressed them gently into their seats, a physical rhythm that for years had been a kind of prayer.
“I felt nothing,” she said, suddenly, the wind whipping her words. “When it was happening. In the living room. I just felt wet, and then cold. There was no pain. Shouldn’t there have been pain? A sign?” She turned to him, her eyes searching his profile. “It just… left. Quietly.”
He had no answer for that. The unfairness of it was a fresh cut. A fight he could have understood. This passive leaking away felt like a theft with no culprit.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, the words inadequate.
“How do you know?” The question was sharp, genuine. “Maybe it was. Maybe it knew. On some cellular level, maybe it knew what we were and it just… checked out. It wasn’t viable. We weren’t viable.”
“Don’t,” he growled, the first real heat in his voice. He took a curve harder than he needed to, the tires complaining. “Don’t do that. The doctor said spontaneous. That’s it. It happens.” He was arguing with his own same dark thought, the one that had whispered unnatural from the moment he’d seen the stain.
She fell silent again, turning back to the window. They climbed higher, the city becoming a sprawling constellation of gold below them. He pulled off onto a gravel turnout, a bluff overlooking the valley. He parked, killed the lights.
The void of the sky was immense. Here, the silence wasn’t oppressive; it was vast. They sat, the only sound the ticking of the cooling engine.
“I need it out of me,” she whispered. “Now. I can’t… wait. I can’t feel this anymore.” She put a hand flat on her lower belly, pressing as if she could expel the hollow ache by force.
“We’ll call Vance first thing. Schedule the… the procedure.” The word was clean, surgical. It promised an end.
“What do we do about Mia?” she asked, her practical side forcing its way through the shock.
Catalina breathed the cold night air in deep, desperate lungfuls. Her hand stayed pressed hard against her stomach, as if holding in a ghost. “We should call her back. She followed us half the night.”
“In the morning,” Dominic said, his own voice a low rumble in the quiet car. “Let her talk to Brian. Or let them both sleep on it. Nothing gets better tonight.”
Her fingers curled into a fist against the fabric of her jacket. “Brian,” she echoed, the name a new kind of ache. “He thinks we’re monsters now. After tonight… do we even tell him? About any of this?” The thought of explaining the loss made her feel scraped raw.
“We tell no one,” Dominic said, finality sealing the words. “The less people know a thing happened, the easier it is to pretend it didn’t.” He was building a wall, brick by heavy brick. “Vance is discreet. We handle it. We move on.”
She absorbed this, the brutal logic of erasure. Her gaze fixed on the distant, shimmering grid of the city. It seemed impossibly far away, a life they’d just fallen out of. “Where do we move to, Dom?” The question was barely audible. “This place, between us… it’s broken now. Isn’t it?”
He didn't answer immediately. He shifted in his seat, the leather groaning. The ultrasound picture in his pocket felt like a shard of glass against his chest. He pulled it out slowly, not looking at it. He held it between two fingers, the pale rectangle stark against the dashboard’s dark gloss. “Maybe it never should have held anything else,” he said, the admission ripped from some deep, guarded place. “Maybe we were wrong to think it could.”
She looked at the picture, then at his profile, rigid against the night. A cold, sick understanding dawned. He was agreeing with her worst fear. It was an ending. Not just of the pregnancy, but of the path they’d stumbled down.
The numbness began to recede, burned away by a sudden, scorching anger. “So that’s it? You just… pack it in? Eight weeks ago, you told me this was it. That we were it.” Her voice gained strength, cutting through the mountain silence. “You didn’t say ‘it’ was conditional on everything working out perfectly.”
“I’m not packing anything in,” he fired back, his head snapping toward her. The first real spark in his eyes. “I’m standing right here. But we forced something, Cat. We tried to make a life fit inside a secret. Look what happened.” He gestured with the photo, a sharp, futile motion. “That’s the universe telling us we were in a goddamn freefall, not building a house.”
“The universe?” A harsh, brittle laugh escaped her. “You think this is about karma? Some mystical fuck-you? It’s biology, Dom! It’s random, shitty luck!” She shoved his shoulder, a weak push fueled by fury. “I will not let you use this to run. You don’t get to make this the ejector seat.”
They glared at each other in the dim light from the dashboard. Their shared grief was curdling, twisting into something new and dangerous. The baby, the silent fulcrum of their crisis, was gone, leaving only the raw, ugly weight of its cause: each other.Her throat tightened. The anger evaporated as quickly as it came, leaving a terrible, hollowed-out desperation. “I can’t lose both,” she whispered, the fight gone. “I can’t.” She looked down at her hands, then back up at him, her eyes wide and glistening with unshed tears. “Dom, I need a second opinion. Please.”
He stared at her, not understanding. “Vance was clear. The machine—“
“Screw Vance and his private machine in that creepy office,” she interrupted, her voice frantic now. “I want lights.Nurses. A real hospital ER with people who do this all day.” She leaned toward him, her palm flat on the center console. “What if he was wrong? What if the machine was old, or he was having a bad day and missed it?The heartbeat. What if it’s still there, just… hiding?”
The irrational hope in her voice was a blade. It was the bargaining stage, desperate and brutal, and he knew it. He also knew that crushing it might break something in her permanently. Arguing medical probabilities was useless. This was about faith, the last shred of it.
“Cat,” he started, his voice gentle for the first time since the garage.
“No. Listen.” She grabbed his hand, the one holding the picture. “People get second opinions for everything. For a weird mole. For back pain. This is our child.” She said the word like a prayer, like a spell. “What if they find it? A tiny, slow little flicker he missed because we were all freaking out? We have to know for sure, from someone who doesn’t know us, who doesn’t have an opinion about us.”
She searched his face, her own a naked plea. “I’m asking, Dom. Can we go to a real hospital? Just get me checked out one more time? Maybe our baby is still alive.”
He looked from her shattered hope to the photograph. The quiet, grey oval. Dr. Vance’s calm, certain face. The heavy, final silence of the exam room. It was insane. It was torture. But he saw in her eyes that if he said no, if he gave her the cold, hard truth, a part of her would always wonder. And that wondering would fester between them, a ghost louder than the one they were already mourning.
The decision settled over him, a reckless, painful indulgence. For her. Only for her. He slid the photo back into his jacket, over the dull ache in his chest. He turned the key. The Charger’s engine roared to life, shattering the mountain’s quiet. The headlights sliced the darkness.
“Okay,” he said, the single word pulled from a deep well of exhausted surrender. He put the car in gear, gravel spitting beneath the tires as he turned back toward the city, toward the distant glow.“Okay. One more time.”
The city lights blurred into streaked ribbons of gold as Dominic pushed the Charger down the mountain road. The engine’s growl was the only sound between them now, a mechanical substitute for the words that had all been spent. Catalina kept her face turned to the window, but her reflection showed her eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
She watched her own ghostly face superimposed over the passing darkness. Her hand remained a permanent fixture on her abdomen, a silent vigil. The damp, cold feeling hadn’t returned, but a low, deep ache was settling in, a physical echo of the void. “Take the 10,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Cedar Sinai is faster from there.”
He didn’t question her. He just changed lanes, the car obeying his slightest input. The digital clock on the dash glowed a relentless 2:17 AM. The world was asleep. Theirs was the only world tearing itself apart.
The emergency room was a jarring collision of fluorescent intensity and lethargic chaos. A security guard eyed them from behind thick glass. A man in the waiting area coughed wetly into his fist. The air smelled of industrial cleaner and stale worry. Dominic guided her to the triage desk, his hand firm on her elbow.
The nurse, a woman with tired eyes and a efficient bun, listened as Catalina spoke in a flat, rehearsed monotone. “Seven weeks pregnant. Started bleeding a few hours ago. My doctor… my previous doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. I need someone else to check.” She held out the crumpled ultrasound photo from Vance’s office, her fingers trembling slightly.
The nurse’s expression softened from bureaucratic detachment to a flash of genuine pity. It was the look Catalina was beginning to hate most in the world. “Have a seat. Dr. Amin is on. We’ll get you back as soon as we can.”
They sat on rigid vinyl chairs bolted to the floor. Dominic’s knee jiggled, a trapped vibration. He scanned the room, the exits, the other haunted faces, as if assessing a threat. Catalina leaned her head back against the cold wall and closed her eyes. Every minute was a grain of sand dropping through an hourglass they’d already been told was empty.
“Toretto?” A different nurse, younger, held a clipboard.
They followed her through swinging doors into the bright, cold belly of the ER. The sounds changed—beeping monitors, the low murmur of voices from curtained bays, a rattling cart. They were led to Bay 8, a cubicle defined by faded blue curtains on a squeaking track.
“Change into this, open in the back,” the nurse said, handing Catalina a gown identical to the one she’d worn hours before. She pulled the curtain closed with a metallic rattle, leaving them in a fabric-walled room no bigger than a car.
Catalina stared at the gown. “I can’t do this again.”
“You don’t have to.” Dominic’s voice was low. He took the gown from her. “Just sit. I’ll help.”
He turned his back, giving her space as she undressed. The air was cold on her skin. She shrugged into the thin cotton, the ties hanging loose down her back. She sat on the edge of the exam bed, the paper sheet crackling beneath her. He turned around, his eyes carefully avoiding her body, and silently tied the gown at her neck, his thick fingers clumsy with the strings.
His knuckles brushed her skin. He froze for a second, then finished. He pulled the second chair close and sat, taking her hand again. This time, his grip wasn’t crushing. It was just there. A point of contact. A tether.
A different doctor swept the curtain aside, a man with sharp, intelligent eyes and a tablet in his hand. “Ms. Toretto? I’m Dr. Amin.” He glanced at Dominic. “And you are?”
“I’m staying,” Dominic said, the statement leaving no room.
Dr. Amin simply nodded. He listened as Catalina repeated her story, tapping notes into his tablet. His face was neutral, professional. He asked precise questions about the volume of blood, the color, the pain. He examined Vance’s ultrasound image on his tablet screen, zooming in. His expression didn’t change.
“The findings are suggestive,” he said, his tone careful. “But we’ll do our own scan. Our equipment is state-of-the-art. We’ll be certain.”
The portable ultrasound they wheeled in was bigger, sleeker. The screen was a large, flat panel. The technician, a quiet woman with a gentle smile, prepared the transducer. Catalina’s breath hitched as she positioned herself, the routine now grimly familiar. Dominic’s thumb resumed its rhythmic stroking on her hand.
The gel was warm this time. A small mercy. The probe, the same intrusive shape, found its way. The screen flickered to life.
Grey shapes swam, then clarified. There was the sac. The same quiet oval. The technician moved the probe, her brow furrowed in concentration. She adjusted settings, the clicks loud in the quiet. She angled the wand, pushing slightly to the left.
The image shifted. A different view.
And there, in the corner of the screen, was a tiny, rapid, fluttering light. A blinking pulse, no bigger than a grain of rice. A silent, visual beat.
The technician’s eyes widened. She froze the image. She moved the probe back a fraction, then forward. The flutter remained. A steady, rhythmic blink in the grey static.
“Well,” Dr. Amin said, leaning closer. He pointed to the screen, to that faint, relentless flicker. “There’s your cardiac activity. Fetal heart rate is measuring at 101 beats per minute. It’s on the lower side of normal for seven weeks, but it’s unequivocally there.”
The world stopped. The beeping from other bays, the cart rattles, the distant PA—it all melted into a white noise roar. Catalina’s entire body went rigid. She stared at the blinking light, her mind refusing to process the information. It was a trick. A mirage. A cruel joke played by a better machine.
“What?” Dominic’s voice was a wreck of shattered air. He stood up so fast his chair screeched back. He leaned over, his face inches from the screen. “What did you say?”
“The pregnancy is viable,” Dr. Amin said, a hint of surprise in his own voice. He looked from the screen to Catalina’s frozen face. “There is a heartbeat. It’s faint, and given the bleeding, this would be classified as a threatened miscarriage. You’ll need close monitoring. But as of right now, Ms. Toretto, your baby is alive.”
Catalina made a sound, a punched-out gasp that dissolved into a shuddering inhale. Her free hand flew to her mouth. She looked from the blinking light to Dominic’s stunned face, then back to the screen. The tiny, stubborn flicker continued its silent, miraculous beat.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.
It was the softest sound imaginable, just a whisper of rhythmic static as the technician turned on the audio. But in the sterile, bright room, it was a thunderclap. It was a universe expanding inside a silent, grey oval. Dominic’s hand tightened around hers, not in pain, but in a grip of sheer, disbelieving force. His other hand came up, hovering near the screen as if he could touch that fleeting light.
“Alive,” Catalina whispered, the word breaking on her lips. A tear, hot and sudden, traced a path through the dried salt on her cheek. It was a verdict, a pardon, a terrifying, beautiful second chance she had no idea how to hold. The void inside her was suddenly, impossibly, occupied.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.