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Apr 3

What Happens in Vegas Never Stays in Vegas

Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch x Reader

Part 1, Part 2

Summary: After a drunken Vegas wedding, Robby disappears by morning, leaving you with nothing but a ring and a mistake that was supposed to stay in Vegas. But when a pregnancy and state paperwork force you to track down the husband who vanished, Robby learns the truth and this time, walking away isn’t so easy.

WC: 12K

Tags: Drunken Vegas Wedding, Runaway Husband, Unexpected Pregnancy, Forced Reunion, Second Chance Romance, Robby Wants to Stay, Romantic Comedy vibes with some Angst, No use of Y/N

You try not to think about Michael. Which would be easier if he hadn’t left traces of himself all over your shift. Not literally. That would at least be useful.

Instead it’s little things. Annoying things. The kind that catch you when you’re already tired and make you resent your own brain for being so stubborn about keeping him.

A man leaning one forearm against the bar in the same easy way. A low laugh cutting through the music at the wrong moment. A whiskey glass turning slowly between someone’s fingers.

The stretch of counter near the far end where he stood that night, half-shadowed under the warmer light, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else until you decided to make yourself his problem.

You hate that you remember it. You hate that out of everything the alcohol should have blurred, your brain kept him sharp.

Dark hair. Tired eyes. Dry little answers like he was trying not to give you too much and doing it badly enough that you kept pushing anyway.

Worst of all, this bar makes it impossible not to remember. Because this is where it happened. Not some random city you flew home from and never had to see again. This is your job. Your actual, current, humiliatingly necessary job.

You slide a vodka soda across the counter without looking up. “You’re closed out.”

The guy on the stool blinks at you. “I didn’t ask for the tab.”

“You asked for another drink. I made an executive decision.”

That gets a laugh from the woman two seats down and an offended little smile from him, like you’ve flirted instead of done your job. You do not have the energy to correct him.

The music is too loud, the floor is sticky in that specific way it always is after midnight, and somebody near the back is yelling at a slot machine. Neon bleeds across the bottles behind you in pink and blue streaks. Somebody spilled beer near the service well five minutes ago and, naturally, did not apologize.

Normal.

Or close enough.

You work through it on autopilot. Pour. Swipe. Smile when necessary. Ignore what you can’t fix. That part, at least, you’re good at. You’ve had practice.

A few months ago, you were a nurse.

Not in the soft-focus, inspirational-poster kind of way. In the real way. Long shifts. Sore feet. Charting until your eyes blurred. Knowing how to keep your voice steady when somebody else was scared. Knowing how to move quickly without looking rushed. Knowing when to talk and when to stand there and let someone have a bad moment without making it worse.

You worked at the VA long enough to get used to the rhythm of it. The routines. The regulars. The particular kind of patience it took to do that job well. Then the money started getting weird. Then staffing got thinner. Then the place shut down and took your paycheck with it.

There were other jobs, technically. Just not close ones. Not easy ones. Not ones that made sense once gas, rent, and plain bad luck got involved.

So for now, you’re here.

Full-time behind a bar, living off tips and bad lighting, telling yourself it’s temporary in exactly the same tone people use when they already know it isn’t.

A hand taps twice on the counter. You blink and look up.

“Hey,” the customer says, grinning like he’s about to become your problem on purpose. “You with me?”

“Tragically.”

He laughs.

You don’t.

“Another bourbon.”

“You’ve had enough bourbon.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“You’ll live.”

He leans in a little. “You always this mean?”

The answer comes to you before you can stop it.

‘Only to the hot ones.’

Your whole body goes still. It hits fast, the memory so sharp it almost feels physical. You had said that to Michael.

Right here.

In this bar. In this exact kind of light. One hand braced on the counter, already smiling before he gave you a reason to, watching him lift his eyes to yours like he hadn’t expected you and wasn’t sure what to do with that yet.

That same brief pause. That same mouth trying not to smile.

God.

You hate this. You hate that he’s still in your head at all.

More than that, you hate that he’s still this clear in your head when he is presumably somewhere else entirely, living a life untouched by any of it, while you’re still stuck working in the place where you met him, trying not to think about the man who married you and vanished before morning like some kind of coward with good timing.

You turn away before the guy in front of you can say anything else.

“One bourbon,” you say flatly, reaching for the bottle. “Then water. Then I stop being nice.”

“You were being nice?”

“Don’t push it.”

By the time your shift ends, your feet hurt, your shoulders ache, and you smell like citrus, beer, and other people’s bad decisions.

The crowd has thinned enough to make the place look more tired than lively. A few tourists still hang around like the night owes them something. It doesn’t. It never does.

You head to the back office to cash out. The room is cramped, over-air-conditioned, and somehow always smells faintly like receipt paper and old limes. You count your tips twice because the number the first time pisses you off.

Not enough.

Again.

Still not enough.

You flatten the bills on the desk, stack them carefully, and do the math in your head anyway. Rent. Gas. Groceries. The minimum on the credit card you keep pretending is not becoming a problem. You lock your phone after checking your account balance for all of two seconds.

Nope.

Not tonight.

You shove the cash into your bag, grab your keys, and head home with the kind of exhaustion that feels older than the hour. Your apartment is quiet when you step inside. Too quiet, maybe.

You kick off your shoes, drop your bag on the chair by the door, and head straight for the kitchen because you’re starving in that vague, irritated way that usually means you waited too long to eat.

The leftover coffee from this morning is still sitting in the pot. You make a face before you even pour it.

Weird.

You usually would’ve microwaved it without thinking. Instead, the smell hits you wrong. Bitter in a way that turns your stomach almost immediately.

You pull back, frowning.

“Seriously?”

You dump it anyway and stand there for a second with one hand braced on the counter, waiting for the nausea to pass.

It does. Mostly.

You tell yourself it’s nothing. You’re tired. You barely ate. You worked too long. Bodies are weird. You do not let your brain go any further than that. Because any further than that leads in one direction, and you’ve spent the last few weeks doing a pretty decent job not going there.

Not to him. Not to the chapel. Not to the ring buried in the back of your dresser drawer under a tangle of receipts and old lip gloss. Not to the marriage certificate shoved into a box in your closet like paper can stop being real if you hide it well enough.

You are not thinking about any of that. You are especially not thinking about divorce.

Why would you?

It isn’t like you’re dating. It isn’t like you’re trying to get married. It isn’t like some great love of your life is waiting in the wings, desperate for your legal availability. And it’s not like divorce is some quick little errand you run between shifts. Divorce takes money, paperwork, time, and, inconveniently, a husband you can actually locate.

As far as you’re concerned, what happened with Michael was one reckless, humiliating disaster of a night that ended the second he walked out of that hotel room.

That’s it. That’s all.

You don’t wear the ring. You don’t say his name out loud. You don’t think about the fact that somewhere out there is a man who is technically your husband and apparently felt no particular urgency about that fact once the sun came up.

You’ve done a pretty solid job pretending none of it matters. Until your body starts being weird. Not in a dramatic way at first. Nothing cinematic. Nothing obvious. Just small, irritating shifts that would’ve been easy to brush off if they hadn’t kept happening.

You’re more tired than usual. Which shouldn’t mean anything. You work late. You sleep badly. You spend most of your shifts smiling through conversations that make you want to fake your own death. Being tired is not new.

But this feels different. Heavier. Like sleep isn’t actually touching it. Like no matter how long you stay in bed, you still wake up feeling like somebody switched your bones out for wet sand overnight.

You make it through the next few days on autopilot.

Work. Home. Shower. Bed.

You tell yourself the nausea is from stress. Or bad food. Or the fact that your sleep schedule is basically decorative at this point. You tell yourself your body is just being annoying because that is, historically, one of its favorite hobbies.

You do not tell yourself the truth. Mostly because you don’t want to know what the truth is yet.

By the fourth morning in a row that coffee makes your stomach roll, you’re actively offended.

You stand in your kitchen staring down at the mug like it personally betrayed you.

“Unbelievable.”

The coffee, unhelpfully, remains coffee. You try one sip anyway. Immediate regret.

You shove the mug away so fast it sloshes over the side and runs across the counter in a thin brown line. Your stomach turns hard enough that you have to grip the edge of the sink.

Nope. Absolutely not.

You breathe through it, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the wave to pass. When it does, it leaves behind that strange hollow feeling, shaky, annoyed, unsettled in a way you can’t quite talk yourself out of. You rinse the mug out harder than necessary and leave it in the sink.

Your apartment is too quiet.

That’s the worst part, maybe. The silence. The fact that there’s no one here to distract you from your own thoughts. No music. No television. No drunks asking for another round like they’ve mistaken your patience for customer service magic.

Just you.

And your own brain starting to turn toward places you do not want it turning.

You open the fridge. Close it. Open it again like there might suddenly be a different answer inside. Nothing looks good. Nothing sounds good either. You settle for crackers because they seem neutral, which feels like a deeply humiliating way to choose a meal.

You eat three standing at the counter. Then stop. Then look at the box in your hand like it’s somehow become evidence.

You do not let yourself finish that thought.

No.

Your period is late. That, unfortunately, is harder to ignore. You know it is.

You’ve known it for days now, in that vague edge-of-your-consciousness way where you keep pretending you counted wrong. Maybe you’re off by a week. Maybe stress messed with it. Maybe you’re just tired, run-down, hormonal, unlucky.

Maybe your body is being weird because life is weird and not because one stupid, reckless, champagne-soaked disaster with a dark-haired man and a legal ceremony somehow followed you home.

You lean both hands on the counter and stare at the cabinet in front of you.

“Okay,” you say quietly.

Your voice sounds strange in the empty kitchen.

“Okay.”

But you’re not okay. Because now that you’ve let the thought in even a little, it won’t leave.

Late. Tired. Nauseous.

You know enough not to play dumb. That almost makes it worse.

You used to be a nurse. You’ve had this conversation with patients before, back when your job was still your job and not the thing you missed every time rent came due. You know how bodies work. You know what early symptoms can look like. You know exactly why your chest is getting tighter the longer you stand here pretending this could still be nothing.

And you know who it would be. That’s the part that really does it. Not some abstract possibility. Not some faceless hypothetical.

Michael.

Michael with the tired eyes and the dry mouth and the hand at your waist in that chapel while the officiant tried not to look embarrassed for both of you. Michael, who kissed you like he meant it just enough to make disappearing afterward feel ruder. Michael, who left before you woke up.

You press the heel of your hand against your forehead.

“No.”

The word comes out thin.

Then stronger.

“No.”

Because that would be insane. Actually insane. A joke so specific it circles back around to cruelty.

You push off the counter and start moving just for the sake of moving. Cabinet. Sink. Living room. Back again. Your apartment is too small for pacing, but that doesn’t stop you.

You try logic first.

Stress can mess with your cycle. Bad sleep can make you sick. You’ve been eating like shit. You work in a bar. You’re around alcohol, bad food, no routine. Of course you feel off.

There are explanations. There are a million explanations. There had better be a million explanations, because the alternative is—

Your gaze catches on the hallway leading to your bedroom. The dresser. The drawer. The ring. Your whole body goes still.

It’s ridiculous how much power that stupid little thing still has. Cheap silver band. Tiny fake stone. Light enough to feel like a joke in your palm.

You haven’t worn it since the first day after you got home. Took it off, shoved it into the back of the drawer, buried it under receipts and old chapstick and things that didn’t matter, like hiding it deep enough might somehow downgrade the whole thing from legally binding to deeply embarrassing misunderstanding.

You swallow hard. Then head for the bedroom before you can talk yourself out of it.

The drawer sticks the way it always does, catching for half a second before it finally opens. You shove past the tangle of junk until your fingers find cold metal.

There it is.

You stare down at it in your palm. Still ugly. Still real. Still enough to make something in your chest tighten.

You don’t put it on.

You just stand there holding it, looking at it like maybe it’ll offer up some kind of useful answer now that you’re desperate enough to want one.

It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. It’s a ring. Not a witness.

Your thumb rubs once across the stone. A flicker of memory hits before you can stop it. Hotel light. Crooked tie. His mouth pulling at one corner while he looked at you like you were the strangest thing he’d seen all night and somehow not the worst part of it.

You close your hand around the ring so hard it presses into your palm.

“Asshole,” you mutter.

At him. At yourself. At the entire state of Nevada, honestly.

You drop the ring back into the drawer and shut it harder than necessary.

No. Not yet.

You are not spiraling over a late period and a few weird mornings. You are not.

You head for the bathroom instead, flicking on the too-bright light over the mirror. Your reflection looks tired. Pale around the mouth. Annoyed, mostly.

Which feels correct.

You lean in closer like your own face is going to explain something.

“When was your last period?”

The answer does not arrive in a helpful rush.

You try counting backward in your head. Shift schedules. Payday. That Tuesday you worked a double. The morning after the hotel. The week after. Somewhere in there, your thoughts start tangling.

That is not reassuring.

You let out one humorless laugh and brace your hands on the sink.

“Great.”

Because now you can’t even lie to yourself properly. You know enough to be scared and not enough to feel in control, which might be the most offensive combination possible. The drugstore is open twenty-four hours. That thought appears in your head fully formed and awful.

You stare at yourself for another long second.

You could wait. You could go to sleep and deal with it tomorrow. You could spend one more day pretending this isn’t happening.

But the second option presents itself, you know you won’t take it. Because waiting would be worse. Waiting would turn every hour into its own special kind of torture, and you are already dangerously close to your limit for the day.

So instead, you exhale slowly, grab your keys off the nightstand, and head back out the door before courage can become cowardice.

The drive to the drugstore is short enough to be rude. Vegas at this hour is all glare and strange quiet in between noise. Streetlights. Headlights. People still moving like the night hasn’t ended yet. It makes you feel weirdly detached from everything around you, like the city kept going without asking whether you were okay with that.

The parking lot is half full.

You sit there for a second with the engine running and both hands on the steering wheel.

This is stupid, you think.

Then, immediately after:

No, this is necessary.

Neither thought helps.

Inside, the fluorescent lights are mean. The whole place smells like floor cleaner and stale air conditioning. You head straight for the aisle without letting yourself hesitate because the idea of wandering around first, pretending you came in for toothpaste or shampoo or literally anything else, somehow feels worse.

You find the tests too quickly. Of course you do. Like the universe wants efficiency now. You stare at the shelf. One test. Two tests. Digital. Pink dye. Early response. All of it suddenly seeming way too cheerful for the situation.

You grab one. Then another. Then put the second one back because apparently you are still trying to perform sanity for no audience whatsoever.

At the register, you add a bottle of water and a sleeve of crackers you do not want, because buying only a pregnancy test feels too much like standing under a spotlight.

The cashier barely looks at you.

“Bag?”

“Yes,” you say immediately.

She bags it. You pay. The world does not end in aisle seven.

Rude, honestly.

Back in the car, the plastic bag sits in the passenger seat like a threat.

You do not start the engine. You just look at it. Then look away. Then back again. You think, wildly and with full sincerity, about throwing the whole thing in the backseat and driving anywhere else.

Instead, you drive home.

The apartment is still quiet when you walk back in. You set the bag on the bathroom counter and stare at it. Your hands have gone strangely steady.

That’s somehow the most irritating part. That your body can betray you all week and then go calm when it would actually be appropriate to fall apart.

You open the box. Read the instructions twice even though you already know how these work. Follow them exactly because at least one of you in this situation should be competent. Then you set the test on the counter. And step back. Immediately. Like distance might soften what’s coming.

You wash your hands even though they don’t need washing. Straighten the towel. Throw away the packaging. Pick it back up when it misses the trash. Check the time. Check it again.

The apartment is so quiet you can hear your own breathing. You keep your eyes on the mirror. Not the counter. Definitely not the counter. Because as long as you’re not looking, there’s still a version of the night where none of this followed you home.

As long as you’re not looking, Michael is just a bad decision with nice eyes and a worse exit strategy. As long as you’re not looking, the ring is still in the drawer, the certificate is still in the closet, and your life is still narrow enough to manage.

You curl your fingers against the edge of the sink. Then force yourself to lift your head. And turn.

Two lines. Bright. Immediate. Unmistakable.

For a second, your brain refuses to process what you’re looking at. It just stops. Like it hit something too hard and too fast and every thought in your head scattered on impact.

You stare at the test. Then closer. Then closer still, like proximity might somehow change it. Like maybe there’s some angle where two lines means not this. Some secret, magical interpretation they forgot to put on the box because apparently the universe hates you personally.

There isn’t. It just stays there.

Positive.

Your hand comes up over your mouth without you thinking about it.

“No.”

The word barely makes it out.

You grab the edge of the sink harder, eyes still fixed on the counter.

No. No, no, no.

Your heart starts pounding so hard it makes the whole room feel thinner somehow, sharper at the edges. The bathroom light is suddenly too bright. The air too still. The silence unbearable.

You stare at the test until the lines start to blur. Then you blink hard and they sharpen again.

Still there. Still real.

Your knees feel unreliable all at once. You sit down hard on the closed toilet lid because the alternative feels like hitting the floor, and for one long second all you can do is breathe through the tight, panicked pressure climbing up the center of your chest.

In. Out. Again.

It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. Because the truth is already there, sitting on the bathroom counter in cheap white plastic.

You’re pregnant.

The words land in pieces instead of all at once.

Pregnant.

You.

Pregnant.

And somehow that’s worse than if it had hit cleanly, because your brain has time to reject each part separately before it all settles in anyway.

Your stomach turns. Not nausea this time. Shock. Fear. And then, hot on the heels of both anger.

Michael.

The name doesn’t land soft this time. It hits. Hard.

Your jaw tightens immediately, something sharp and hot cutting clean through the shock.

Of course. Of course this is how this goes. He gets to disappear. You get to deal with the aftermath.

A short, bitter laugh leaves you before you can stop it.

“Unbelievable.”

Your voice sounds strange in the little bathroom. Thin at first. Then sharper. Because what, exactly, are you supposed to do with this?

He walked out. Didn’t leave a note. Didn’t leave a number. Didn’t leave anything except a legal mess and a memory you’ve been trying to bury since the second you got home.

And now—

Now this.

Your hand drops hard against the side of the toilet seat.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

It comes out louder this time, the anger finally catching up to everything else. Because he doesn’t even know. That’s the part that really does it.

Somewhere out there, he is completely unaffected. Sleeping. Working. Existing. Completely untouched by the fact that his impulsive one-night decision just detonated your life weeks later in a bathroom with bad lighting and cracked grout.

“He doesn’t even know,” you say, sharper now, like saying it out loud makes it worse. “He just walked away.”

And you—

You’re here.

Holding this. Dealing with this. Alone.

The word lands heavier than you expect.

Alone.

Something in your throat tightens, but the anger comes back faster, pushing it down before it can turn into anything softer.

“Yeah,” you mutter, staring at your reflection. “No. That tracks.”

Of course you’re the one stuck figuring it out. Of course you’re the one sitting here doing math and thinking about doctor’s appointments and money and what the hell you’re supposed to do next. Of course he gets to opt out without even knowing he opted out.

Your laugh comes again, sharper this time.

“That’s convenient.”

You push yourself back to your feet and brace both hands on the sink, leaning in toward your reflection.

“Must be fucking nice.”

There’s something steadier in you now. Not calmer. Just anchored differently.

Anger instead of panic. Blame instead of fear. It doesn’t fix anything. But it gives you something to hold onto. Because if you let yourself sit in the other feeling, the one underneath this, you’re pretty sure you won’t get back up.

Your eyes flick to the test again. You hate it on sight now. Hate the shape of it. Hate the stupid little window. Hate the certainty of it.

You snatch the box off the counter and start digging through it with jerky, irritated movements like maybe you missed some fine print. Maybe there’s a margin of error. Maybe the whole thing is cheap trash and wrong and you are having the worst possible overreaction in recorded history.

Instructions.

You read them again. Then again.

Pregnant.

You let the paper drop back onto the counter.

“Oh, that’s bullshit,” you murmur to absolutely no one.

The bathroom remains unsupportive. You stare at yourself in the mirror. You look exactly the same. That feels insulting. Same face. Same hair. Same tired eyes. Same old T-shirt hanging off one shoulder. Nothing about you looks like somebody whose entire life just shifted six inches to the left.

You laugh once under your breath.

“This is fucked.”

Not dramatic. Not loud. Just true. Because now all the things you were not thinking about have become the only things in the room. The ring in the drawer. The certificate in the closet.

Michael.

Michael, somewhere out there, blissfully unaware that the worst decision of your life apparently had follow-through.

Anger flashes again, fast and clean. Of course. Of course this is what you get. He disappears. You get nauseous. He vanishes without a note. You get a positive pregnancy test in a bathroom with bad lighting and a hand towel that still doesn’t match anything.

You brace both hands on the sink and bow your head. You don’t cry. You think maybe you should. Maybe this would feel cleaner if you cried. More normal. But all that’s there is panic and anger and a strange, frozen little center of disbelief that still hasn’t caught up.

So instead you start thinking in ugly, practical circles.

How far along? What day is it? When was your last period really? How much money do you have? Who do you call? Do you call anyone? Do you call him?

That one stops everything. Your head lifts slowly.

“No.”

Immediate. Absolute. You do not call him. You don’t even have his number. Which somehow feels both helpful and deeply offensive.

You blow out a breath and look away from yourself, away from the test, away from everything. The shower curtain has a tear near the bottom hem. There’s a water stain on the ceiling just above the vent. Ordinary apartment things. Ordinary life things.

Except nothing feels ordinary now.

You grab your phone off the counter and sit back down on the toilet lid. Search history fills the screen before you even type. Your thumb hovers.

Then:

early pregnancy symptoms

You stare at the words after you hit search like somebody else typed them. Fatigue. Nausea. Missed period. You look up from the phone and let out a thin, disbelieving laugh.

“Well, great.”

You scroll.

How many weeks pregnant am I? First prenatal visit. How soon do I need to see a doctor?

You stop there.

Because the answer to that is going to cost money. Money you don’t have. Your throat tightens. You lock the phone and set it face down on your thigh. Then stare at the floor again.

This cannot be the reason you go looking for him. That thought arrives slow and stubborn. Because that would be worse somehow. Worse than the test. Worse than the panic. Worse than all of it.

You cannot be the woman who tracks down the man she accidentally married in Vegas just to tell him she’s pregnant.

You can’t. You won’t.

The refusal settles in immediately, fierce and defensive.

No. Absolutely not.

You are not going to chase a man who left. You are not going to beg for help from someone who made disappearing look easy. You are not going to hand him this and let him decide how much it matters. If he wanted to matter, he should have stayed long enough to leave a damn phone number.

That thought burns hot enough to keep you upright.

Good.

Anger is useful. Anger is easier than fear.

You stand again, slower this time, and pick the test up between two fingers like it’s something mildly contagious.

Still positive. Still rude.

You set it back down and stare at it one last second.

Then you open the bathroom cabinet, shove it behind a bottle of aspirin and an old box of bandages, and close the door.

The result doesn’t disappear with it. Obviously. But hiding it buys you half a breath of distance, and right now that feels like the most mercy you’re getting.

You turn off the bathroom light and head into the bedroom. The apartment feels different in the dark. Smaller. Too aware.

You sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the dresser for a long time. At the drawer where the ring is. At the closet where the certificate is. At all the things you were doing such a good job not dealing with.

Then you lie down without changing clothes, one arm over your eyes, and listen to your own heartbeat for what feels like an hour.

Sleep doesn’t come. Neither does clarity. Just the same thoughts, circling.

Pregnant.

Married.

Alone.

By the time the sun starts bleeding thin and colorless around the edges of your blinds, you still haven’t decided what to do. But you know one thing with perfect, miserable certainty. You cannot unknow this now.

—

Three months is enough time for shock to lose its drama. Not its weight. Just its shape.

In the beginning, everything had felt sharp. Immediate. Like your whole life had split open in one ugly, fluorescent-lit second and left you standing there staring at the mess of it.

Three months later, it’s different. Less explosion. More grind.

The panic doesn’t hit as often now. Not because things are better. Just because your body apparently got bored waiting for you to process it and moved on without your permission.

So you do too. Or something close enough to it. You go to work. You come home. You sleep badly. You wake up tired anyway. You learn the rhythms of this the same way you learn anything else you didn’t ask for, by surviving it long enough for it to become routine.

You keep bartending because rent does not care that your life got complicated. You smile at customers. You carry trays. You ignore the smell of tequila on bad nights because sometimes it still turns your stomach if it hits too strong and too fast. You eat what you can when you can. Crackers in your bag. Granola bars. The occasional piece of toast when your body is willing to negotiate.

You get good at moving around it. At hiding. Loose shirts. Crossed arms. A strategic apron tie. The practiced expression of someone who does not want comments from strangers who think your body is community property the second it starts changing.

Because it is changing now.

Not dramatically. Not in some movie way. Just enough. Enough that you notice it getting harder to suck in your stomach without thinking. Enough that your jeans stopped being worth the argument. Enough that one night in the bar’s employee bathroom, you catch your reflection sideways and have to look away before the reality of it hits too hard.

You are pregnant.

Still.

That sounds stupid, even in your own head. Of course you are still pregnant. But some part of you keeps expecting to wake up and find out the whole thing was a clerical error by the universe. A cosmic mix-up. Somebody else’s life filed under your name by mistake.

It never is.

Every morning you wake up in this body. Every day it’s a little more real. And somehow, impossibly, Michael is still nowhere in it. You don’t say his name much, even in your head. You don’t need to.

He lives in the shape of the problem without you naming him. In the ring still buried in the drawer. In the certificate still shoved in the closet. In the ugly practical questions you keep punting down the road because each one feels like it comes with a price tag you can’t afford.

You do what you can first. You buy prenatal vitamins after standing in the pharmacy aisle long enough to feel ridiculous. You stare at the price, put them back, pick them up again, and buy the generic ones because they’re three dollars cheaper and right now that matters.

Everything matters. Gas matters. Groceries matter. Whether you can justify buying real orange juice instead of the store brand matters.

You stop looking at your bank account unless you absolutely have to, because the number there is never good news and somehow always manages to feel personal.

The bar helps, sort of.

Tips are unpredictable, which means every decent night gives you just enough relief to make the next bad one feel worse. One weekend you make enough to breathe a little. The next you’re counting singles at your kitchen counter at one in the morning, trying to decide whether paying the full electric bill this week is optimism or irresponsibility.

It turns out pregnancy is expensive even before it becomes visible. That part pisses you off more than feels reasonable. The vitamins. The tests. The quiet mental math every time you think about a doctor. Because that’s the part you can’t keep circling forever.

You know that. You know too much not to. And that’s the cruel little joke of it all. You are exactly qualified enough to scare yourself properly. You know what early care matters for. You know the timelines. You know that “I’ll deal with it later” is a stupid plan dressed up as denial.

Which is why you finally make yourself try. Not because you feel ready. Not because you have suddenly become brave. Because avoidance, unfortunately, does not count as prenatal care.

So three months later, you’re sitting in a plastic chair that sticks slightly to the backs of your thighs, staring at a laminated sign about eligibility requirements like it might suddenly rewrite itself into something more helpful.

It doesn’t. Nothing here does.

The waiting room smells stuffy. There’s a TV mounted in the corner playing something muted with subtitles no one is actually reading. A toddler is crying somewhere behind you. Someone coughs. Papers shuffle.

Normal. Government-office normal. You hate it immediately.

Your name gets called before you can talk yourself out of being here. You stand, smooth your hands over your shirt without thinking about it, and follow the woman down a short hallway into a small office that somehow feels even more airless than the waiting room.

“Go ahead and have a seat,” she says, already pulling up your file on her computer.

You sit. Perch, really. Like you’re ready to leave at any second.

“I’m just going to go over a few things with you,” she continues, polite but efficient. “Then we’ll see what you qualify for, okay?”

“Okay.”

Your voice sounds normal. You’re almost annoyed by it.

She starts with the easy stuff.

Name.

Address.

Employment.

You answer those without thinking. You’ve had practice. You’ve been surviving on autopilot for three months now. You can recite your own situation like it belongs to someone else.

“Full-time bartender,” she repeats, typing. “And no current insurance?”

“Right.”

“Okay.”

More typing.

“Are you currently pregnant?”

Your fingers curl slightly against your knee.

“Yes.”

She nods like that’s just another box to check. Because to her, it is.

“Alright. And approximately how far along are you?”

“About twelve weeks.”

You say it clean. Like it doesn’t mean anything.

She clicks something, then scrolls.

“Okay. And your household size would be…?”

“One.”

Your answer comes too fast.

She pauses. Looks up.

“Just you?”

“Yes.”

Another pause. This one is longer.

“And the baby, once born, would count toward household size, but for now we also need to account for the other parent if applicable.”

Your stomach drops. You keep your face neutral.

“There isn’t—” you start, already trying to step around it. “It’s just me.”

She gives you a small, practiced smile.

“I understand. I just need to ask, are you currently married?”

There it is. You feel it hit before you answer. That same tight, trapped feeling from the kitchen. From the test. From seeing the word sitting there like a dare.

You hesitate. Just for a second. But she notices. They always notice.

“Yes,” you say finally.

The word tastes awful.

Her fingers move again across the keyboard.

“Okay. And is your spouse currently living with you?”

“No.”

“Are you separated?”

“…Yes.”

That one comes out slower. Less certain.

She nods, still calm, still professional.

“Alright. I’m going to need some information about him as well.”

Of course you are.

Your jaw tightens.

“I don’t have that.”

She glances up again, this time with a little more focus.

“You don’t have any of his information?”

“I have his name.”

It sounds worse out loud. More ridiculous. More real.

She tilts her head slightly, not unkind, just assessing.

“Okay. We’ll start with that. What’s his full name?”

You swallow once.

“Michael Robinavitch.”

She types it in.

“Do you know where he’s employed?”

“No.”

“Approximate income?”

“No.”

“Last known address?”

“No.”

Each answer lands flatter than the last. The room feels smaller with every one.

She pauses typing. Looks at you again.

“Okay,” she says carefully. “In order to determine eligibility, we do need to consider spousal income unless you’re legally separated or in the process of divorce.”

There it is. The part you were hoping to avoid.

Your fingers press harder into your knee.

“I’m not—” you start, then stop. “We’re not… together.”

“I understand,” she says gently. “But legally, you’re still married. So unless there’s documentation of separation or divorce proceedings, we have to include him in your case.”

A laugh slips out before you can stop it. Short. Sharp.

“Include him?” you repeat.

Like he’s a person you can just reach out and grab. Like he didn’t disappear. Like he exists anywhere in your life outside of paperwork and a memory you didn’t ask to keep.

Her expression softens slightly, but she doesn’t back off.

“If you’re unable to provide that information, it may delay or affect your eligibility. Another option would be to begin the process of legal separation or divorce. Once that’s documented, we can reassess based on your individual income.”

There it is. Clean. Simple. Unavoidable.

Your chest tightens. Because suddenly this isn’t theoretical anymore. This isn’t something you can keep shoving into drawers and closets and the back of your head.

This is real. This is paperwork. This is access to care. This is your life narrowing down into one very specific, very inconvenient truth. You are still married. And it matters now.

Your gaze drops to her desk. To your file. To your name sitting there next to his. Tethered. Whether you like it or not.

“Okay,” you say, quieter now.

But steadier.

“What do I need to do?”

You don’t remember standing up.

One second you’re sitting there staring at your file on her desk like maybe if you look hard enough it’ll rearrange itself into a life you actually recognize, and the next you’re on your feet with your bag over your shoulder and a polite, numb little smile stretched across your face like you borrowed it from somebody more functional.

The woman says something about documentation. About bringing in what you can. About calling if you have questions.

You nod like any of it is reaching you. It isn’t.

The hallway feels too bright on the way back out. Too narrow. Too hot.

The waiting room is still full of the same terrible little sounds it was making before, the television no one is watching, the crying toddler, papers shuffling, somebody coughing like they’ve committed to making it everyone else’s problem.

And all of it feels wrong somehow. Off. Like the room kept going while something in your life quietly shifted underneath it.

You push through the front doors and the air outside hits you hard and dry. It should feel better. It doesn’t. It just feels different.

You keep walking anyway. Past the bench by the entrance. Past the sad little patch of landscaping with the dying shrub somebody probably planted with good intentions and no budget. All the way to your car.

You unlock it on the second try because your fingers are shaking just enough to piss you off, then slide into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

Silence. Not real silence. Parking-lot silence. Distant traffic. An engine starting two rows over. Someone’s bass too loud through rolled-up windows. But compared to inside, it feels empty enough to break in.

You drop your bag into the passenger seat and just sit there. Hands still on the wheel. Eyes straight ahead. Breathing like you ran here.

You are still married.

The thought lands different now. Cleaner. Meaner. Not a stupid secret tucked into a drawer. Not a funny story gone bad. Not something you can ignore because you’re not dating and you’re not trying to remarry and it doesn’t matter in any practical, adult way.

It matters. It matters when somebody behind a desk looks you in the eye and asks for your husband’s income. It matters when your access to care gets tied to a man you cannot locate. It matters when your own life gets reduced to required fields you can’t fill in because the person attached to them walked out before sunrise and apparently took the rest of himself with him.

A laugh slips out. Short. Sharp. Ugly.

“Unbelievable.”

You say it to the windshield. To the steering wheel. To the whole idiotic situation.

Because of course. Of course it comes down to paperwork. Of course the thing that finally makes this real isn’t the chapel or the ring or even the test. It’s a woman in a county office saying, gently and professionally, that your husband counts.

Your husband.

The phrase makes something hot twist under your ribs.

You let your head fall back against the seat.

“Husband,” you mutter, staring at the roof of the car. “That’s insane.”

But it is. It’s insane and humiliating and apparently legally relevant, which feels like a personal attack.

You close your eyes. The office comes back in ugly little flashes.

I’m going to need some information about him as well.

We have to include him in your case.

Unless you’re legally separated or in the process of divorce.

That last one digs in the deepest.

Divorce.

The word lands heavier now than it ever has before, because until this moment it was theoretical.

A someday problem.

A thing normal people handled when they had time, money, clarity, and maybe a marriage that lasted longer than a hotel minibar tab.

Now it isn’t theoretical. Now it’s a gate. A locked one. And Michael is standing on the other side of it without even knowing it exists.

Your eyes open again. Anger comes back fast.

Good.

Anger is better than embarrassment. Anger is better than the other thing threatening underneath it, the panic, the helplessness, the horrible little pulse of, “What am I supposed to do now?”

Because what are you supposed to do?

Call him?

You bark out another laugh.

No.

Can’t call a man whose number you do not have. Can’t ask questions you have no way of asking. Can’t file paperwork with a ghost.

That thought hardens something in you.

You sit up straighter.

Look out through the windshield at the rows of parked cars shimmering faintly in the heat.

A legal husband who might as well be a rumor.

Great. Fantastic. That’s sustainable.

Your fingers tighten around the steering wheel.

“He really just left,” you say out loud.

Hearing it makes it worse. Not because you didn’t already know it. Because now it sounds exactly as pathetic and infuriating as it is.

He really just left. Left you in a hotel room. Left you with a certificate. Left you with his name and nothing else.

And now somehow you are the one stuck doing all the humiliating parts, sitting in a benefits office, admitting out loud that you don’t know where your own husband works, what he makes, where he lives, how to reach him.

Your face burns just thinking about it. You grip the wheel harder.

“No,” you mutter.

Not no to the facts.

No to this.

To sitting here and letting him stay abstract. To pretending it’ll somehow fix itself if you keep ignoring it.

Because it won’t. It’s already not.

Your gaze drops to your bag. To the folder sticking half out of it with the paperwork they handed back to you.

The neat stack of forms.

The calm little checklist of things you need.

Proof.

Documentation.

Information.

As if any of that is just lying around waiting for you to get organized.

You stare at it for a long second. Then look away. Then back again.

And there it is.

Not clarity, exactly. Nothing that generous. Just a hard, bitter sort of inevitability.

You have to find him. Not because you want him. Not because you’re suddenly interested in reopening the worst night of your life and examining it from all angles like maybe there was secret meaning hiding in the minibar peanuts and chapel lighting. Not because you need emotional closure.

God, no.

You need paperwork. You need this fixed. You need him to stop being a legal problem and start being a person with an address, a job, and a signature.

That’s it. That’s all.

The lie settles fast and easy because it’s practical, and practical feels safer than honest. You don’t need anything from Michael except cooperation.

Maybe a completed form. Maybe divorce papers. Maybe the decency he didn’t bother showing you the first time.

You swallow hard and reach for your bag. Your hands are steady now. That almost annoys you more than the shaking did. You pull the folder out. Flip through the pages without really reading them. Your own name. Blank spaces. Notes in the margin. A list of documents they’ll need.

Then, underneath that, your eyes snag on the line you already know is there.

Spouse information.

Your jaw tightens.

“Yeah,” you mutter. “I got it.”

The paper, unsurprisingly, offers no apology.

You shove the forms back into the folder and toss it onto the passenger seat.

Then you start the car. Not because you know exactly what comes next. You don’t. Not fully. But because sitting in this parking lot isn’t going to turn him into a divorced man with a forwarding address. And because for the first time since that hotel room, pretending it doesn’t matter has stopped working.

By the time you pull out of the lot, one thing has settled into place with ugly, perfect certainty:

You are going to find Michael Robinavitch.

And when you do, he is going to fix this.

—

You go home. Not because you have a plan. Because anger gives you momentum, and you know better than to waste it.

The second you stop moving, this might turn back into humiliation. Into panic. Into that trapped, sick feeling from the office when a stranger looked you in the eye and calmly explained that your husband still counted.

So you keep moving. Through traffic. Through red lights that feel longer than they should. Through the same city that looked exactly the same this morning and somehow doesn’t now. By the time you get back to your apartment, your jaw aches from how hard you’ve been clenching it.

You let yourself in, kick the door shut behind you, and head straight for the closet. No pause. No hesitation.

You yank the box down from the shelf hard enough that one of your old heels topples sideways and hits the floor. You leave it there. The marriage certificate is still folded inside. Still real. Still official. Still just as stupid as it was the first time you read it. You carry it to the kitchen table and flatten it out with both hands. The paper crackles under your palms.

Your name. His name. A government seal. Signatures. Proof that one reckless night apparently had stronger follow-through than most actual relationships.

You stare at his name.

Michael Robinavitch.

Your jaw tightens.

“Unbelievable.”

Then you reach for your laptop. The search bar blinks at you. For one second, you just sit there, fingers hovering over the keys, hit by the very irritating reality that this is what your life has come to. Googling your husband.

A man you barely know. A man who walked out before morning. A man you now apparently need in order to get basic medical care.

Humiliating.

You type anyway.

Michael Robinavitch Pittsburgh

Search.

The page loads.

And there—

You go still.

A hospital result.

You click it.

The page opens clean and clinical, all neutral colors and polished formatting, like the kind of place that has its life together in a way yours currently does not.

And then you see it. A photo. Him. No question. No hesitation. It’s him. Same face. Same eyes. Just sharper somehow. Pulled together. Professional. Contained.

Michael Robinavitch, MD

Emergency Medicine — Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center

You stare at the screen.

A doctor.

The word doesn’t settle right.

Not because it doesn’t make sense. You remember the way he talked, the way he carried himself. But because of the timing of it. Because while you’ve spent the last three months stretching tips and cutting corners and pretending everything is fine—

He’s this. A doctor. At a trauma center. With a hospital profile and a professional headshot and what looks like a life that did not pause for even one second after that night.

Your mouth tightens.

“Wow.”

It comes out flat. Sharp.

Because of course. Of course the man who disappeared on you has a stable, high-paying, respectable career while you’re standing in your kitchen doing mental math over groceries and gas. Of course he does.

Your eyes flick back to his title.

Emergency Medicine.

You let out a short, humorless breath.

“Yeah. That fucking tracks.”

Because something about that makes it worse.

He shows up for strangers. He builds a career on responsibility. He gets to be the kind of man people trust in an emergency and he could not even stay long enough to say goodbye.

Your hand presses flat against the table. Hard.

“He’s a fucking doctor,” you mutter, disbelief twisting into something hotter. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Because that changes things. Not emotionally. Practically. Because if he’s a doctor, then he has income. Insurance. Stability. Everything the woman in that office just made painfully clear you do not have access to without him.

Your jaw sets.

So no. He does not get to disappear. Not anymore. Not when his name is the reason you got stalled trying to get care. Not when his life is stable enough to be listed neatly on a hospital website while yours is barely holding together with tips and denial.

Your gaze drops back to the screen.

To him.

Michael Robinavitch, MD.

Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

You say it under your breath once, committing it.

Then lean back slowly in your chair.

Pittsburgh.

The distance hits you a second later. Not close. Not convenient. Not something you fix on your lunch break.

Your eyes flick to the hospital number on the page. You stare at it. For one second. Two.

Then shake your head.

“No.”

You are not calling. You are not giving him the chance to ignore you from a safe distance. Not giving him a voicemail he can put off. Not giving him a receptionist to hide behind. Not giving him the option to decide when or whether to deal with you.

He already disappeared once. You are not handing him the chance to do it again.

If this is happening—

When this happens—

It happens in person.

That decision settles into you fast. Heavy. Certain.

Not because it’s easy. Because it’s the only version that doesn’t make you feel completely powerless.

You close the laptop halfway.

Then open it again.

New search.

Vegas to Pittsburgh drive time.

The map loads. Long. Inconvenient. Completely unreasonable. Doable.

You stare at it.

Then let out one short, disbelieving laugh. Because of course. Of course this is what it’s come to. A road trip across state lines to track down your legal husband because the government needs his information and he couldn’t even be bothered to exist in your life long enough to give it to you.

Your fingers tap once against the table. Decision already forming.

Because what’s the alternative?

Wait?

Keep struggling?

Keep getting blocked because of a man who walked out of your life like it meant nothing?

No.

Your jaw tightens again. You look back at the route. Then at his name still open in the other tab.

Michael Robinavitch.

You nod once. Sharp. Resolved.

“Yeah,” you mutter. “No. We’re not doing this long distance.”

You close the laptop. Push back from the table.

And just like that—

Your life changes direction.

—

By the time the Vegas skyline disappears in your rearview mirror, you’ve already had three separate chances to turn around.

You don’t take any of them.

The first is when you stop for gas just outside the city and stand there at the pump with the nozzle in your hand, staring at the numbers climbing higher than you want them to.

The second is twenty minutes later when your phone reroutes around traffic and the blue line on the map suddenly looks even longer, stretching east in a way that feels almost mocking.

The third is quieter.

Meaner.

It happens somewhere out on the highway when the city finally drops away behind you and there’s nothing left but open road, the low hum of your tires, and the deeply irritating reality that you are actually doing this.

Actually driving to Pittsburgh. Actually crossing state lines to track down the man you accidentally married in Vegas because the government needs his information and apparently your life now runs on administrative humiliation.

You tighten your grip on the steering wheel.

“Nope,” you mutter to the windshield. “Still stupid.”

The windshield offers no argument.

Outside, the desert stretches wide and flat and sun-bleached in every direction, all washed-out beige and heat shimmer. The road unfurls ahead in one long ribbon, endless and indifferent. You keep your eyes on it.

There is no romance in this. No impulsive-freedom montage. No cinematic sense of reinvention. You are not a woman boldly reclaiming her life on the open road. You are tired, pregnant, underfunded, and angry enough to weaponize a Honda Civic.

That’s it.

That’s the vibe.

Your overnight bag is in the backseat next to a grocery bag full of snacks, bottled water, prenatal vitamins, and the folder with all the paperwork that started this in the first place. The marriage certificate is tucked inside, because of course it is. Because apparently you are now the kind of person who travels with legal proof of catastrophic decision-making.

The thought almost makes you laugh. Almost.

You flick on the turn signal, pass a semi, and settle back into the right lane. The road noise fills up the car. It leaves too much room to think anyway.

That’s the problem with driving. There is nothing to do but move and think and move and think, and your brain has never been a particularly cooperative travel companion.

So naturally, it starts in on him.

Michael.

His face in that hospital headshot. Too calm. Too polished. Too professional.

Michael Robinavitch, MD.

Emergency Medicine.

Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

The title still makes your jaw tighten every time it drifts through your head. A doctor. A whole emergency medicine doctor.

You blow out a breath through your nose, somewhere between a laugh and a curse.

Because of course he is. Of course the man who vanished before sunrise has a respectable career, a hospital profile, and probably health insurance good enough that he has never once had to sit in a county office being told his spouse counts.

Meanwhile you are out here rationing gas station snacks and trying not to think too hard about your checking account.

That part burns all over again. Not because you want his money. You don’t. You want him to stop being a problem. You want him to fill out whatever needs filling out, sign whatever needs signing, and stop existing as this infuriating little legal knot in the middle of your life.

That’s all. That’s what you keep telling yourself, anyway.

You shift in your seat and adjust the air vent, angling it away from your face. The last thing you need is to feel car-sick on top of everything else. The morning nausea has mostly backed off these days, but it still likes to ambush you when you get too warm, too hungry, or too cocky.

You reach blindly into the passenger seat for the water bottle you left there and take a sip.

Warm already.

Gross.

You drink it anyway.

A green highway sign flashes by overhead. You don’t read it fast enough to keep it.

Good.

You don’t need landmarks yet. You need distance. Hours. Progress. Something you can measure without getting emotional about it.

You glance at the clock on the dash. Still early enough that the day feels enormous. Still early enough that Pittsburgh doesn’t feel real.

Right now it’s just a destination on your phone and a tightening in your chest every time you remember why you’re headed there.

You wonder, not for the first time, what exactly you’re going to say when you see him. The thought arrives uninvited and immediately starts making trouble.

Do you walk in calm? Do you throw the paperwork at him? Do you start with the marriage certificate? Do you start with the fact that you needed him and he was nowhere? Do you say “Hi, remember me?” Do you say “Congratulations on the medical degree and the abandonment issues?”

You snort once despite yourself.

It’s not funny. It’s just that at some point the sheer absurdity of your life becomes impossible not to acknowledge.

You’re road-tripping to Pennsylvania to confront your husband.

Your husband.

That word still sounds fake in your own head.

It sounded fake in Vegas too, honestly, but Vegas had the decency to make everything sound fake. Neon does that. Champagne does that. Chapel music and a clearance bridal veil definitely do that.

The problem is that none of it stayed fake. The ring in your bag isn’t fake. The certificate isn’t fake. The test definitely wasn’t fake. And the baby shifting the shape of your life mile by mile is about as real as anything has ever been.

Your hand moves to your stomach before you think about it. A quick, unconscious press through the fabric of your shirt. You catch yourself and pull it back to the wheel almost immediately.

It’s still strange, that instinct. Still a little startling. Still something you don’t know what to do with.

You keep driving.

The radio stays low, more background than actual listening. Every so often a song comes on that annoys you for reasons you can’t articulate and you switch stations. Then switch back. Then finally turn it down until all you can really hear is tires on asphalt and the occasional rattle from something in the backseat every time you hit a rough patch of road.

A few hours in, you stop at a gas station somewhere ugly and forgettable. The kind of place that looks tired even in daylight. You park near the side, sit for a second, then gather your phone and wallet and step out into air that feels different than Vegas but not better. Just less familiar.

Inside, the fluorescent lights buzz softly overhead. The coffee smells burnt. The roller grill is an active threat. You head straight for the bathroom. When you catch your reflection over the sink, it throws you a little.

Not because anything dramatic has changed since this morning. Because you look exactly like someone driving across the country fueled almost entirely by spite. Hair pulled back badly. Tired eyes. Mouth set hard.

You wash your hands longer than necessary and stare at yourself in the mirror.

“This is insane,” you tell your reflection.

Your reflection, annoyingly, does not disagree.

Back in the store, you buy crackers, a bottle of juice, and one of those little peanut butter snack packs you know you’re going to resent later but buy anyway because the alternative is nausea and self-pity.

At the register, the cashier barely glances at you.

“Long drive?”

You freeze for half a beat.

Then force your face neutral. “Yeah.”

He nods like that explains everything.

You want to ask him if it explains “tracking down my estranged Vegas husband because state assistance says he counts,” but you suspect that might slow the line down.

So you take your bag and leave.

Back in the car, you eat three crackers before you even start the engine again. Then four more. Then sit there chewing and staring out through the windshield while a pickup truck pulls in crooked two spaces over.

This is really happening. You are really doing this. There is no plan beyond get there. No real script beyond anger and paperwork and the certainty that whatever happens next, Michael Robinavitch is going to have to look at you and deal with the fact that he does not get to be theoretical anymore.

That thought steadies you better than anything else has.

You start the car. Pull back onto the highway. Keep going.

By the time afternoon starts fading toward evening, the road has changed shape a dozen times. Flat to hilly. Open to crowded. Long stretches of nothing broken up by exits with chain restaurants and gas stations and the same three hotel brands pretending to be different in increasingly depressing color palettes.

You pass trucks, towns, weathered billboards, churches, overpasses, construction zones, and enough license plates from enough states to remind you that the whole country is apparently in motion except the one man who should have been easy to find.

You keep thinking about the first thing you’ll see when you get there. Not Pittsburgh. Him.

Will he look the same in person as he did in that headshot? More tired? More real? Will he recognize you right away? Will his face change? Will he look guilty? Will he look confused? Will he have the nerve to look inconvenienced?

That last thought spikes so hard it makes your pulse kick.

“Oh, don’t even,” you mutter.

You can already feel the fury that would bring.

If he looks at you like you are the disruption here, like you are the one who showed up dragging trouble behind you instead of the woman he married and abandoned with a legal mess and a baby on the way, you may actually lose your mind in a hospital hallway.

Good to know in advance, at least.

You drive until the light starts going gold and thin around the edges. Until your shoulders ache. Until your lower back starts complaining. Until the blue line on the map gets shorter in ways that still don’t feel fast enough.

You’ll need a motel soon. Maybe food. Definitely a real bathroom that doesn’t smell like industrial cleaner and despair. But for now you keep going. Hands steady on the wheel. Eyes on the road. Anger packed neatly under your ribs like fuel. Because turning back is not an option anymore.

And somewhere ahead of you, in Pittsburgh, Michael Robinavitch is still living like none of this has reached him.

Not for much longer.

—

By the time Pittsburgh finally rises up around you, your whole body feels wrung out.

Not just tired.

Used up.

The kind of exhaustion that settles into your shoulders and behind your eyes and makes every red light feel personal.

The city comes at you in pieces first, bridges, overpasses, concrete, flashes of skyline caught between buildings, then all at once, dense and gray and real in a way Vegas never is. Vegas performs. Pittsburgh doesn’t seem interested in that. It just exists. Heavy. Working. Unapologetic.

Your GPS keeps talking in that calm, neutral voice that makes you want to throw your phone out the window.

In half a mile, keep left.

At the light, turn right.

Like this is normal. Like people do this every day. Like it’s ordinary to drive across the country to confront the man who married you in Vegas and then disappeared before morning.

Your fingers tighten on the wheel.

“Great,” you mutter. “Fantastic.”

You haven’t slept enough. You haven’t eaten enough. Your back aches, your hips ache, and your patience burned off somewhere around Ohio. What’s left is adrenaline, stubbornness, and a thin, mean edge of anger that has kept you moving this whole time.

Because if you stop being angry, this becomes terrifying.

And you do not have the energy to be terrified yet.

Traffic thickens as you get closer. Cars hemming you in. Brake lights flashing ahead of you. The city narrowing around you with every turn your GPS makes. A bridge. A tunnel. Another light. Another turn.

Then—

Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

The sign appears so suddenly it almost doesn’t register.

Until it does.

And then your stomach drops. Not because you didn’t know where you were going. Because now it’s here.

Real.

A building.

A place.

His place.

You pull into the hospital drive more slowly than you mean to, eyes tracking over the entrance, the ambulance bay, the people moving in and out under fluorescent light and late-afternoon gray. Families gathered in little tense knots. Staff in scrubs walking fast enough to say they’re busy without having to tell anyone.

A real hospital.

His hospital.

Of course.

Of course while you’ve been stretching tips, dodging bills, and getting lectured by caseworkers about your husband’s income, he’s been here.

Being a doctor.

Saving people.

Having a normal, respectable life with a hospital badge and a salary that probably covers more in a month than you’ve seen in a long time.

Your jaw tightens hard enough to hurt.

Of course he has.

You park in visitor parking and kill the engine. Silence drops around you. Not real silence. Never real silence. There’s traffic somewhere, a car door slamming, the cooling tick of your engine, somebody laughing too loudly two rows over.

But inside the car, it feels close enough.

You don’t move right away. Your hands stay on the wheel. Your eyes stay on the hospital.

Because getting here was one thing. Walking in is another. Seeing him is another. Because in another minute, maybe less, this stops being paperwork and turns back into a person. And if that person has the nerve to look at you like you’re the complication here, you’re going to say something neither of you can take back.

That thought cuts clean through the nerves. You can work with that.

You reach for your bag, then the folder. The paperwork is inside. The marriage certificate is inside. The whole reason you’re here is inside.

Your hand brushes your shirt on the way back and catches on the ring.

You look down.

Cheap silver band. Tiny stone. Still tacky. Still real.

Good.

Let it be seen. Let him see it. Let anybody in that ER with functioning eyesight see exactly what this is before he gets the chance to act confused.

You shove your door open, get out, and slam it harder than necessary.

The air is cooler than Vegas. Damp in a way that sits differently on your skin. The hospital looms ahead of you all glass and concrete and motion, and for one ugly second you feel very small in front of it.

Then the anger comes back as you start walking. Fast enough to keep from thinking.

The emergency department is chaos the second you step into it. Not dramatic chaos. Not television chaos. Just real ER chaos. Too many people, too much noise, too much waiting and movement happening in the same space.

Every chair in the waiting area looks occupied. A little kid is crying somewhere off to your left. Somebody’s coughing. Somebody else is arguing with a clerk at the far end. Phones are ringing behind the desk. A television bolted to the wall is on, but nobody is really watching it. The lights overhead are fluorescent and unforgiving, flattening everything into the same tired shade of too much.

The air smells like disinfectant and stress.

It hits you hard.

Not because you’ve never been in an ER before. Because you have. Because your body knows this place even when your brain doesn’t.

Not this hospital.

But enough.

Enough that you clock the pressure points without meaning to. Who’s been waiting too long. Who’s about to snap. Who behind the desk is handling too many things at once. Where not to stand if you don’t want to be in someone’s way.

For one disorienting second, it knocks against something in you that still remembers working at the VA. The pace. The pressure. The constant low-grade triage of everybody’s needs, including your own.

Then that’s gone too.

Replaced by the sharp, ugly reminder that you are not here to work.

You are here because of him.

You head for the desk.

The woman behind it looks up right away. Middle-aged. Hispanic. The kind of face that has seen a hundred versions of panic, anger, grief, and entitlement in one shift and knows how to meet all of them with the same steady eyes.

She looks directly at you.

Not rude. Not warm either. Just attentive.

“Can I help you?”

You open your mouth.

Nothing comes out.

For half a second, you just stand there, exhausted and furious and suddenly aware of how insane this probably sounds.

You didn’t drive across the country to choke now.

You swallow once.

“I need to see Dr. Michael Robinavitch.”

Her eyes stay on yours.

“Do you have an appointment?”

A short, disbelieving breath leaves you.

“Not exactly.”

“Is this about a patient?”

“No.”

Too fast. Too sharp.

You see her take that in without reacting to it. She glances down briefly, then back up.

“Dr. Robinavitch is busy right now,” she says. “If this isn’t urgent, I can take a message.”

There it is.

That calm, professional distance. That easy little wall hospitals are good at putting up. The kind that might have worked on anyone else.

Not today.

Your fingers tighten around the folder so hard the edges bite into your palm. You can feel the ring on your other hand like a pulse.

“No.”

The word comes out flat.

Then steadier:

“Then let him know his wife is here.”

That gets her.

Not dramatically. She doesn’t gape. She doesn’t recoil. But her eyes flick down for the first time, straight to your hand resting on the counter.

To the ring.

Then back up to your face.

Good.

Let her see it.

You wore it for a reason. Not because it belongs there. Because today it’s proof.

For one beat, she says nothing.

The sounds around you keep going, but they feel farther away now. Or maybe your pulse is just louder.

“I’m sorry?” she says carefully.

“You heard me.”

Your voice is colder now. Cleaner. Less shaky than you feel.

“Tell Dr. Robinavitch his wife is here.”

That changes the air.

Not silence.

But a shift.

A couple people in the waiting room glance over. Somebody behind the desk pauses. Another staff member looks up and then very deliberately looks back down.

The woman studies you for one more second.

Then nods once.

“Alright.”

She stands.

“I’m Lupe.”

“I’m not leaving until I see him.”

“I figured,” she says.

Still calm. Still making eye contact. Still not rude. Just certain.

“Come with me.”

For half a second, you almost refuse on instinct. Not because you don’t want to go. Because you don’t want to be moved. Handled. Managed.

But there’s something in the way Lupe says it that makes it clear she’s not brushing you off.

She’s taking you to him.

So you nod once.

Lupe leads you straight back.

No elevator. No clean separation between waiting room and whatever this is. Just through the open churn of the ER and deeper into it, like stepping across an invisible line.

The noise changes as you go.

Gets closer. Sharper.

Phones. Voices. Monitors. The clipped pace of people who are working too fast to afford mistakes.

Your body starts adjusting automatically. Small things. Staying to the side. Not blocking a path. Reading who’s moving where without really trying.

You hate how natural it feels.

Lupe glances back once like she notices.

Then she slows. Not enough to make it obvious. Just enough.

“Right there,” she says quietly.

You follow her gaze.

And there—

There he is.

Turned halfway away from you, talking to someone with a chart in his hand. Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Familiar in a way that lands before your brain can catch up.

Everything in you goes still.

Lupe lifts her voice just enough.

“Dr. Robby.”

He turns.

And there he is.

Not a photo.

Not a memory.

Him.

More tired than the headshot.

More real.

And for one long, awful second, the whole room narrows down to his face as recognition hits.

You see it happen.

The pause.

The stillness.

The way something drops out from under his expression before he can cover it.

Good.

Let him feel it.

His eyes go to your face.

Then your hand.

The ring.

That lands too.

He says your name like it slips out before he can stop it.

Barely above a breath.

And that—

That lights the match.

Because he remembers.

Of course he does.

You step forward.

Then again.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

Low. Controlled. Stunned in that careful way people get when they are trying very hard not to let a room see them unravel.

For a second, you almost laugh.

“What am I doing here?”

Then you step closer.

“You have got some nerve.”

Around you, the ER keeps moving.

But not like before.

Close enough now to feel people listening.

His jaw tightens.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

That almost makes you smile.

Not because it’s funny.

Because it’s unbelievable.

“Oh, I shouldn’t be here?”

He glances around once, quick, taking in exactly how many people are absolutely not paying attention.

And that’s when you do it.

You lift your hand.

The one with the ring.

High enough for him to see it clearly.

High enough for anyone else nearby to clock it if they want.

Then you flip him off with your ring finger.

Sharp.

Deliberate.

Mean enough to feel good.

His face changes.

There it is.

That hit.

That recognition he cannot talk his way around.

You don’t lower your hand right away. You let him look at it. At the ring. At the finger. At the reality of what he left behind.

Then you meet his eyes.

And say, low and cutting—

“You have the fucking audacity,” you say, looking him dead in the eye, “to leave your wife in Vegas without even saying goodbye.”

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