Marco
Hospitals have a very specific kind of silence — it isn’t the absence of sound, but rather the suspension of ordinary life, as if everything inside exists in a fragile pause between one diagnosis and the next. I had never noticed that so clearly until that night. Sitting in the rigid chair of the obstetric wing’s reception area, elbows resting on my knees and hands clasped in front of my mouth, I tried to ignore the antiseptic smell that seemed to seep straight into my thoughts. The clock on the wall moved far too slowly, each second scraping against my nerves, while a muted television played images no one was truly watching. People passed by, nurses came and went with brisk, efficient steps, yet for me the world had narrowed to a single door — the one through which Alice had disapp
