Not once in ten days.
Working as a senior healthcare quality auditor had taught me one rule: verify the facts before reacting.
I logged into the hospital’s administrative portal and reviewed the transplant project’s official protocols.
Within minutes, I found Section 4, Paragraph B:
Personnel in isolation may request a temporary dispensation of up to two hours for immediate family medical emergencies, life-threatening illnesses, or surgical procedures, subject to standard re-sanitizations.
Then I searched the system for dispensation requests submitted by Dr. Marcus Hayes.
Zero.
Not one.
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?”
“I need you to draft divorce papers,” I said evenly.
Sarah initially assumed illness and anger were driving me.
