He caught something on the ship.
The second voyage had brought a new group of passengers, and illness had travelled with them. The ship’s crew took steps. Announcements were made. Precautions advised.
For most people, this was a shared concern.
For him, it was an inconvenience that applied to everyone else.
I begged him. I reasoned with him. I reminded him that our daughter was two years old. That the least he could do was think of her, even if he wouldn’t think of me.
It fell on deaf ears.
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When we docked and came home, he promptly transferred whatever he had caught — straight to me.
Within weeks I was in hospital.
Pneumonia.
I had never felt pain like it. Not the white-hot pain of fibroid degeneration — this was a different kind of suffering entirely. The kind that makes you wonder if your lungs remember how to work.
I genuinely thought I was going to die.
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So I called my father.
I told him quietly what I was afraid of. I asked him — please — to make sure that if the worst happened, my daughter would not be left in his care alone.
My father paused.
And then he said, with the calm certainty of a man who had thought about everything:
No one is going to take her from him.
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I sat up in that hospital bed.
Just like that.
Because what he meant was: legally, practically, in the eyes of everyone who would be consulted — her father had rights. And in that moment, no one was coming to override them.
The thought of my child having no one to rely on but him shook me to my soul.
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That very morning, he had brought her to visit me.
She was dressed like she had been sent out in whatever was nearest — not put together, not thought about.
She fell upon my plate of hospital food.
And something in my throat tightened that had nothing to do with the pneumonia.
I asked him if he had fed her.
She hadn’t said she was hungry, he told me.
She was two years old.
It was gone one in the afternoon.
A two-year-old does not tell you she is hungry. A two-year-old reaches for your plate and eats like she hasn’t been offered anything all day.
Because she hadn’t.
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I think that is where the strength began.
Not from the doctors. Not from reassurance. Not from any machine measuring what was happening in my chest.
From a two-year-old reaching for my food.
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They were worried it might be a pulmonary embolism — a clot in the lung.
I couldn’t breathe without pain. I couldn’t sleep. Every position was wrong. Every breath was a negotiation.
And then — the pregnancy was confirmed.
February was still weeks away when I had discovered I was expecting. But now, lying in that hospital bed in January, it was the one thing nobody seemed to know what to do with.
Every new doctor who came to see me — I would tell them. Quietly, carefully. I am pregnant.
And each one would look at me with a flash of something — surprise, recalibration — and say the same thing.
I’ll just check something in your notes.
And then they would not come back.
Not one of them. Each time, a new face, the same words, the same disappearing act.
This baby, I thought, is my get out of jail free card. If I can just make them understand — if I can just get one of them to stay long enough to listen — this pregnancy changes everything about how they have to treat me.
But the ward moved at its own pace. And my baby was not on anyone’s chart.
I phoned him.
I told him not to bring our daughter to see me until I knew more.
He didn’t ask why.
He didn’t ask what was happening. Didn’t ask if I was in pain. Didn’t ask what the doctors had said.
When he had been ill on that ship — before he so generously shared whatever he had caught — he had been ready to write his will. I had nursed him. Managed everything. Made sure he was comfortable, cared for, not alone.
The moment I went down, I was on my own.
No question asked. No concern offered. Nothing.
It was its own kind of answer.
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To know for certain whether there was a clot, they would need to inject radioactive dye and scan me at a different hospital.
A kind woman was assigned to escort me in the ambulance. She chatted the whole way — warm, easy conversation that floated past me while I sat in my silence.
I felt rude. Eventually I told her.
I told her I was frightened. That I was pregnant. That every doctor who heard those words walked away and didn’t come back.
She looked at me steadily.
You are in charge of your own body, she said. You tell that doctor exactly what you’ve told me.
She said it like it was simple. Like it was already true.
And somehow, in the way that small moments from unexpected people so often do — it gave me courage.
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The doctor was a quiet Indian man. He listened to everything I said without interrupting.
Then he told me he was very good at what he does.
He explained it carefully. He would use one tenth of the usual dose of radioactive dye. Enough to see what he needed to see. He said the dye would collect in the bladder — and the bladder sits very close to the uterus.
So when you return to the ward, he said, drink as much as you can. And pass water as often as you can. I cannot promise this will protect your baby entirely. But it gives them the best chance.
I seized that hope with both hands.
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When I got back to the ward, I asked for a jug of water.
A sign had been put up outside my room. No children within twenty-four hours of the scan.
I had already called him. Already told him not to bring her.
He still didn’t ask why.
And somehow — that was fine. Because it meant I was alone, unobstructed, and entirely in charge of what happened next.
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I was not fully mobile, so I asked for a commode to be brought to my bedside.
And I drank.
As soon as one jug was finished, I asked for another.
I cannot tell you how many jugs there were. I only know that at some point my throat muscles ached with the effort of swallowing. That the act of drinking had become its own kind of labour. That my throat felt raw and my body felt like it had done everything it possibly could.
I fell asleep crying.
Whispering the only words I had left.
Ya Rabb. I have done my part.
The rest is in Your hands.
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Sometimes tawakkul is not a feeling of peace.
Sometimes it is the moment after you have emptied yourself completely — of fear, of water, of effort, of everything — and you simply let go.
Not because you are not afraid.
But because there is nothing left to do but trust.
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This story is part of the SisterLink community – a space for Muslim single mothers to share, heal, and rebuild.Welcome to Sisterlink. A Digital Village.Because even the strongest women were never meant to do this alone.