For a moment I thought I saw something move behind his eyes, some flicker of the man I had thought I married, some hesitation.

And then he broke my gaze, and he took his coat from his mother’s hands, and he turned, and he followed her toward the sliding glass doors.

The doors slid open with a soft mechanical hum.

The cold night air came in for a moment around them, and then they stepped through it, and the doors slid closed behind them with the same soft hum, and that was that.

My husband walked out of the emergency room and left me alone with our sick baby, at two in the morning, to wait for a doctor by myself.