Daniel smiled, but his eyes filled.
“Not yet.”
“Dad?”
Eric stood behind me.
“I called the superintendent,” he said. “I told her there was no pregnancy and no evidence Daniel had harmed you.”
“Did you tell her you were wrong?”
Eric hesitated.
“Yes.”
Sophie closed her eyes again.
“Good.”
The pathology report arrived two days later.
Dr. Shah gathered us in a conference room and wrote the diagnosis on a whiteboard: an hCG-secreting intracranial germ cell tumor.
The words looked less frightening than the MRI image. They were not.
“The tumor produced the hormone that caused Sophie’s positive pregnancy tests,” Dr. Shah explained. “It also disrupted the part of her brain that regulates thirst and development.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“Is it cancer?”
“Yes.”
I heard the word, but my mind refused to hold it.
Dr. Shah continued. The tumor was serious, but this type could respond to chemotherapy. Sophie would receive several treatment cycles, followed by focused radiation if the oncology team believed it necessary.
“What are her chances?” Eric asked.
“We have reason to hope,” Dr. Shah said. “But treatment must begin immediately.”
Sophie understood more than we wanted her to.
That evening, she asked me whether cancer meant she was going to die.
I climbed into bed beside her.
“It means the doctors know what they have to fight.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” I whispered. “It isn’t.”
I held her face between my hands.
“I don’t know everything that will happen. But the doctors believe they can treat this, and we are going to stay with you through every part of it.”
Her first chemotherapy cycle began three days later.
Daniel slept in the reclining chair beside her bed. Eric brought breakfast every morning, even when Sophie could not eat it. I learned to measure time by medications, blood tests, and the changing numbers on Dr. Shah’s reports.
A detective returned during Sophie’s treatment.
He told us the medical findings and Sophie’s consistent statements provided no basis for a criminal case against Daniel. The hospital social worker documented that no pregnancy had been found.
Daniel was officially cleared.
