(Sophia's POV)
Chloe stared at me.
The words just hung there between us in the corridor, and she had absolutely nothing to say to them. Her mouth opened, closed, and she looked away with the particular discomfort of someone who has asked a question they deeply regret.
"I'm sorry," she finally managed. "I didn't know."
"It's fine." I snapped on the fresh gloves. "Seven years is a long time to wait for something that isn't coming. You get used to it."
She looked at me with something I recognized as pity, and I let her have it. Pity was a useful cover. She would go home tonight and tell someone that Dr. Davis had a husband who couldn't perform, and that story would travel exactly as far as it needed to, and it would explain everything that needed explaining.
The truth was simpler and worse.
Sebastian had no problem. None whatsoever. On our wedding night, he'd sat on the edge of the bed in that enormous room in the Vance estate and told me, with the same expression he used to review quarterly earnings reports, that he had no intention of having children. Ever. He was busy. He would remain busy. He expected me to understand that and not raise the subject again.
I had understood. Or I'd told myself I had.
What I understood now, watching the memory from a distance of seven years, was that his real reason had nothing to do with being busy.
He didn't want children because he didn't want to give the woman he actually loved any reason to feel displaced.
The irony was that I had almost told him about Lily. Three separate times in the past two years, I had drafted the conversation in my head. Sebastian, there's something you should know. I have a daughter. She's four, she's healthy, she lives with Dr. Caldwell in the next city. I had gotten as far as the opening sentence twice before losing my nerve.
I was profoundly grateful for that cowardice now.
I was still standing at the nursing station when I saw him come back through the main corridor doors. He was holding a folded piece of paper-the billing receipt from Chloe's transfer, probably-and he walked past me without slowing down. His eyes moved across my face the way they might move across a wall. No recognition. No pause.
I watched him go.
He hadn't heard what I said to Chloe. Or if he had, it hadn't registered.
Either way, it didn't matter.
My shift ended at six. I drove home in the gray early light, too tired to feel much of anything, and let myself in through the front door.
I was still in the entryway, trading my shoes for slippers, when I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Sebastian came down in a fresh shirt, jacket folded over one arm. He was already dressed for the day, already somewhere else in his head. He crossed the foyer without looking at me.
I said it before I could think better of it.