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“It’s more clinical.”

“It sounds like a bridge collapsed.”

“In a sense.”

He turns slowly toward me. “I’m going to regret asking, but what exactly are we discussing?”

I lean back against my desk. “Hypothetical.”

“Of course.”

“A patient undergoes ovulation induction and timed intrauterine insemination. Around the same window, there is intercourse with barrier failure. Pregnancy is confirmed. The question is whether the second event remains biologically plausible as the source.”

Marcus watches me for a second. Then he sets his coffee down. “You just said hypothetical in the voice people use when they have already made it personal.”

“It is not personal.”

“That was also the voice.”

“Marcus.”

“Fine.” He faces the board again, now interested despite himself. “How close to ovulation?”

“Close enough.”

“That is a useless answer.”

“It’s the answer available.”

“Then yes, it remains plausible. Depends on timing, sperm viability, whether ovulation occurred exactly when expected, the insemination sample, the interval between events, all of that.” He points at the trigger window. “If this is accurate, then you can’t rule out either source without testing.”

“I know.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You came in uninvited.”

“True, but now I’m consulting.”

I pick up the marker again, though I don’t write anything. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t weighing one event too heavily.”

Marcus looks at me.

That’s the problem with old friends. They hear the thing under the thing.

“One event meaning the unplanned one,” he says.

“Yes.”

“The unplanned one involving sex.”

I say nothing.

“You can say sex, Dalton. You’re a doctor, not a nineteenth-century furniture salesman,” he says.

“I’m aware.”

He looks back at the board. “Medically, you know the answer. If both events are close enough to the fertile window, either is possible. Emotionally, I have no idea what you’re actually asking me, because you’re pretending this is about gametes.”