Chapter 9: The Hospital Corridor
The polished linoleum was a black river under Alexandra’s feet. Her scrubs were wet against her skin, the damp from Mark’s hair like a cold brand on her shoulder that was already starting to fade. She was moving, one foot in front of the other, the sound lost in the hum of the hospital night. A janitor pushed a buffing machine in a distant hall, the smell of lemon wax cutting through the antiseptic. A nurse’s laughter from a station around the corner felt like a foreign language.Ten feet. Maybe fifteen.
She focused on the exit sign glowing at the far end of the corridor, a green promise of outside, of air, of escape. She could taste the moment from five minutes ago—his fingers in hers, his shaky whisper in the dark car—like something bright and precious she’d already swallowed, a poison she knew would kill her later.
“Alex.”
The sound was a sandpaper drag against the quiet. Low.Gutted.
Her name.
She stopped, but didn’t turn. It wasn't a hallucination. It was his voice, worn down to a splinter. Mark’s voice. Yet it couldn't be him. He was in the bed. With Sabrina.With the future.
A metallic clatter. A series of wheezed curses—first Mark’s, then Ben’s more panicked one.
She turned.
He was standing in the corridor, silhouetted against the harsh light spilling from the ruined bay. He was a chaos of wires and vulnerability. The IV pole was tangled with him, the clear line snaking from the back of his hand. His other hand clutched the front of his blue cotton hospital gown, holding it closed. It gaped open at his chest anyway, revealing a stark line of collarbone and muscle, a flash of a tattoo she remembered under different light. His hair was a mess of damp curls plastered to his forehead. His legs were bare beneath the gown, bare feet planted wide for balance on the cold floor. He was trembling with the effort of standing.
Ben hovered behind him, hands held out like he was trying to steady a spooked horse. “Bro, you can’t—”
“Stop.” Mark’s voice cracked but the command in it was absolute. He didn't take his eyes off Alexandra. His gaze pinned her to the spot, ten feet away, an uncrossable gulf of fluorescent-lit tile between them.
Ben froze, his face a portrait of distress. Behind him, at the curtain, Sabrina stood. She hadn't moved from the threshold. Her arms were crossed, her expression a careful study in concern hardening into disapproval. She said nothing, just watched.
Mark swayed. His knuckles went white around the pole. He sucked in a breath that sounded painful. “It isn't mine.”
The words weren't loud. They were a bullet in the silence.
Alexandra shook her head, a tiny, desperate motion. “Mark, you need to go back to bed.”
“Listen to me,” he rasped, taking a half-step, the pole’s wheels squeaking in protest. His strength was failing. The button on the blood pressure cuff on his arm was flashing. “The baby.It can't be mine. It’s impossible.”
Sabrina stepped forward, her voice cool and cutting. “Mark, you’re delirious. You have no idea what you’re saying. This is the medication. Let’s get you back—”
“I got a vasectomy.” He blurted it, his voice gaining a scrap of its old force, directed squarely at Alexandra. “Two years ago, after St.Louis. That fan incident got way too real. I wasn't careful, she… it was a whole thing. No one knows.Ben.Des. I never told anyone.”
The air in the corridor changed. The hum seemed to intensify. Ben’s mouth dropped open. Sabrina’s facade of concern slipped, revealing something cold and sharp beneath.
Mark’s chest was heaving now, each breath a visible struggle. “It’s an outpatient thing, I was down for a week, we had to delay a shoot… I told everyone I had food poisoning. There’s paperwork. A urologist in Dallas.I can show you the damn reciept and the sterile sample test. I’m shooting blanks, Alex. It’s medically impossible.”
He was trying to give her evidence, facts.A paper trail. In the middle of a hospital corridor, in a gown.
Alexandra stared at him. She was a nurse. Her brain processed the medical claim first: a vasectomy two years ago rendered pregnancy extremely unlikely without surgical reversal. A confirmed sterile sample was definitive. But her heart was a swelling bruise in her chest, pulsing with the shockwave.
“She came to L.A. a month ago,” he pressed, his voice desperate, clinging to logic. “She came to my apartment to ‘talk about the brand’ after everything blew up. I was fucking wrecked over Leeland, over you…
“She came to my apartment to ‘talk about the brand’ after everything blew up. I was fucking wrecked over Leeland, over you… and I told