Your Privileges End Tonight

Natalie's POV

By six-thirty, the kitchen table looked like a case file.

I laid out all six treatment folders in a row, oldest to newest. Each one had a clinic sticker on the spine. *Cycle 1. Cycle 2.* All the way to *Cycle 6*, the one whose final page I'd never been able to read twice.

At the end of the row, I set the new protocol for cycle seven. Fresh paper. Clean dates. A stimulation calendar with tiny boxes for every injection. Dr. Ortega had recommended one last retrieval before we tried transferring the two embryos still in storage.

Next to it sat the weekly pill organizer, seven plastic compartments with the days of the week stamped on the lids. I'd filled it last night after he hung up on me. My hands had needed something to do.

The front door opened at 6:52.

Alex came in with his jacket over one arm, his tie loose, and his hair still damp like he'd showered somewhere else. He dropped his keys in the bowl and walked into the kitchen without looking at the table.

When he leaned past me for a mug, I smelled it.

Not his cologne. Something sweet and floral with a powdery finish, the kind of scent that clings to a collar when someone presses her face against it.

"You're up early," he said.

"I didn't sleep."

He poured coffee. His eyes passed over my arm, over the purple bruise in the crook of my elbow from yesterday's blood draw, and kept going.

Four years ago, he would've stopped. He would've touched the edge of it with his thumb and asked if the nurse had missed the vein again.

After the second transfer failed, he'd taken a week off work. He made me breakfast every morning, terrible scrambled eggs and toast cut into triangles. He sat at this same table with my medication schedule and sorted every pill into this same organizer, reading the dates out loud like it was important. Like it mattered to him.

*Next time, I'll be there for every single appointment,* he'd told me. *Every one, Nat.*

I pushed the organizer toward him.

"You used to count every pill with me, Alex. Now you can't even remember why I need them."

He glanced down at it, then at the folders. His jaw tightened.

"I'm not doing this before I've had coffee."

"You've had coffee. You've also had a shower. Just not here."

He set the mug down hard enough that coffee sloshed over the rim and soaked into the corner of my budget sheet, the one where I'd tracked every dollar we'd saved. The ink on *Cycle 7 — Final* bled into a brown smear.

Alex didn't apologize. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded stack of papers, and slapped them on the table on top of my folders.

"Here. Read it. Once you see what she's dealing with, you'll understand."

The letterhead had the same gold logo I'd seen on Victoria's headboard. *Meridian Private Recovery.*

I unfolded it. Itemized charges ran down two full pages.

Physical therapy. Pain management. Orthopedic consultations. Those were real. Those made sense.

But they added up to maybe a third of the total.

The rest was something else entirely.

*Premium Recovery Suite — 30 nights.* Eleven thousand dollars.

*Private Concierge Nursing — overnight.* *In-Suite Chef Service.* *Spa Hydrotherapy Package.* *Linen and Amenity Upgrade.*

I looked up at him.

"Linen upgrade, Alex?"

"Don't."

"I'm not saying she doesn't need therapy. She was in an accident. Fine. Pay for therapy." I tapped the line with the suite. "But this? A chef? You didn't even call me. You took every dollar we had, and you didn't think I deserved a conversation first?"

"There wasn't time for a conversation."

"There was time to book a spa package."

He leaned both hands on the table, looming over the folders like they were in his way.

"She deserves the best care I can give her. You can wait."

I sat very still.

*You can wait.*

Four years of waiting rooms and needles and negative tests, and he'd just said it like it cost him nothing.

Before I could answer, his phone lit up on the counter. A video call. *Victoria.*

He answered it immediately, his whole face rearranging into something gentle.

"Hey. You're up early."

"I couldn't sleep without you here." Her voice came through bright and sleepy. "Is everything okay?"

He angled the phone, and I could see her now. She was sitting up in that cream-colored bed, wearing a champagne silk robe with her initials stitched on the lapel. A huge arrangement of white peonies sat on the nightstand behind her.

Her eyes slid past his shoulder and found me.

"Oh. Hi, Natalie." She bit her lip. "Alex, is she upset? Please tell me she's not upset with me."

"She's fine," he said.

"I'm not fine," I said.

Victoria's hand flew to her chest. "Wait. Is this about the money? Alex, you told me that was from your bonus." She looked straight into the camera, straight at me, with wide, wet eyes. "I had no idea it was your IVF fund. Honestly. If I'd known, I never would've let him spend a cent on me."

The timing was perfect. She'd practiced it, or she was just that good.

Alex shook his head. "Hey. Stop. You didn't do anything wrong. I don't regret a single thing, okay? Not one."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

I stood up and stepped into the frame so she had to look at me.

"Then it's easy," I said. "You didn't know. Now you do. The therapy stays. Can you ask Meridian to refund the suite and the extras? The chef, the spa, the concierge nursing. Even half of it would let me start my last cycle on Friday."

Her lower lip trembled. The red rushed into her eyes so fast it was almost impressive.

"I—I didn't think—" She pressed her fingers under her lashes. "I'm sorry, I'm just really tired, and my leg—"

Alex's thumb hit the red button.

The screen went dark mid-sentence. He turned on me.

"What the hell is wrong with you? She's a patient. She can barely walk, and you're shaking her down for a refund?"

"I asked her a question."

"You humiliated her." He shoved the phone into his pocket. "Stop making Victoria feel guilty for being someone I can actually help."

The words landed exactly where he meant them to.

Someone he could actually help. Not like me. Not like the wife whose body kept failing no matter how much money he poured into it.

I turned away before he could see my face and started gathering the folders, stacking them, squaring the edges. Anything to keep my hands busy.

Under the cycle six folder was an envelope I didn't recognize.

Plain white, clinic return address. Someone had already opened it, and the flap had been tucked back in. Typed across the front was *Embryo Consent Review*. Beneath that, a signature on the delivery slip.

*A. Carter.*

"What's this?"

Alex was across the kitchen in two steps. He pulled it out of my hand before I'd even finished the question.

"Nothing. Annual paperwork. They send it out every year."

"They've never sent it to just you."

"It's routine, Natalie."

But it wasn't. Every form that had ever touched our embryos, every storage renewal, every transfer authorization, had needed both our signatures. We used to sit in the clinic office side by side, initialing page after page. He used to joke that we'd signed more paperwork for these embryos than for our mortgage.

There were two of them left. Frozen. The last pieces of us.

"Then let me read it," I said.

He didn't answer. He walked to the hallway, opened his black leather briefcase, and slid the envelope inside. The latches snapped shut, one, then the other.

He kept his hand flat on top of it for a second longer than he needed to.

I didn't argue. I already knew what I was going to do. The clinic opened at eight tomorrow, and I'd be on the phone at 8:01.

Alex came back into the kitchen, pulled something from the bowl by the door, and set it on the table in front of me.

The key to the guest room.

"I need you to clear that room out today," he said. "Put fresh sheets on the bed. Move your sewing stuff into the garage."

I stared at the key. "Why?"

"Meridian's discharging her today. She lives alone, and she's in no shape to manage stairs."

He said it the way he'd say it to a nurse. Like an order that had already been approved.

"Victoria needs somewhere safe to recover. I told her she can stay with us."