Chapter 145

I must sit in numbed shock for minutes as tears pour down my face and then zone back into reality and the fact I am still sitting in this sterile room. My mind was lost to some weird state of nothing as I try to digest what I am reading and flick through the papers again as though I had hallucinated it. I can’t swallow it down as this dream state of weirdness pushes me to feel like I am floating in some dizzy haze.

There it is in red ink, so bold you cannot miss it or the meaning. There is no mistake and no other way to interpret it. It even states on the cover sheet what your results mean, and right there, it says a zero percent score means no blood relation to your test subject.

I let out a sob of sheer devastation. Not because I’m sad that he’s not but because of everything I have suffered in these last weeks. It’s relief and yet also resentment and heartbreak all rolled into one. Self-pity for what I have endured.

Every stab at my heart, every crumbling of my soul