Chapter 30

Dr. Emilio began, his voice surprisingly steady, yet strained under the clinical intensity he forced upon it. “When Miss Evelyn Hazel came to the hospital, it was for chronic pelvic pain. When assessing a woman for this, a doctor typically performs three steps.” He deliberately looked at Evelyn, treating her as a professional case study. “We perform a pelvic exam, then a transvaginal ultrasound, and sometimes a Saline Infusion Sonography, or SIS, if necessary.”

He paused, adjusting his posture. “In Miss Hazel’s case, the SIS was indicated. Would you like me to explain all three procedures?”

Evelyn was visibly uncomfortable, her eyes darting between the sterile white walls. But to her great surprise, Dr. Williams also seemed visibly ill at ease. Even though she was a doctor, Williams struggled to explain her sudden, acute discomfort hearing the details. This wasn’t her specialty, but she knew what the terms meant, a knowledge which somehow amplified her distress. Emilio, however, remained immaculately professional and serious.

“No need to explain all those details,” Evelyn’s shrewd lawyer, Ms. Yada, interjected. “I would like to know the level at which the error occurred.”

“To perform an SIS, we must inject a liquid into Miss,” Emilio paused, pointing stiffly at Evelyn, “her uterus, through a thin catheter to check the shape of the womb.”

“We’ve grasped that,” Williams cut in sharply, adjusting her weight in the uncomfortable chair. Her gaze briefly met Evelyn’s, and a shared flicker of heat and discomfort passed between them. “She wants to know where the mistake happened, Dr. Emilio.”

“I know,” Emilio retorted, his tone serious and slightly defensive. “I want her to understand the similarity of the procedures to grasp the error itself.”

“Go ahead, Doctor,” Yada insisted, visibly fascinated by the procedural misstep.

Evelyn gripped her hands beneath the table, attempting to anchor herself, her gaze fixed on the meeting room door, willing the conversation to end.

“The SIS procedure is almost identical to an insemination,” Emilio continued, the words dropping like small stones. “A speculum is used, a catheter passes through the vagina bit by bit, and the patient may feel strong pressure, but not acute pain. Therefore, if the clinic confuses the patient files, she would not realize that sperm was inserted into her canal instead of a saline solution.”

Emilio’s explanation was professional, yet agonizingly raw for Evelyn. The awkwardness was suffocating. For her, it felt like a visceral, complete exposure in front of all of them, especially Williams. Evelyn desperately wished the CEO would vanish. Lost in this agonizing thought, she looked up and found Williams already staring at her, only for Williams to snap her gaze away.

But didn’t Evelyn have a primary care physician?” Yada pressed, homing in on the systemic flaw. “How could you confuse patients?”

Emilio froze. It was the crucial question that undermined his fabricated cover story. Dr. Marz had failed to provide the fine details of this ridiculous, yet hyper-dramatic, error.

“I am not a regular patient at the hospital,” Evelyn clarified, sparing Emilio. “This was my second time here. The doctor who consulted me and prescribed the tests was different from those who performed the procedure.”

“You work like a factory assembly line,” the lawyer noted with controlled disgust.

“That’s how all large hospitals work; there’s nothing new about that,” Williams snapped, exhausted by the humiliating, awkward details and the lawyer’s smug judgment.

“And therefore, you should review the flow of information,” Yada concluded.

Williams took the criticism like a physical blow. “Has Dr. Emilio clarified things for you?”

Emilio, sensing the rising temperature, quickly intervened. “Miss Evelyn, do you have any questions for me?”

“That’s enough,” the lawyer interjected, standing up.

“Then I’m going to call the others back. And as for us, we’re going to run a test to check whether Miss Hazel is pregnant or not.”

The lawyer nodded to Williams, then headed to the exit.

As Emilio held the door open for Evelyn and Yada to exit, Williams suddenly strode across the room and took hold of his arm, an abrupt, surprising action.

“Will you restart the same procedure to check if she is pregnant, because…?”

Emilio was utterly shocked by the question, freezing in the doorway. “Williams,” he hissed, his eyes wide with disbelief. “To check if a woman is pregnant, we simply do a blood or urine test. I am not going to check through her…”

“Oh! Yes. Exactly,” Williams cut in, immediately dropping his arm, her cheeks flushing with self-reproach. She was a brilliant, accomplished doctor, yet she had just asked a question of basic medical knowledge that any intern could answer. “I mean,” she covered quickly, forcing a mask of professional annoyance, “since you made the mistake, I thought a different doctor should conduct the test.”

“Hmm,” nodded Emilio before leaving.

A few minutes later, Mr. Polo and his associate returned, finding Dr. Williams alone, wrestling with a mix of alien emotions she struggled to define.

“Are you alright?” Polo asked gently.

Dr. Williams nodded curtly, unwilling to elaborate.

“Your surgery is scheduled for this evening. Wouldn’t it be wise to rest?”

“Don’t worry.”

Sitting in the silence of the meeting room, waiting for the final verdict, Dr. Williams couldn’t shake the explanations Emilio had delivered with such serene professionalism. The thought that Dr. Emilio had performed all this on Evelyn, had seen her, had touched her intimacy, made her intensely uncomfortable, a feeling she could only identify as a primal, irrational aversion.

“To perform an SIS, I had to inject a liquid into the uterus through a thin catheter to check the shape of the womb. As it moves inside her vagina, the patient might feel a sharp pressure but no sharp pain. So, if the clinic mixed up the patient files, she would not realize they inserted sperm instead of saline…”

The words kept ringing in her head, forcing her to stand abruptly and walk to the window, anything to stop visualizing Emilio and Evelyn in those stark, clinical details.

Mr. Polo and his colleague noticed her sudden agitation.

“Did he explain the details to you?” Mr. Polo asked, embarrassed, knowing Williams had demanded them.

“Hmph,” Williams replied, offering nothing more.

Dr. Williams nervously began biting her index finger without realizing it.

After a brief, agonizing interval, the door opened again. They were back, this time carrying the definitive results.

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