The transition from "student" to "mother" was not a metamorphosis of the soul; for Elena, it was a change in logistics.
She sat at the small, salvaged wooden desk in the corner of her recovery room, the early morning light of Chelsea filtering through a heavy privacy screen. The clinic was quiet, a high-priced sanctuary of beige walls and silent nurses. To her left was a stack of finalized Economics journals, their digital submission windows glowing green on her laptop screen. To her right, in a transparent bassinet that looked more like a piece of laboratory equipment than a cradle, was the variable.
Matteo.
He was six pounds, four ounces of silence. He didn't cry; he observed, his eyes—a dark, startling slate—tracking the movement of the light. Elena looked at him and didn't see a mir
