Prolonged dial tones in the phone struck at my taut nerves. For an entire hour now, I hadn’t been able to get through to my husband to pick us up—me and our daughter—from the maternity hospital. I wouldn’t give up on calling, though.
— What do you want?— his annoyed voice finally snapped through.
— What do you mean, what?— I was stunned by such a “greeting.”
— We’re being discharged. You need to come get us with our daughter. You bought everything, like I asked?
— Listen, I was thinking…— Mikhail hesitated, and my heart sank with a foreboding of something bad.
— It’s not my thing. What kind of father am I? Especially since the girl isn’t even mine.
— Misha, are you in your right mind? Who insisted day after day that we needed a child? Who convinced me to go through IVF?
— In short, choose—either me, or her.— The next words from my husband hit like a slap.
— Write a refusal, and we’ll close the topic once and for all.
“Alright, Snezhа, calm down—just don’t cry,” I repeated to myself. “Inhale, exhale. You can’t be nervous right now. This bastard doesn’t deserve even a single tear. I’ll manage. I’m strong. I can do everything—for my daughter, for her future.”
The second novel in the series “Chronicles of Broken Hearts.”