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“You need a milk problem.” He presses the cup to Alexei’s mouth.

I tense. Misha has gone a little far this time. Alexei sits with the problem without correcting it.

I look down at the schedule again. The truth between us has begun pressing against every ordinary thing, from strawberries to security cards. He knows something. I feel it whenever his eyes rest on Misha, then return to me without asking the question again.

After breakfast, Sergei arrives with Mikhail and his nanny, Anna, along with enough toy vehicles to block a customs route. Oksana follows them into the playroom, where the new biometric panel flashes green beneath my thumb. Lidiya waits beside the kitchenette with a tray of snacks.

Misha runs in first but stops when everyone follows him.

“Too many,” he says, backing into my legs.

Anna crouches near him without reaching for him. “Mikhail brought a cement mixer and two flatbed trucks carrying cars. Look, he also brought an animal truck.”

Mikhail lifts it above his head. “It carries a zebra, a lion, and a bear.”

“Go play, Misha,” Oksana says.

Sergei smiles from beside the bookcase, but Misha looks from him to Oksana, Lidiya, Anna, and the guard standing beyond the door.

“I don’t like it.”

My irritation rises. “He isn’t used to having this many people watch him. Give him some space.”

Sergei steps into the corridor, and Anna joins him. Lidiya leads Oksana toward the kitchenette to discuss snacks, and the guard moves farther from the doorway. Misha relaxes when only Mikhail and I remain.

The relief lasts four minutes.

Misha drives the yellow racer through Mikhail’s block garage, knocks down one wall, and shouts, “Emergency.”

Mikhail grabs the dump truck. “You broke my station.”

“It was sick.”

“Buildings don’t get sick.”

“Doctor Shark says yes.”

They argue until Misha puts the yellow car inside the toy medical kit and orders everyone to stop talking during surgery. Mikhail refuses, so Misha covers his mouth with a washcloth.

I remove it.

“He was loud,” Misha explains.

“You can’t gag your patients.”

“He isn’t patient. He’s Mikhail.”

Suddenly, I miss the rush of a trauma theater, with monitors beeping, the breathing bag rising and falling, and my fingers checking the patient’s pulse. Nurses call out numbers, suction clears the blood, and surgeons trade quick orders across the table. Then the image disappears when Misha cups my face in his hands and says, “Mama, smile.”

Before lunch, Misha climbs onto the low bench and presses the alarm button beside the glass passage because it is red and “red means race.” Two guards arrive from opposite ends of the corridor, Abramov calls the playroom, and Alexei appears from his office with one hand beneath his jacket. Mikhail scratches his head and points to Misha.

Misha points proudly at the blinking panel. “I made everyone come.”

I close my eyes.

Alexei lowers himself onto the bench beside him. “That button is for danger.”

“It’s also red.”