My husband was a doctor at the very hospital where I spent an entire month fighting for my life—and during all that time, he never visited me.

He had permission to see me.

He had the opportunity.

He simply never asked.

And once quarantine ended completely, he had another ten days to take an elevator five floors up and walk into my room.

He chose not to.

I saved the protocol, his shift records, and public event registries as PDFs in cloud storage.

Then I ordered an Uber.

Instead of returning to our Lincoln Park brownstone, I went directly to the office of Sarah, my university friend and a family law attorney.

She took one look at my thin, exhausted face and shot out of her chair.

“Clara! My God, what happened to you?”