NIKOLAI
ONE MONTH LATER
He hadn’t moved in five hours.
Still in the same chair. Still staring at the same patch of wall like it held a way out of this. His leg bounced with a rhythm that didn’t match the silence in the room. Hands locked so tight they looked like they were fused together. Fingertips pale. Joints tense. Like if he loosened them, he’d fall apart right in front of me.
A month ago, he had come into our room and told me he was going to raise the baby.
No lead-up. No emotion. He didn’t look at me when he said it. Didn’t breathe. Just stood there in the doorway like a man already defeated.
“I think I’m going to raise the baby,” he said.
And that was it. No explanation. No plea. Just those words. Delivered flat and empty, like something he’d practiced saying a thousand time
