The lights were blinding.
I’d forgotten how bright stage lights could be.
Or maybe I’d just never noticed before.
Because I’d never been this close to the front row at the National Innovation Awards.
My husband, Derek, was on stage, accepting the Medical Technology Pioneer Award.
The trophy gleamed in his hands as he smiled at the camera.
That practiced smile I’d watched him perfect in our bathroom mirror for the past three weeks.
“I want to thank my incredible team at Metatech Solutions,”
he said, his voice carrying across the ballroom.
“To my brilliant VP of sales, Sophia Reeves, who believed in this vision from day one.”
I watched Sophia stand from her seat three tables away.
Her dark hair cascading over her burgundy dress as she placed a hand over her heart, mouthing thank you with tears in her eyes.
My own table was in the back.
Table 47.
I checked my place card twice when I arrived.
Derek continued.
“To my investors, my board members, my mentors.”
He paused, scanning the crowd.
His eyes passed over me without stopping.
“And to everyone who said a portable dialysis device was impossible, thank you for the motivation.”
The applause was thunderous.
I clapped too.
Automatically.
Even as something cold settled in my chest.
Seventeen years.
I’d spent seventeen years as a patent attorney.
And twelve of those years, I’d worked exclusively on Derek’s patents.
I’d filed the provisional application for the portable dialysis pump from our kitchen table while pregnant with Emma.
I’d argued the continuation case while recovering from a C-section, laptop balanced on my hospital bed.
I’d secured the international patents that made this company worth $340 million.
My name was on every single patent.
Elena Torres.
Patent attorney of record.
But tonight, I was just the woman at table 47.
“Elena, you okay, honey?”
I turned to find Patricia Morrison, a colleague from my old firm, looking at me with concern.
We’d been seated together.
Along with some junior associates from the medical law division.
“I’m fine,”
I said.
Though I wasn’t sure I was.
“That was a beautiful speech,”
Patricia said carefully.
She’d always been perceptive.
“Though I noticed, he forgot to thank his wife.”
A voice cut in from behind me.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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