"Dr. Harding, what do I do? That family from the other day, the ones making all that noise about their mother dying, they put it online. That I gave her the wrong medication and killed her."
"Everyone online is trying to dox me now, and the family said they're bringing reporters to drag my name through the mud. What if I can never work as a doctor again?"
"Don't panic. You've got me. I won't let anything happen to you."
Sidney comforted Cecily, and when his gaze shifted to me, something in it hardened, like he'd made up his mind.
"Sheila, when the reporters get here, you tell them the medication error was yours. That none of it had anything to do with Cecily."
"You're her supervising physician, after all. This is on you either way for not doing your job and reviewing her work. You should be the one answering for it."
I stared at him, unable to believe it. "Sidney, have you lost your mind?"
"You know that the second I own this, my whole career is finished!"
He clicked his tongue, impatient.
"So you'd rather ruin a young girl's entire life out of your own selfishness?"
"Cecily isn't like you. She's still so young. Her career in medicine hasn't even started."
"Even if you lose this job, worst case you've still got me to provide for you. What more could you possibly want?"
I stepped back without thinking, and the man in front of me slowly blurred into the eighteen-year-old face I used to know.
The day we filed our college applications, Sidney and I both hit confirm on the same major. Medicine.
His eyes were so bright back then. He held me tight and said that for the rest of his life he'd climb to the top of medicine hand in hand with me, that we'd become the couple everyone in the field envied.
In school I wasn't as smart or as gifted as he was, and I fell behind on the dense, difficult material more than once.
He spent every hour outside class organizing my notes and tutoring me, night after night.
Countless top hospitals came after him, and his one condition was always that they had to take me too.
The man who'd once been so certain he'd never leave me behind. How had he turned into someone I couldn't recognize anymore?
My eyes focused back on the Sidney standing here now, and I shook my head.
"No. I won't agree to it."
Sidney, I'm begging you. Don't turn what's left of our happy memories into hatred.
But he was out of patience for persuasion.
A wave of noise came closer. The family had arrived, with a TV crew.
"You quack, give me back my mother's life!"
Before I could react, Sidney had already reached out and pushed me forward.
"Everyone, this accident was indeed my wife Sheila Simmons's momentary carelessness. She wrote the wrong prescription for the intern. As her husband, let me apologize to you all on her behalf first."
I denied it at once. "That's not true. I'm not the one who got the medication wrong!"
The family was frantic, several of them crowding in around me, refusing to hear a word of my defense.
"So it was you, you quack, who really killed my mother!"
"Your own husband came out and named you. Who else could it be?"
"You nearly had us blaming the wrong person. Today you're paying for my mother's life!"
Fists came down on me, hard, and I was beaten to the floor, curled in on myself.
In the middle of the despair I struggled to reach out. "Sidney... help... help me..."
But through the legs of the people hemming me in, all I could do was watch Sidney gather Cecily against him and stride away.
He never once looked back.
When I opened my eyes again, it was the familiar hospital ceiling.
Sidney sat at the edge of my bed, and when he saw me wake, he let out a breath.
"How are you feeling? I didn't think they'd get so worked up and start hitting you."
