Diego stood four feet from the edge of my paper-covered mattress. He had not taken off his dark wool overcoat; its shoulders were still damp from the light drizzle falling outside on 4th Avenue. His posture was rigid, chin jutted forward with the theatrical disdain he usually reserved for low-level junior contractors on his firm’s construction sites.
Beside him, Paula kept one manicured hand tucked lightly inside the elbow of his coat. She had combed her chestnut hair into a smooth, glossy bob, wearing a cream cashmere turtleneck that smelled faintly of expensive almond blossom perfume—the same fragrance she had worn six months ago when she sat at our dining table, complimenting the texture of my homemade focaccia.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Salinas said. Her hand did not move from the ultrasound transducer resting on the cold blue gel spread across my lower abdomen. Her voice carried the flat, unhurried weight of an obstetrician who had delivered four thousand infants and seen every iteration of domestic collapse. “This is an active clinical examination suite. Intruding upon a patient during an internal diagnostic scan is a direct violation of state medical privacy protocols. You will wait in the outer corridor.”
