With that background, the stakes are these: if she journeys to find him, and does, and gets rejected again, what has she lost? Nothing, because she didn’t have him to begin when she started the journey.

NOW, add the fact that she had his baby while he was gone, and that the baby has a life-threatening condition/disease/illness that can only be cured with a transpplant of some kind from the father, now you have a much higher conflict- life and death- and stakes- death of a loved one.

For the father, he is now forced with a choice of returning to a lifestyle of sin by having to give up his monk quest, returning to a woman he possibly never loved, and a child he never knew he had, or stay, thus almost assuring that the child will die.

For the protag- the wife- she is forced to make this trip for reasons other than her own selfishness, and she probably won’t take “no” for an answer. This now becomes a “Sophie’s Choice” scenario with a religious twist of sorts.

If you REALLY want to give it a twist, don’t have the husband/monk agree to come back and/or save the child. Now what?

Clearly, the above scenarios make the genre and tone quite obvious, so let’s hope it’s not a romcom!