Chapter 9: The Clinic Run
The backroom of Tej’s garage was a pocket of stifling heat and deep shadow, thick with the smells of burnt coffee, motor oil, and stale cigarettes. A single, dust-caked window high on the wall let in a bar of harsh morning light, cutting through the gloom to illuminate floating motes of lint and grease. Dominic stood with his back to a cluttered workbench, watching Tej count the cash.
Tej’s long fingers moved with a mechanic’s practiced efficiency, not looking at the bills, his eyes locked on Dominic’s. He finished, folded the money, and tucked it into the chest pocket of his coveralls without a word. He jerked his chin toward the door that led back to the main bay, then toward the outside world.
“Two blocks east,” Tej said, his voice a low rasp. “Desert Sun Women’s Clinic. Looks like a place you’d get a bad tattoo. It’s not. Cash only, no ID, no insurance paperwork. They ask zero questions.” He paused, his gaze shifting past Dominic to where Catalina sat slumped on a worn vinyl sofa, Mina dozing against her chest. His expression softened, just for a fraction of a second. “That girl looks like she lost a fight with a semi-truck, man.”
Dominic didn’t turn. He knew. He’d watched the color drain from her face over the last hour, seen the fine tremors in her hands she tried to hide by clasping them around a mug of tea she hadn’t drunk. “She’s tough.”
“She’d have to be,” Tej muttered, turning back to a carburetor sitting in pieces on the bench. He picked up a wrench, the conversation clearly over. “Door locks from the inside. Leave the key on the counter when you go.”
The clinic was exactly as described: a single-story, sand-blasted stucco box squashed between a pawn shop and a closed-down beauty supply store. A neon sign flickered a sickly pink in the daylight. Dominic parked the Charger a block down, eyes scanning the quiet street. It was a part of town where people knew better than to make eye contact.
“Stay here with Mina,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument.
Catalina’s hand was already on the door handle. “No.”
“Cat.”
“I’m walking in there myself.” She turned to look at him, the determination in her eyes cutting through the fatigue. “You think I’m letting you handle this? You think you’re going to talk to some nurse about my… my situation?” She shook her head, a sharp, final movement. “You stay with Mina.”
They stared at each other across the console, a silent battle of wills raging in the confined space. Mina stirred in the back, mumbling in her sleep.
Dominic broke first, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “Ten minutes. I’m coming in.”
“Fine.”
She got out, the dry desert wind catching her hair. She walked the block with her head down, shoulders squared, looking like any other woman hurrying toward a difficult appointment. He watched her push through the glass door and disappear into the dim interior.
The ten minutes stretched into twenty. Dominic’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until the vinyl creaked. Every person who passed on the sidewalk seemed to look at the car too long. Every engine that slowed made his pulse spike. He kept checking the rearview, watching Mina sleep, her lips parted, completely unaware.
Finally, the clinic door opened. Catalina emerged, walking slower now. She held a white paper bag in one hand. She didn’t look at the car as she approached, just slid into the passenger seat and closed the door with a soft click.
The air in the car changed. It became heavy, charged.
Dominic didn’t start the engine. “Well?”
She stared straight ahead through the windshield, her profile like carved stone. She reached into the paper bag and pulled out a small, rectangular box. A pregnancy test. The kind with a digital readout. She placed it on the dashboard between them. The tiny screen was blank.
Then she pulled out a second one. And a third. She lined them up on the dash, three neat plastic soldiers. All blank.
“They make you buy your own,” she said, her voice devoid of inflection. “The consultation’s cash. The tests are extra.” A hollow, mirthless sound escaped her, not quite a laugh. “Free condoms by the door, though. Little late for that.”
Dominic looked at the tests, then at her. A cold, clear certainty was settling in his gut, heavier than any engine block. “How long?”
“The nurse said the tests are accurate from the day of your missed period. Mine was…” She closed her eyes, calculating. “Five weeks ago. Just before Mia’s barbeque.”
The barbeque. The last normal day. The scent of charcoal and carne asada, the sound of laughter, Mia playfully scolding Brian for burning the burgers. The memory was like a photograph from someone else’s life.
“Five weeks,” he repeated, the words flat.
“She said I should take them first thing in the morning.” Catalina picked up one of the tests, her fingers tracing the plastic edge. “For the highest concentration of… whatever. So we wait.”
“We’re not staying at Tej’s another night.”
“I know.”
He started the car, the growl of the engine unnaturally loud. He pulled away from the curb, driving without direction. The tests on the dashboard taunted him. A countdown in plastic. He drove until he found a sprawling, half-empty strip mall parking lot on the edge of town. He parked at the far end, away from the few other cars, facing the empty desert beyond the cracked asphalt.
Silence filled the Charger, a thick, suffocating thing. Mina slept on.
Catalina finally spoke, her voice small. “What if they’re positive?”
Dominic watched a tumbleweed bounce and roll across the barren lot. “Then they’re positive.”
“And then what, Dom?” The question burst out of her, sharp with fear. “We’re running from our family. We have a two-year-old in the backseat. We’re sleeping in strangers’ apartments. We can’t… we can’t have a baby out here.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“How?” She turned to him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “You ‘figure out’ a turbo install. You ‘figure out’ a race route. This isn’t a mechanical problem! This is a life. Another life.” Her hand went unconsciously to her abdomen. “What’s the plan? We drive from shitty motel to shitty motel until I’m screaming in labor in the back of this car? Then what? We add a newborn to the ‘on the run’ package?”
Her words hung in the air, harsh and true. He had no answer. The vast, meticulous control he exerted over his world—his crew, his car, his streets—meant nothing here. This was biology. This was consequence. This was a future hurtling toward them with no road map.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said, the statement sounding futile even to him.
“It’s already happening!” she shot back, then immediately clenched her jaw, looking away. She took a shuddering breath, trying to claw back her composure. “I’m scared,” she whispered, the admission costing her.
He reached over, his hand covering hers where it rested on the console. His skin was rough, warm. “I know.”
They sat like that for a long time, hands stacked, watching the shadows lengthen across the parking lot. The three plastic tests sat on the dashboard, a silent jury. The future, once a terrifying blank, now had a possible shape, and it was even more terrifying.
Finally, Mina woke up, fussy and disoriented. The spell broke. Catalina pulled her hand free to tend to her, the practical motions of mothering a momentary anchor.
“We need somewhere to stay tonight,” Dominic said, his mind shifting back into tactical mode. “Somewhere we can… do this.” He nodded at the tests.
“Not Tej’s,” Catalina said, wiping Mina’s face with a spare cloth.
“No.”
He drove toward the interstate, the tests rattling gently on the dash with every bump. He passed a dozen chain motels, their vacancy signs glowing like beacons. They were traceable. They required ID or at least a license plate number on a registry.
He took an off-ramp into a older, quieter neighborhood. He cruised past dated apartment complexes and small, tired houses. His eyes, trained to spot opportunity and weakness, scanned. Then he saw it: a small, hand-painted sign in the overgrown front yard of a peach-colored bungalow. “Casita – Rent by Week.” There was a phone number.
“Give me the burner,” he said.
Catalina handed him the cheap phone Tej had provided. He dialed.
An older woman’s voice answered on the second ring. “Yes?”
“The casita. Is it available tonight?”
“Cash in advance. Two-fifty a week. No pets, no parties.”
“One night. Two hundred.”
A pause. “Two-fifty for the week is the rate. You stay one night, you still pay the week.”
“Fine.” He didn’t have the energy to haggle. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The casita was a detached studio behind the main house, little more than a converted toolshed with a bathroom tacked on. It was clean, in a bare, indifferent way. A full-size bed, a small table, a miniature fridge. The window looked out onto a wall of unkempt oleander.
Dominic paid the woman in wrinkled bills through a crack in her front door. She handed him a single key without looking at his face.
Once inside, Dominic latched the flimsy door and shoved the table against it. It wouldn’t stop anyone determined, but it would make noise. Catalina placed Mina on the bed with a bag of crackers and turned on the small TV, flipping to a static-filled cartoon channel.
Then, they were out of distractions.
Catalina picked up the paper bag from the clinic, her movements deliberate. She took the tests and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Dominic stood in the center of the tiny room, listening to the inane chirping of the cartoon, the crunch of Mina’s crackers. He could hear the rustle of paper, the crinkle of plastic packaging from behind the thin door. His whole world narrowed to that door, to the few square feet of dingy tile on the other side.
Minutes passed. Each one stretched, elastic and agonizing.
The bathroom doorknob turned.
Catalina stepped out. She held the three tests in one hand, pressed together like a hand of cards. Her face was pale, wiped clean of all expression. She walked to the small table, moving as if in a dream, and laid the tests down in a row.
Dominic approached, his boots soundless on the thin carpet.
He looked down.
Three digital screens. Three identical words, clear and final in their tiny, glowing letters:
PREGNANT.
The word shimmered in the dim light of the casita, a blue, digital verdict.
Dominic’s breath stopped in his chest. The cartoon noise from the television warped into a distant, tinny hum. He could smell the sterile plastic of the tests, the faint, mildewed damp of the room, the sharp scent of Catalina’s fear-sweat. He stared, waiting for the letters to change, to morph into something else, anything else.
They remained. Solid. Unforgiving.
Catalina hadn’t moved. She stood beside the table, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, staring at the wall. The defiant woman from the car was gone, replaced by someone hollowed out by inevitability.
“Five weeks,” Dominic finally said, the words scraping his throat raw. He was calculating, his mind a cold engine. “That means…”
“It means it happened around Mina’s birthday,” Catalina finished, her voice flat and distant. “Her party. After everyone left.”
A specific memory unlocked, vivid and punishing. The wreckage of a toddler’s party in Mia’s backyard. Sticky cake plates, deflated balloons, the exhausted quiet after the chaos. Putting a sugar-crashed Mina to bed in the spare room. The silence that had descended, heavy and charged. The way they’d drifted into the darkened living room, a magnetic pull they’d fought for years finally snapping.
He remembered the taste of her, the desperate, silent press of mouths, a collision of forbidden want.
Catalina turned her head slowly to look at him. Her eyes were dark pools of accusation and a shared, terrible knowledge. “You asked when.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, tight and fierce. “Mina’s birthday. We fucked. I told you not to come in me. I told you I was fertile, that it was a bad time.” She swallowed, a hard convulsion in her throat. “You just said ‘too late’.”
The memory crashed over him, visceral and complete. The heat of her skin under his hands, the frantic, clumsy push of their clothes. The ragged sound of her voice in his ear, a warning he’d chosen to ignore. His own guttural reply, swallowed by her mouth. ‘Too late.’
It hadn’t been passion. It had been surrender. A mutual giving up.
Dominic took a step back from the table, as if the tests were emitting a force. He bumped into the wall, the flimsy structure shuddering. The reality of it, the concrete cause and effect, was a physical blow. This wasn't some abstract mistake. This was a direct consequence of a specific, weak moment he had engineered.
He had done this.
“You said it,” Catalina whispered, the words sharp as glass shards. “You knew.”
From the bed, Mina giggled at something on the TV. The sound was a surreal slash through the tension. Dominic looked at her, at her round cheeks and dark, trusting eyes. His daughter. Their daughter. The product of another night like that, another ‘too late’ buried in lies.
Now there would be another.
The path ahead, already a treacherous cliff edge, crumbled into a sheer drop. A newborn’s cries in motel rooms. Doctors’ visits requiring forged papers. Double the risk, double the need, double the helpless, screaming evidence of their sin.
Catalina sank into one of the rickety chairs, her body folding in on itself. She placed her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, her fingers pushing into her hair. “Oh, god,” she muffled into her palms. It wasn’t a prayer. It was a surrender.
Dominic pushed off the wall. The chaos in his mind solidified into a single, stark imperative. They couldn’t stay here. They couldn’t breathe this air. He strode to the bed, his movements mechanical. He gently pried the cracker bag from Mina’s hands.
“We’re leaving,” he said, his voice devoid of all inflection.
Catalina didn’t look up. “Where?”
“Anywhere. Now.” He began gathering their meager belongings, stuffing them into the duffel bag with brutal efficiency. The pregnancy tests still glowed on the table. He snatched them up, ripped out the tiny batteries, and threw the plastic carcasses into the trash bin. He zipped the bag shut with a sound like a gunshot.
The finality of the motion shook Catalina from her stupor. She looked at him, at the rigid set of his shoulders, the blank mask of his face. This was his version of panic—cold, decisive action.
“Dom—”
“Get her shoes on,” he interrupted, slinging the bag over his shoulder. He checked the window, then the door, his body coiled tight. “We’re burning daylight.”
He was already gone, mentally vaulting ahead to the next problem, the next mile, the next hiding spot. The diagnosis was in. The prognosis was a life on the run, now with two anchors instead of one. He couldn't afford to feel it. He could only move.
Catalina stared at the empty space where the tests had been, at the trash can that now held the proof. She took a deep, shuddering breath that didn’t reach the bottom of her lungs. Then she stood, her legs shaky, and turned to her daughter.
“Come on, baby,” she said, her voice miraculously soft. “Time to go for another ride.”