The day after he had escaped from the police custody and faced her in hospital, Elena got some medical report from the doctor who had conducted body documentation of her. The doctor gave Elena a confidential document, enclosed in a brown envelope.
Elena waited till she was home that day, after being handed the document and spending the day in the hospital and released thereafter after her condition had improved. She was sitting on a couch in the living room, grazing her eyes on the ceiling above her, out of things to do as she let the time heal the trauma away. She remembered the document that she had slipped into the pockets of her overcoat that had been brought by her mother to the hospital. When she opened it up, the white sheet of paper bared the news to her. When she read across and her eyes finally landed on the positive pregnancy news, she almost fainted.
She screamed so loudly as she came to terms with the shocking news and she cried out bitterly when the reality sank in deeper and cemented itself permanently in her scorched and hurt mind. Lynn raced over to her downstairs as she sought to seek what was wrong with her. She found Elena crying, shaking, and whimpering all together in a traumatized state.
When Lynn asked Elena what was wrong, Elena wasted no time telling her that it was the trauma and not the pregnancy. She had lied. For some reason, Elena lied. She shook as her mother eased her increased trauma again, and she cried into her like a little girl. Deep inside, she held home to an infant, months away from its birth.
"So your mother does not know?" Ethan asked when she was done with her tale.
She shook her head. "No, she doesn't. It's just you and me." She answered him. She immediately recalled how Caroline, her younger sister, almost found her earlier that week as she caressed her tummy in the living room as her shirt was up past her navel. That was before her mother asked her later on what was worse than being raped... and in her mind, she knew what. She just couldn't find it in her to tell her. Without much hesitation, she also remembered Shallon asking her why she seemed like she was zoning out of their conversations when they had gone to a restaurant with Mike and Lance, and that it was because Ethan was her company. And that she was missing him. She remembered telling Shallon that she wouldn't understand why she was holding on to Ethan. She had been hiding her pregnancy all along.
How she was too free to tell him, had its own strong effects. If she had managed to hold it back from everyone all the while, that meant she really wanted him to find out... one way or another. She had slipped up to him, a lucky mistake.
"Why didn't you tell her?" He inquired further.
"I think we all know why. Ethan, it's embarrassing. Even for her." She lied.
"Elena are you sure?" He asked once again.
"I am, Ethan. Do you think I can make a joke out of something that serious?" She shrieked. "Why else do you think I love the cold?"
"Huh?" Ethan asked her, unsure.
"Women in pregnancy have different cravings." She told him sadly. "I like the cold. I don't know how but I know why." She shrugged.
Ethan took time and skimmed his eyes at her. She was in that falter dress of hers. From what he could see from her bust-up as she was in her seating posture, he noticed that she was too exposed to the cold. Most people in the hall had dressed warmly and he himself was in a jacket. Elena seemed to be enjoying the cold day.
"I didn't intend that to happen Elena. I never wanted to get you pregnant."
"Stop talking like it means anything to you." She hissed at him, shaking her head. Her hair followed the shake rhythmically.
"But Elena," he cried out, "I do. I do care about you."
"Why do I feel like just getting up and leave this table right now every time you say you care about me or say you're sorry because I know you don't."
"If you truly don't care about me then get up and go." Ethan dared her boldly on the outside, too frail as a loose stick hanging on a branch on the inside. Elena and Ethan exchanged some weird and harsh gazes, each daring the other to do the unthinkable. Elena frowned and shook her head firmly, tears tempting to come out again.
"I can't." She said.
"So... you do care about me?" Ethan asked her.
Elena cried out and took his hands into hers tightly. She could feel his warmth and he felt her cold. "What do you want me to say? That I don't?"
"Ethan, you're the father of this baby inside me. How can I not care about that? You got me pregnant Ethan and now I have our baby in here. In me." She looked at her belly. Ethan bit his lip worriedly. "I promised myself that I was going to forget you. I told myself that I was going to let you go. That you were just a passerby in my life, that we had our fun and it ended when you took advantage of me. That's all I had promised myself to think of you... in that way."
"No touching!" A male voice interrupted them. Elena stared at the prison officer who was standing beside the table. She removed her hands from his. Ethan never wanted them away as the feeling of being that close to her, skin to skin, lightened him up in many ways than she could have ever imagined. The prison officer walked away.
"But then this happened." She continued. "And things changed in a snap. I realized that I wasn't going to forget you. I realized that I had you in me, and letting you go was never going to be easy anymore."
"If you didn't want to continue to remember me, you could have opted for an abortion," Ethan told her abruptly, still worried.
Elena shrugged and scoffed. She smiled later on. "You know I wondered about Ingrid and her pregnancy. I understand that our situations or circumstances are different for holding our pregnancies Ethan... but I finally understood why she might never opt for such a thing. An abortion." She smiled. "You don't see it at first but when you finally register that the thing inside you, is just but an innocent baby... Ethan you would want to see it out, at the right time."