I gave him the clinical facts, flat and cold, stripped of the warmth forty years had earned him.

I watched his eyes, and once — just once, for a fraction of a second — they flicked toward the ICU doors behind me, checking, calculating, and then returned to their performance of grief.

He asked to see her.

I told him she was in a medically induced coma, that the ICU was locked down to essential personnel until we identified the allergen, that it was protocol.

His composure cracked, just slightly — “You’ve known us forty years, Ivan, don’t talk to me about protocol, that’s my wife in there” — and I said the truest thing I said to him that whole day: “Which is why I’m keeping her alive.” He lingered three long seconds, his jaw twitching.