My Ten-Year-Old’s Pregnancy Test Was Positive PART 2

Chapter Six

What the Test Had Really Found

The biopsy lasted three hours.

Daniel paced the waiting room. Eric sat beneath the television with his elbows on his knees. Neither man spoke.

When the neurosurgeon finally appeared, I knew Sophie was alive because he was walking instead of running.

“The procedure went as planned,” he said. “She is awake.”

My legs nearly gave way.

“Did you remove the tumor?”

“Removing it now would risk damaging structures involved in vision and hormone regulation. Today’s goal was diagnosis.”

We were allowed to see Sophie one at a time. She was sleepy and pale, with a small bandage hidden near her hairline.

Her first question was not about the surgery.

“Did Daniel’s school let him come back?”

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.

But innocence on paper did not erase the parents who had already whispered his name in the school parking lot.

“I can handle it,” he told me.

I knew he was lying.

After the first treatment cycle, Sophie’s nausea worsened. She slept most of the day and cried when strands of hair began collecting on her pillow.

Then Dr. Shah entered holding a laboratory report.

For the first time since we met her, she smiled before speaking.

“Sophie’s hCG has begun to fall.”

I looked at the page. The number was still far above normal.

“How much does that mean?”

“It means the tumor is responding.”

Sophie touched the bandage covering her IV.

“So the thing in my brain is getting weaker?”

“That is what we hope.”

She reached beneath her blanket and pulled out the stuffed rabbit.

“Then it should be scared.”

Daniel laughed softly. Eric turned toward the window and wiped his eyes.

The pregnancy hormone that had accused an innocent man had become something else.

It was now the number telling us our daughter might survive.