The phone calls.
The dark screen in his jacket pocket while Madison leaned close and whispered, Today is about us.
Mark turned away, pressing his hand against the wall. For a moment, he thought he might be sick.
“I need to see my children,” he said.
Lauren’s eyes softened, though her voice remained firm. “You need to speak with NICU administration.”
“They’re my children.”
“Yes,” she said. “And they are patients. There are protocols.”
“Are they alive?”
The question broke out of him before he could stop it.
The hallway quieted inside his mind.
Lauren did not answer immediately, and in that pause Mark heard the memory of fetal monitors screaming.
Finally, she said, “You need to speak with Dr. Patel.”
Mark stared at her.
The refusal told him nothing.
And somehow it told him everything.
Dr. Naomi Patel met him twenty minutes later in a small consultation room with pale walls and two boxes of tissues on the table.
