(Sophia's POV)

The break room was quiet at 2 a.m.

I sat curled in the corner of the worn couch, still in my scrubs, one earbud in. Lily's voice message played for the third time.

"Mommy, why have I never seen Daddy? Tommy at school says if you never see your daddy, it means he's dead. Is Daddy dead?"

Five years old and already asking the hard questions.

I stared at the ceiling and thought about it seriously. Sebastian Vance wasn't dead. Technically. But given how absent he'd been from our lives, the distinction felt academic.

The problem was that Lily was getting older. She was starting to notice the gap where a father should be. I'd managed the first five years with careful deflection and the occasional vague answer, but that window was closing fast.

I pulled up my messages and opened Sebastian's contact. The cursor blinked at me.

If we had a child, would you-

I stopped.

Would he what? Show up? Care? I wasn't even sure what I was hoping he'd say. Our marriage had always been a quiet, functional arrangement, conducted in separate wings of a house too large for two people who barely spoke. I'd told myself for years that his coldness was just his nature. That some men were built that way.

I was still deciding whether to finish the sentence when the break room door swung open hard enough to hit the wall.

"Dr. Davis." The young nurse, Chloe, was already half out of breath. "We've got an emergency. Possible ruptured corpus luteum, early pregnancy. She came in with severe abdominal pain."

I set my phone down and stood.

"Early pregnancy?" I grabbed my coat off the hook. "What was she doing?"

"The intake form says-" Chloe hesitated. "Vigorous physical activity."

I frowned and followed her into the corridor. "Vigorous physical activity in the first trimester. That's extraordinarily irresponsible. The uterine environment is barely established. One wrong move and you're looking at hemorrhage, fetal loss, the works." I kept my voice low as we walked. "Who cleared her for-actually, never mind. Let's just see what we're dealing with."

Chloe pushed open the door to bay four.

I pulled back the curtain.

The woman on the bed was young, blonde, dressed in what had probably been an expensive outfit before it got crumpled. Her green eyes were sharp even through the pain.

I recognized her immediately.

The words died in my throat.

I stood there for two full seconds before I managed to say her name. "Chloe?"

Not the nurse behind me. The other one. Chloe Davis.

Sebastian's cousin's fiancée.

I did the math automatically, the way doctors do. Alexander had been sentenced five months ago. Corporate fraud, eighteen months minimum. Which meant that if Chloe was pregnant, the timeline didn't line up with Alexander at all. I looked at her abdomen. Flat. No visible signs yet, so early stage. But the math was the math.

I wasn't the type to dig into other people's private lives. Whatever the story was, it wasn't my business.

I snapped on a pair of gloves and stepped toward the bed. "I'm going to need to examine you. Can you-"

"Don't." Her voice came out sharp and cold. She pushed herself upright, jaw set. "I don't want you touching me. I want a transfer."

"Ms. Davis, you came in with acute abdominal pain. If this is a rupture, every minute matters. I can't let you-"

She raised her hand and swatted mine away.

The sound was clean and loud. The back of my hand went hot.

I didn't move. I just looked at her.

Then her whole expression shifted. The coldness dissolved into something softer, almost theatrical. She turned her head toward the curtain and said, quietly, "Sebastian."

I heard the name before I processed it.

My hand was still burning when I looked up.

He walked in with his jacket folded over one arm, unhurried, filling the space the way he always did without seeming to try. Tall. Dark hair. The kind of posture that made rooms rearrange themselves around him.

His eyes swept the bay and landed on me for exactly one second.

One second, and then he looked through me like I was part of the furniture. His gaze moved past my shoulder and settled on the woman in the bed, and his entire bearing softened in a way I had never once seen it soften in seven years of marriage.

"Are you alright?" His voice was low. Careful.

I stood there with a glove on one hand and a red mark on the other, and I watched my husband look at another woman like she was the only person in the room.

Chloe leaned back against the pillow, and something in her posture changed. The sharp edges rounded off. She looked up at him with her green eyes and said, in a tone I can only describe as intimate, "You know why I'm here. My stomach started hurting and I got scared."

The nurses around me went very still.

Nobody said anything, but everybody understood.

The vigorous physical activity had a name now, and he was standing right there in a tailored shirt with his jacket over his arm, not denying a single word.

Sebastian said nothing. He pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down, his focus entirely on her.

I had spent years telling myself his distance was temperament. That he was a man who didn't do warmth, who didn't do tenderness, who moved through the world at a remove from ordinary human feeling. I had accepted that. I had built a life around accepting that.

Watching him now, I understood that I had been wrong about all of it.

He wasn't cold by nature.

He was just cold to me.

The realization didn't hit like a wave. It settled, slow and certain, like sediment dropping to the bottom of still water. I felt something in my chest go very quiet.

I peeled off one glove.

Chloe seemed to notice the shift in my expression. A small smile crossed her face, barely there. "I'd like to be transferred," she said again, this time to Sebastian. "Somewhere better."

"Of course." He was already reaching for his phone.

No hesitation. No are you sure. No let the doctor finish the assessment. Just immediate, unconditional compliance, as though she'd asked him to pass the salt.

I watched them arrange it between themselves while I stood three feet away, invisible.

They left without Sebastian glancing back once. The curtain swung shut behind them.

I stood there for a moment longer than I needed to.

Then I finished removing my gloves, dropped them in the bin, and walked back toward the nursing station.

Behind me, I could already hear the murmuring start. Someone said something about the man's bone structure. Someone else laughed.

Chloe fell into step beside me, voice dropped low, eyes bright with the kind of curiosity that doesn't know when to stop. "Okay, so that guy. Was that-did you know him? Because the way he looked at her was-"

"He was handsome," I said. "Sure."

"Very. And the energy between them." She shook her head. "Honestly, you'd think they were-" She caught herself, glanced at me sideways. "Sorry. You've been married, what, seven years now? How come nobody's ever heard you mention kids? I always assumed-"

I pulled open the supply drawer and took out a fresh set of gloves.

"My husband has erectile dysfunction," I said, keeping my voice completely flat. "He's still in treatment."