Badge on his pocket.
A cup of coffee in his hand.
The same man who’d kissed my forehead five hours earlier.
He saw me.
The coffee slipped out of his fingers.
It splashed across the tile.
A security guard stepped out behind him.
Big man.
Gray uniform.
He put his hand on Nate’s arm.
Not rough.
Almost kind.
“Dr. Cole,” the guard said.
“You know you can’t be up here.”
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
I looked at the guard.
Then at my husband.
“What does he mean?” I asked.
“Nate.”
“What does he mean, you can’t be up here?”
Nate looked at me.
Then at Owen.
Then at the floor.
“Marcus,” he said to the guard.
“Give me one minute with my wife.”
“I can’t do that, Doc.”
“The agreement says—”
“I know what it says.”
“Then you know I have to walk you out.”
The agreement.
What agreement?
“Somebody tell me what’s going on,” I said.
My voice came out too loud.
Heads turned all the way down the hall.
A patient’s mother peeked out of a doorway.
Nate flinched at the sound.
“Not here,” he said.
“Please, Laur.”
“Not here.”
Marcus steered him back toward the elevator.
Gentle.
Firm.
Like he’d done it before.
Like he’d done it many times.
The doors closed on my husband’s face.
I stood there holding a meatloaf sandwich.
Owen reached for my arm.
“Lauren—”
I stepped back.
“Don’t.”
“Please, let me—”
“You knew.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Whatever this is, you knew.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
He swallowed.
“Since the beginning.”
I turned to Denise.
“You too?”
She looked down at the clipboard still lying on the floor.
That was my answer.
I walked back to the elevator.
I pressed the button four times.
Nobody tried to stop me.
I found him in the parking garage.
Level four.
His silver Honda was parked by the stairwell.
Right where he’d parked it every morning.
I know that now.
He was sitting behind the wheel with the engine off.
Marcus was gone.
I opened the passenger door and got in.
I set the lunch bag on the dashboard between us.
