“You never heard about me?”
“No, Nikki.”
His answer came firmly this time.
“I only started going into Ward 10 this week.
At the time you were there, I cleaned around reception.
I did not know you.
I did not know what happened to you.”
He paused, then looked directly at her.
“Are you suspecting me of something?”
Nikki shook her head immediately.
“No.
Not at all.”
But she understood why he had asked.
She had followed him to work.
She had searched among his clothes.
She had confronted him with his uniform.
Now she was asking whether he had been around the ward where her unexplained pregnancy began.
Anyone standing in Roland’s place would have felt accused.
“I just want to find the man who got me pregnant,” Nikki said quietly.
The sentence took much of the anger out of the room.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“It happened at that hospital.
That is all I know.
I thought perhaps because you work there, you might have seen something.
Or heard something.
Maybe someone talked about me.
Maybe you knew who was around Ward 10 when I was there.”
Roland remained standing.
“I don’t know.”
Nikki nodded slowly.
She hated that answer, but not because she believed it was necessarily a lie.
She hated it because it left her exactly where she had been before she followed him that morning.
Without an answer.
Without a name.
Without anything she could take back to her husband and say, This is what happened.
This is the truth.
Her entire life seemed trapped inside a question nobody could answer.
Roland picked up the cleaner’s uniform from the bed and folded it.
Nikki watched him.
“Why did you lie about the hospital?” she asked.
Roland stopped folding.
“I told you I also work at the supermarket.”
“But you knew what I meant when I asked where you worked.”
He did not answer.
“You could have told me about the hospital.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.
At the right time.”
Nikki almost laughed, but nothing about the situation felt funny.
“That is what you said before.”
Roland put the uniform away.
“I am sorry.”
She studied him for a moment.
Despite her suspicion and hurt, another truth remained beside it: Roland had taken her in when she was desperate.
He had given her somewhere to sleep.
