Page 24 of Cruel Submission

The doors open onto a different world. Softer lighting. Pastel walls. The antiseptic smell is weaker here, replaced by something sweeter. Baby powder, maybe. Or hope.

I step out and immediately spot Dr. Cullen coming down the hallway. He’s younger than I expected—mid-forties with graying temples and the kind of steady demeanor that probably keeps panicked fathers from losing their minds in delivery rooms.

“Mr. Laurov.” He extends his hand, and I shake it, noting the firm grip. “Thank you for coming.”

“Where is he?”

No pleasantries. No small talk. Just the question that’s been eating me alive since the phone rang.

Dr. Cullen’s expression softens with something that might be sympathy. “Follow me.”

We walk side by side down a corridor lined with windows looking into various hospital rooms. I catch glimpses of new mothers holding bundles, visitors cooing over tiny wrapped forms, nurses checking monitors with gentle competence.

Normal births. Normal families. Normal lives where babies come from love instead of wreckage.

“The mother,” Dr. Cullen says carefully, “left explicit instructions that you be contacted. She wanted you to know about the child.”

Instructions. The word sits wrong in my mouth. Rosanna planned this. Wrote it down before she got into that car. Made sure I’d be dragged into this mess even if she couldn’t face it herself.

I don’t say any of that. Just nod.

“Here we are.”

We stop at a door marked NICU—Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Through the window, I can see rows of clear plastic bassinets, each one containing something impossibly small. Nurses move between them like guardians, checking tubes and monitors and making notes on clipboards.

Dr. Cullen swipes his ID card, and the lock clicks open. “He’s in the back row. Third from the left.”

I step inside, and the temperature drops. They keep it cool in here—better for the fragile systems of babies born too early or too sick.

My feet move without conscious thought, carrying me past the first row, then the second. And then I see him.

Third bassinet. Third from the left.

Aleksander Tulikov. The name card says it right there in neat handwriting. Not Laurov. Tulikov. Rosanna’s name, not mine. Because legally, officially, I’m nothing to this child.

But Christ, when I look at him—

He’s so fucking small. Smaller than I imagined. Smaller than should be possible for something human. His face is wrinkled and red, eyes squeezed shut in sleep. One tiny hand rests near his cheek, fingers curled into a loose fist. A blue knit cap covers his head, making him look even more fragile than he already is.

My ribs feel too tight, like someone’s wrapped chains around them and pulled. The air won’t come right.

I don’t move closer. Can’t. If I touch that glass, if I acknowledge this is real, then I’ll have to deal with what comes next. The questions. The responsibility. The fact that I might be looking at my son.

Or I might be looking at a stranger’s child whose mother I failed so catastrophically that she chose death over facing me.

“Would you like to hold him?”

I turn to find Dr. Cullen standing beside me, watching my face with that same careful sympathy.

“What?”

“Hold him,” he repeats. “Skin-to-skin contact is beneficial, even at this stage. And you’re family, regardless of the paperwork.”

Family.

The word is a knife.

“No.” I shake my head abruptly. “Not yet.”