said, “Since this morning.”
Nathan spoke over her.
“Babies get fevers.”
“How high?”
Maya looked toward the nightstand.
A digital thermometer rested beside a bottle of infant medicine.
“It was 103.8 when I checked last.”
Ethan felt his pulse thudding in his neck.
“Did you call the pediatrician?”
“I tried.
The nurse said I needed to bring her in immediately.”
Maya’s voice shook.
“Your father took my keys.
Nathan took my phone.”
Gerald entered the room behind them.
“Because she was panicking,” he said.
“You know how irrational people become after having babies.”
Ethan turned.
“Why would you take her phone?”
“She was calling everyone, creating drama.
I was trying to calm the situation down.”
Maya’s eyes flashed.
“I called one nurse.”
Gerald ignored her.
“Then she wanted to dose the baby with medicine without giving the fever time to resolve naturally.”
Ethan looked at the bottle.
“Did Ava get the dose the nurse recommended?”
Maya shook her head.
“He poured it into the sink.”
Gerald’s expression stayed perfectly composed.
“I’m not apologizing for preventing a hysterical mother from doing something reckless.”
For years, Ethan had mistaken that composure for strength.
As a child, Gerald had rarely shouted.
He did not need to.
He could make disappointment sound like a courtroom verdict.
He could turn disagreement into disloyalty and boundaries into insults.
Ethan had spent most of his life trying not to provoke him.
That instinct was still somewhere inside him.
But it had to compete now with the sight of his wife’s bruised face and the heat coming from his daughter’s tiny body.
There was no competition.
Ethan lifted Ava carefully.
She released a weak whimper against his chest.
“I’m taking her to the hospital.”
Nathan stepped across the doorway.
“Why don’t you calm down first?”
“Move.”
Nathan gave a short laugh.
“Nine months on a ship and you come home thinking you’re some kind of commander.”
“Move away from the door.”
Ethan did not raise his voice.
Something in his face made Nathan’s smile disappear.
He stepped aside.
Gerald remained where he was.
“You should hear what has been happening before you decide who’s at fault.”
“I already know enough to get my daughter medical care.”
“You know nothing,” Gerald snapped.
“You left.
I stayed.
I helped your wife while you were gone.
I paid for groceries.
I fixed things around this apartment.
Nathan rearranged his entire schedule.
And this is how you come home? Treating us like criminals?”
Ethan looked at him.
“You were asked to leave.”
For the first time, Gerald’s confidence flickered.
Only for a second.
“Maya gets emotional.”
“You were asked to leave,” Ethan repeated.
Maya looked between them.
Gerald’s face tightened.
Then headlights swept across the bedroom wall.
A vehicle stopped outside the building.
Another followed.
Then a third.
Nathan turned toward the window.
“Who is that?”
Ethan adjusted Ava against his shoulder.
“People I called before I got here.”
Gerald stared at him.
“What have you done?”
The answer had begun seven weeks earlier.
At first Ethan had blamed exhaustion for Maya’s strange messages.
Ava had been born after a difficult delivery.
Maya was sleeping in short stretches.
Ethan was twelve time zones away, often calling from noisy ports or cramped crew quarters.
Their conversations had never been perfect.
But they had
