Sixteen weeks.
He had not been on the thirty-first floor for sixteen weeks.
He stood in the lobby on a Monday morning and looked at the elevator and understood, in a way that was different from the understanding he'd had in the weeks before the birth, that going back was a different kind of going back than he had anticipated.
Not worse. Just different.
He had left as one version of himself.
He was returning as another.
The badge still worked.
That was something.
The elevator opened on thirty-one.
The floor assembled around him in the familiar sequence.
Same desks. Same light. Same two-inch gap of light from the office at the end of the corridor.
Different quality of attention when he stepped off.
Not the recalibration of the statement. Not the careful professional courtesy of people managing around something significant.
Something warmer.
Eli Park looked up from three rows back and nodded once.
The way you nodded at someone you were glad to see.
Seren nodded back.
