The woman turned pale, the world blurred before her eyes. She remembered how she had laughed, how she had knitted baby socks, how she had stroked her belly thinking a new life was growing inside… while all this time, death had been growing there instead.

“If you had come immediately,” the doctor said quietly, “we could have removed the tumor. You could have lived many more years in peace. But you lost precious months.”

Larisa covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. She understood the terrible mistake she had made — believing in a miracle, refusing to check the truth, avoiding doctors.

Now she was no longer fighting for a child that never existed… but for her own life.