Something in between, standing in a hospital room, waiting to learn what could still survive.
Then my phone vibrated once, though it was off.
A remembered vibration, perhaps.
Or guilt pretending to be sound.
I reached into my pocket, took it out, and placed it on the table without turning it on.
Lucie saw the gesture.
This time, she did not nod.
But she did not look away either.
After a while, she said, “When we leave here, I don’t want to go home to her messages.”
I understood what she was really asking.
Not about an apartment.
Not about voicemail.
About whether I would finally stand between her and the thing I had called harmless.
I looked at the phone.
Then at the faint bruise my own nails had left in my palm earlier that night.
“I’ll call her from here,” I said. “And you won’t have to speak.”
Lucie closed her eyes again.
Her hand moved once over her belly, slow and protective.
The hallway outside brightened with morning, and somewhere nearby, another machine began to beep in steady rhythm.
I picked up the phone.
Turned it on.
And before the first message could finish loading, I already knew the next words would cost me something.
The first message loaded before I had time to prepare myself.
Adrien, I know you are angry, but a mother has the right to protect her son.
I stared at the sentence until the letters stopped feeling like words and became something colder.
Lucie did not ask what it said.
She only watched my face, and that restraint was worse than any demand.
There were six messages after that, each one dressed as concern, each one carrying the same poison.
She is emotional right now.
Do not let panic decide your future.
A paternity test would protect everyone.
You deserve certainty before you attach yourself forever.
I read them all.
Not because I wanted to.
Because turning away now would only be another version of the same cowardice.
My thumb hovered above the call button.
For years, I had answered my mother with explanations, soft words, little compromises.
That morning, in the hospital room, explanations suddenly felt like another way of asking Lucie to endure more.
I pressed call.
My mother answered on the second ring, breathless, as if she had been waiting with the phone in her hand.
“Adrien, finally. Listen to me before she fills your head with tears.”
I closed my eyes.
Lucie’s fingers tightened around the sheet, but she stayed silent.
“No,” I said. “You will listen.”
The line went quiet.
I could hear my mother breathing, offended before any accusation had even reached her.
“Lucie is in the hospital,” I said. “The baby is at risk, and your words helped bring her here.”
