Signing Away the Doctor's Wife

Harvey James was the youngest attending physician in the OB-GYN department.

In three years of marriage, he had saved a great many people's children.

Only my child never got to wait for him.

That night, in the small hours, I started bleeding with abdominal pain, and a neighbor rushed me to the hospital. A nurse stood over me with the consent form and asked where my family was.

I called Harvey James seventeen times.

On the eighteenth, he finally picked up, his voice low. : 「Joyce just finished her follow-up. She's not stable right now and I can't get away. Let the nurse handle it for now.」

I said, : 「Harvey, I'm in the ER.」

He went quiet for two seconds, and his tone cooled. : 「Don't try to scare me with something like that. Early pregnancy is unstable to begin with. You trained as a nurse, didn't you? Just cooperate with the doctors.」

After the call ended, the way the nurse looked at me had changed.

The light in the operating room was very white.

The signature line stayed empty.

And the baby was gone.

The next morning, lying in my ward, I saw him pass down the hallway with his arm around Joyce Fox.

Joyce held her test results in one hand and said, all coaxing, : 「Harvey, you stayed with me all night last night. Your wife won't be upset, will she?」

Harvey James tugged her coat snug around her. : 「She's sensible. She won't make a thing of it.」

Through the half-open door, I watched the moonlight settle at the foot of the bed.

It was cold.

When he pushed the door open and came in, his first words weren't to ask whether I was in pain.

Instead he frowned and said, : 「Why did you get admitted to my department? Joyce will read too much into it if she sees you.」

I looked at the chart on my bedside table, already stamped.

And suddenly I wanted to laugh.

So it turned out that in his hospital, even losing a child, I had to do it out of other people's sight.

……

When Harvey James shut the ward door, half the light bleeding through the gap was cut off.

He stood beside the bed, his white coat clean without a single crease, the words ATTENDING PHYSICIAN bright on his badge.

「When did you get pregnant?」

I looked up at him.

He didn't ask it like a husband. He asked it like he was reviewing a case file that had gone wrong.

I kept my hand under the blanket, my fingertips finding the rough hem of the hospital gown.

「Seven weeks.」

Harvey's brow tightened.

「Why didn't you tell me?」

I looked at him, and suddenly I remembered three nights ago, when I had stood at the study door with the pregnancy test in my hand.

He'd been on the phone with Joyce Fox.

He'd said, : 「Joyce, don't be afraid. I'll go with you to your follow-up myself tomorrow.」

I stood there a long time.

In the end I tucked the test into the very bottom drawer of the nightstand.

「You were busy.」

He was silent for a few seconds, his voice dropping.

「Lena Swanson, don't use that kind of line to needle me. You trained as a nurse. Early-pregnancy bleeding has plenty of causes. It wasn't necessarily because I didn't come.」

「I didn't say it was because of you.」

My voice was very soft.

It only made him more irritated.

「Then who is this act for? Joyce is in the hospital today too. She already has an anxiety disorder, and with you staying here, she'll think she's the one who hurt you.」

I slowly turned my head toward the window.

The morning moon hadn't fully faded, still hanging in a gray-white sky.

That moonlight last night had fallen at the foot of the bed just as coldly.

I said, : 「Then what do you want me to do?」

Harvey James looked at me.

「Transfer to the neighboring branch to recover. I've already had someone arrange a ward. It's quieter there, and it'll spare the two of you any awkwardness.」

I let out a small laugh.

「I just came out of surgery, and you want me to change hospitals now?」

「Not change hospitals. Change branches.」 he corrected. 「An ambulance will take you over.」

I stared at the fountain pen in his breast pocket, the one I'd given him for his birthday last year. Later I saw Joyce Fox at the nurses' station signing with it. She said Harvey wouldn't mind.