When she woke, her belly was flat and clean. The bruise was gone. The phantom cramp in her navel was silent. She looked down at the neat, healing incision where her belly button used to be. It wasn't a perfect dimple anymore. It was a small, straight scar. A scar that, for the first time in two years, did not bleed.
Dr. Ionescu didn’t say “coincidence.” She didn’t reach for a penlight. She reached for an ultrasound wand.
On the morning of the surgery, Clara traced the bruise one last time. It had become a part of her, an unwelcome lodger. She thought of all the months she’d been dismissed, told she was imagining it, told it was just a skin problem. She thought of the silent, stubborn cells that had migrated to the loneliest part of her body and built a home.