"I went through with the induced labor. The doctors are the ones who admitted me."
Chester's whole body jerked, and he whipped his head around to look at me.
"What did you say?"
"Just like you wanted. I lost the baby."
His hand closed into a fist, and the displeasure poured off him.
"What do you mean, like I wanted? There was nothing wrong, so why would you go through with it? Why didn't you tell me? Didn't I say to wait until I was free and I'd look at the scan myself?"
I watched the anger on his face, cold, not understanding what he thought he had any right to be angry about.
"You're the one who told me to do it."
His whole body went rigid. He denied it flat out.
"When did I ever—"
Something seemed to occur to him. He pulled out his phone and scrolled back through our messages.
His face went green, then red, then drained to white.
"I was just too busy, so I had Claire look at the scan for you. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the baby. I didn't know she'd say that to you—"
Now it was my turn to freeze.
The man who usually took hours to answer me hadn't just replied in seconds yesterday.
He'd even sent me a romantic cash gift through the app.
It had been the intern the whole time.
The Chester I used to know couldn't stand anyone touching his phone.
That one time, when his parents were fighting and I was only trying to calm his mother, I asked him for his passcode so I could send her some money through the app.
He'd flown into a rage and accused me of having no sense of boundaries.
And now he'd handed his phone to an intern, let her read our baby's scan, let her decide whether our child lived or died.
He'd even given her his payment password to send me money.
And he'd trusted Claire Delgado so completely that a full day had gone by and he still hadn't bothered to check what she'd written back to me.
Or maybe he just didn't want to open the chat with me at all.
Chester zoomed in on the scan I'd sent, studied it for a moment, then rounded on me.
"I didn't have time to look at the report, so why couldn't you find someone else? These things usually aren't anything serious!"
"I'm not the only cardiac surgeon in this hospital. Are you that stupid, or did you get rid of our baby on purpose?"
"Just because I was too busy to answer you right away?"
One furious question after another, until they shook a wet, broken laugh out of me.
I really was stupid.
Stupid enough to think that hearing I'd actually lost the baby, he might say two kind words to me.
I pointed at that last message, the one that read better than wasting time, just get the surgery over with, and threw it back at him.
"You're my husband, and the head of cardiothoracic surgery. When you tell me to get the surgery, isn't that a death sentence for our child?"
"Did I not go to your department? You'd called away every surgeon to operate on Claire Delgado's mother. You're the one who told me to wait until you were done!"
Chester opened his mouth to argue back.
"I already told you, that wasn't me who replied!"
"Why couldn't you wait? Wait until I was finished? Claire's mother is a patient, waiting on surgery to save her life! What was the rush?"
But I just didn't want to wait anymore.
He was the one who'd chased me in the beginning, and yet through all of it, dating and marriage alike, it had always been me chasing after him.
Waiting for him to find a moment to answer me, waiting for him to keep me company, waiting for him to say he loved me.
The more used to waiting I got, the more I felt like I was no different from someone living completely alone.
I couldn't take it, the house that should have been full of life, the bed meant for two, always so cold.
So I begged him for a child.
At first he refused. He wanted to wait until he was thirty-five.
But by the time he turned thirty-five, I'd be a high-risk mother.
So I used a little trick and got pregnant.
When he found out, the truth was he wasn't happy about it.
But he still held me, his voice thick when he spoke.
"Claire, thank you. I'm going to be a father!"
After that he threw himself into work even harder, saying he had to earn the money for our baby's formula.
