She always knew how to make me feel small. Like I existed just to serve her needs, a background character in the epic drama of her life. My sister. From borrowing my favorite clothes without asking, to needing me to cover for her failing grades, to calling me in the middle of the night for an emotional emergency that always dwarfed my own problems. She just… expected me. And I, like a fool, always delivered.I resented it, God, how I resented it. But I never said no. Never really could. Because underneath all the frustration, there was always that tiny, desperate voice telling me she truly needed me. That I was the strong one. The reliable one.
Then came the call. Not a frantic late-night sob-fest this time, but a quiet, almost defeated tone. The kind that makes your stomach clench because you know it’s not a minor drama. She was infertile. The doctors had confirmed it. Years of trying, hope after hope, shattered. And she was utterly, profoundly broken.
“You’re my last hope,” she whispered, her voice raw. “You’re the only one I can trust. Please. I need you to be my surrogate.”
A beautiful garden outside a house | Source: Unsplash
My breath hitched. A surrogate. For her. My own dreams of a family, tucked away for “someday,” suddenly felt irrelevant. My body, my time, my entire existence for the next year… to be dedicated to her dream. It felt like the ultimate test of my unspoken promise to always be there. It was the biggest thing she had ever asked of me.
I tried to explain. My new job, the travel plans with my partner, my own desire for children someday. Every excuse felt weak against the tidal wave of her despair. She didn’t yell, she didn’t even argue. She just cried. Soft, heart-wrenching sobs that painted me as the villain for even hesitating. Our parents weighed in, too. Family is everything. She deserves this. You’re so strong, you can do this.
And just like always, I caved.
The process was… clinical. Invasive. My body became a vessel, not my own. The hormones made me a stranger to myself, bloated and emotional. Every injection, every doctor’s visit, every ultrasound, she was there. Not as a supportive presence, but as an owner. Her questions were always about the embryo, the baby, never about me. “Is it okay? How’s its heartbeat?” Not, “How are you feeling?” or “Are you in pain?”
A close-up of a man standing in a living room | Source: Midjourney
I remember one night, wracked with nausea, barely able to keep down water. I called her, hoping for a shred of empathy. She was out with friends. “Oh, just push through it,” she’d said, a little too brightly, her voice tinged with irritation. “You’re doing this for us. It’ll all be worth it. Just imagine my baby in your arms.”
My baby. Not our baby, not the baby we were bringing into the world. Her baby. And I was just the incubator. The resentment festered, a bitter poison. I was sacrificing my body, my career, my future, my sanity, for someone who didn’t even see me as a person, just a means to an end. But it was too late to turn back. I had committed. I was doing this. For her. For family.
The pregnancy was difficult. High blood pressure, morning sickness that lasted all day, constant fatigue. My partner, bless his heart, tried to be supportive, but even he felt like a bystander. This wasn’t our journey. It was hers, and I was merely walking it for her.
A bowl of cereal | Source: Pexels
Finally, the day came. Labor was long, excruciating. But through the pain, a tiny flicker of hope, of connection, ignited. This was a life I was bringing forth. Maybe, just maybe, this act of ultimate selflessness would heal the rift between us. Maybe she would finally see me, truly see me, for what I had given.
When the baby was born, I remember the immediate relief, the exhaustion. And then, the moment they laid the tiny, squalling bundle on my chest for a few fleeting seconds. A warmth spread through me, overwhelming. A connection, primal and profound. But it was cut short. She, my sister, swept in, tearing the baby from my arms, her face alight with a joy that felt… alien.
“My baby!” she exclaimed, tears streaming, completely oblivious to my own pain, my own empty arms, my own aching body. She didn’t even look at me. Didn’t thank me. Didn’t acknowledge the gaping void she left.
A present on a table | Source: Midjourney
Over the next few weeks, I felt like a ghost in my own life. My body was recovering, but my heart was shattered. She kept the baby at her house, refusing to let me see it for more than a few minutes at a time, always with her watchful eye. “You need to rest,” she’d say, but I knew what it was. She was staking her claim. Erasing my role.
One afternoon, months later, I was at her house, helping her sort through some documents. She’d gone out for groceries, leaving me alone with the baby sleeping in the next room. My eyes fell on a file, half-hidden under a stack of magazines. “Medical Records – IVF.” I shouldn’t look, but I couldn’t help myself. A morbid curiosity. Maybe there’s something that explains why she was so cold.
I opened it. Page after page of clinic forms, genetic reports, consent forms. My name was there, alongside hers, on the surrogate agreement. But as I flipped further, my breath hitched. There was another form. A detailed genetic profile of the embryo used. A donor profile. And then, a small, handwritten note from a doctor tucked inside.
An annoyed man sitting at a table | Source: Midjourney
My eyes scanned the words, once, twice, a third time. My vision blurred. The room spun. The quiet hum of the refrigerator was deafening. No. NO. This couldn’t be right. I grabbed my phone, opened a search engine, typed in the medical term. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely hold it steady.
THE EMBRYO WASN’T HERS. NOT BIOLOGICALLY. The genetic markers listed… they weren’t hers at all.
Then I saw it. A name printed clearly on the form, under “Egg Donor.” My name. My full name, my date of birth. And next to it, under “Sperm Donor,” not her partner’s name, not a clinic donor, but… my partner’s name. My boyfriend’s name. The one I’d been with for years. The man I loved. The man I had talked about starting a family with.
My mind raced. Years ago, before we were even serious, my partner and I had discussed freezing some sperm, just in case something happened, as he worked in a high-risk job. A backup plan. We never went through with it, or so I thought. And my own eggs… I had done a fertility assessment once, years ago, just to check, and they’d retrieved and stored a few for my own future if I ever chose it. A private, personal decision I had never told anyone about.
An exhausted woman wearing pink scrubs | Source: Midjourney
SHE KNEW. She must have known. She found out about my stored eggs, about his stored sperm. She somehow accessed them, manipulated the clinic, created an embryo using our genetic material, and then convinced me to carry OUR OWN CHILD for her.
My sister didn’t just take me for granted. She didn’t just use my body. She didn’t just steal my time or my dreams. She stole my child. My future. She engineered my own fertility, my own hopes, into a devastating, malicious act of pure, unadulterated theft.
The baby in the other room. The one I birthed, the one I felt an undeniable connection to, the one she ripped from my arms… IS MINE. MINE. MY BABY.
A glass of water on a table | Source: Pexels
The world went silent. My own child, stolen before it was even born, by the very sister I had sacrificed everything for. The sister who always took me for granted. No. This wasn’t taking me for granted. This was an execution. And I was the one who had driven the knife.
