My phone slipped from my fingers, clattering onto the sterile linoleum floor of the delivery room. The nurse gave me a sharp, questioning look, but I couldn’t move. My entire body felt hollowed out, as if the air had been violently sucked from my lungs hb.
I looked down at the infant in my arms. He was beautiful, innocent, and entirely a stranger. The brown birthmark beneath his left eye seemed to burn through me, a brand of my own spectacular stupidity. Beside me on the bed, Valerie turned her face toward the wall, pulling the hospital blanket up to her chin. The silence between us wasn’t just deafening; it was an admission of guilt.
“Mr. Mendez?” the nurse repeated, holding out the birth certificate paperwork, her pen hovering. “We need the legal father’s signature for the registry.”
“I… I can’t,” I choked out.
With trembling hands, I gently placed the baby back into the plastic bassinet. He let out a soft, whimpering cry, a sound that should have torn my heart in two but instead felt like an echo from a life that didn’t belong to me. I scooped my phone off the floor, ignored the nurse’s calls, and bolted out of the maternity ward.
