He let the stuffed animal slip from his hand onto the floor of the hallway. He did not pick it up.
He was walked to the elevator and escorted out through the lobby into the January air.
He stood on the sidewalk outside the hospital, looking up at the lit window of the maternity wing.
The cold came through his coat. The street was quiet. A cab moved past slowly.
He stood there for a long time.
And somewhere in that cold and quiet, the full picture finally assembled itself in his mind. Not just what had happened, but how long it had been happening. Elena had known about the affair before he had stopped pretending to hide it. She had been reading his messages while he sat across from her at dinner. She had handed him the pen that signed his own termination clause. She had walked into a fertility clinic and exercised rights he had granted her without reading the form.
Every step he thought he was taking forward, she had already accounted for.
He had spent a year feeling untouchable.
She had spent a year making sure that when the time came, there would be nothing left to touch.
