Bridget’s voice softens with the kind of sympathetic firmness that only comes from years of delivering impossible news, but the moment the words leave her mouth—“Electra, you can’t get pregnant anymore”—the entire world seems to tilt, shudder, and then collapse around Electra as she sits frozen on the exam table, her breath stalling in her chest as though her heart has forgotten how to beat, her dreams dissolving before she can even understand what’s happening, and for a long, agonizing moment she can only stare at Bridget, unable to speak, unable to think, unable to reconcile the hope she carried into the appointment with the unbearable truth she’s walking out with, a truth that tears through her like a jagged blade because she had imagined a future so vividly—tiny socks folded in drawers, a crib by the window, long nights of rocking a child whose heartbeat would echo her own—and now all of it crumbles into dust as Bridget gently explains the diagnosis, the complications, the irreversible damage that no treatment, no miracle, no stroke of luck can undo, but Electra hears none of it, her mind drowning in the deafening silence of shattered expectation as memories she never got to make flicker out like dying stars. She tries to form words, tries to ask how, why, what she did wrong, whether anything could have saved the dream she held so tightly to, but her tongue feels stuck to the roof of her mouth, and when her voice finally emerges it breaks apart like glass, trembling and lost as she whispers that this can’t be real, that she can’t be the kind of woman life passes by, that she can’t accept a future where motherhood is something she must watch others have while she stands on the outside, empty-handed and forced to smile through the pain, though the truth burns through her like fire. Bridget reaches for her hand with quiet compassion, but Electra pulls away, not out of anger but because the gentleness feels unbearable, because kindness right now only makes the heartbreak sharper, because nothing about this moment feels survivable, and she presses her palms to her eyes as hot tears spill through her fingers, sobs shaking her shoulders as she realizes she is grieving not just the loss of a possibility but the loss of a future self she had already fallen in love with. Bridget tries to ground her, offering next steps, counseling options, ways to cope, but Electra can’t hear any of it over the pounding in her ears, the suffocating weight in her chest, the echo of dreams collapsing in on themselves like a dying star, because she had spent years imagining the child she would one day hold, the lullabies she would sing, the milestones she would celebrate, and now she is left with nothing but the hollow ache of absence, a maternal instinct with nowhere to go, a heart full of love she’ll never be able to give. She stumbles out of the clinic in a daze, the bright hallway lights blurring as she walks past strangers who have no idea her world has just ended, and by the time she reaches her car her legs buckle, sending her to her knees as another wave of grief crashes over her, raw and uncontrollable, tearing the breath from her lungs as she presses a trembling hand to her stomach, mourning a child who never existed but who lived vividly in her imagination, a child she had already promised her heart to without ever speaking it aloud. She thinks of the conversations she and her partner shared, the “someday” whispers, the gentle plans, the hopeful laughter, and the fear of telling them the truth sends a fresh spike of panic through her because she worries they’ll pity her, or resent her, or worse—leave her, because the future they wanted now has cracks running straight through it, but she also knows she cannot hide this forever, that the moment she speaks the words aloud she will feel the reality settle even heavier in her bones. As she sits in her car with her forehead against the steering wheel, tears dripping onto her hands, she feels small and powerless, as though fate has singled her out for a cruelty that defies explanation, and the once-bright dream she carried like a lantern now feels like cold ashes, leaving behind an emptiness she doesn’t know how to fill, a silence she doesn’t know how to live with. Yet somewhere beneath the grief, in the faintest, most fragile corners of her heart, a whisper of resilience flickers—a spark she doesn’t yet recognize, one that will take time to grow, but for now she can’t see it, can’t feel it, can’t believe in anything beyond the pain choking her breath, and as Bridget watches from the clinic door with a sorrow of her own, knowing she has delivered news that will change Electra forever, the world outside keeps moving, unaware that a future has just been rewritten, that a woman’s heart has been broken in a way no one but her will ever fully understand, and that Electra, trembling and devastated, must now face a tomorrow she never prepared for, a tomorrow without the dream she cherished most.