My husband’s childhood friend, Nancy Price, got distracted on her phone during her nurse shift and gave me the wrong IV.
I was two months pregnant by then and I lost my baby.
My husband Edwin Andrews, who was also my attending doctor, covered for her. “The miscarriage was due to the patient hiding her allergy history. It had nothing to do with the nurse’s procedure,” he falsely testified.
Nancy faced no consequences. Instead, the hospital accused me of stirring problems and made me pay for the entire medical review instead.
Edwin told me, “We can always try for another child, but if Nancy gets a black mark on her record, her whole career will be ruined.”
I remained silent at his response, no shed of tears, no screaming. Then, I calmly asked for a divorce.
At that, Edwin thought I was just being dramatic. “You love me too much to actually leave. Stop acting out. In the end, you’ll only embarrass yourself.”
What he didn’t know was that tucked between the diagnostic report and the discharge summary he’d just signed… was the divorce agreement I had prepared long ago.
——
Edwin rubbed his temples, looking impatient. “Stop making a scene at the hospital! I’ll take you home.”
He stood, shrugging off his white coat.
I ignored him and turned toward the door. The moment I pulled it open, I ran straight into someone standing outside.
It was Nancy.
She was holding a steaming bowl of soup and smiling sweetly. “Ms. Robertson, I made this for you.”
I glanced at it—shrimp and crab floated in the broth. My admission papers clearly stated I was allergic to seafood.
Losing my baby apparently hadn’t been enough—she seemed so eager on killing me.
I said nothing to that and walk past her. All of the sudden, Nancy stumbled sideways and spilled the scalding soup all over me.
She let out a sharp “Oh no!” and looked as though she might cry.
Before I could react, Edwin—still half out of his coat—rushed to her side. He took her hands in his.
“How could you be so careless?” he asked.
Sniffling, Nancy murmured, “I just thought Ms. Robertson needed something nourishing after the miscarriage, but she seemed not liking it and—”
Her gaze flicked toward the steaming mess on the floor and she stopped mid-sentence.
Edwin’s glared at me and clenched his jaw. “Sammy! You’re unbelievable.”
As I watched him hurry Nancy off toward the medical room, my chest felt cold and hollow.
When I had been bleeding out from the miscarriage, he hadn’t looked half as worried. Now, all he saw were Nancy’s reddened fingers—never the blistered skin on my arm, already breaking out in a rash from the seafood.
I took a taxi to another hospital’s emergency department.
The doctor frowned at the bruised, vein-marked mess of my arms, unable to find a spot for an IV. In the end, he gave me only two tubes of ointment to apply externally.
Just weeks earlier, when I’d been too sick from morning sickness to keep food down, I’d gone to Edwin’s hospital for a nutrient drip.
Nancy as the intern nurse, had used me as practice, jabbing both arms more than thirty times without finding a vein.
When I’d asked for a more experienced nurse, Edwin had scolded me. “If you can’t handle a little pain, how will you ever give birth?”
By the time I got home that night, it was nearly eleven.
There was a message from Edwin on my phone.
[Working late tonight. Not coming home.]
I opened my social feed on a whim.
Sure enough—half an hour earlier, Nancy had posted a photo with a caption: [Hope I’ll always be the one my big brother cherishes most!]
In the picture, Edwin was carefully tending to her hand.
Below, he’d commented: [If I don’t cherish you, who else would I do?]
When they were much younger, Nancy had been Edwin’s neighbor back in his hometown, the daughter of a family friend.
Three months ago, Nancy moved to West Lake to be near him.
He’d placed her in his own department for her internship—and even gave her the single dormitory room assigned to him by the hospital.
