“Are you saying it was… my fault?” she asked, but her voice lacked its usual firmness, replaced by a tremor she couldn’t control.
The doctor gently denied it, although her subsequent silence left an awkward space, a pause that weighed more than any direct answer or explicit accusation.
“I’m saying there was a critical moment,” he replied, “and that any small factor could have significantly changed the outcome.”
Marcus nodded, but he didn’t fully understand, or perhaps he did, and that was precisely what paralyzed him in that cold, bright hallway.
She remembered the kitchen, the light coming through the windows, the warm water, Emily’s calm smile as she gently held Zion.
He also recalled his own voice, harsh, sharp, breaking up that scene as if it were something wrong, something that should be stopped immediately without question.
The sound of the monitors inside the room pulled him from his thoughts, a constant beeping that now set the rhythm of something much more fragile than his usual control.
He sat down slowly, resting his elbows on his knees, looking at his hands as if they didn’t quite belong to him, as if they had acted on their own.
