Chapter 3
573words
The sting on my cheek was nothing compared to the inferno raging in my chest.
One thought consumed me: get home, grab my things, and escape this suffocating city—leave behind the stranger wearing my husband's face.
I wandered along the street in a fog when headlights suddenly blazed toward me.
Tires screamed. Metal crunched. Glass exploded around me.
The world went black.
I'd walked straight into a pile-up, my body broken in the wreckage.
Sirens wailed. Paramedics loaded me into an ambulance bound for my own hospital—the bitter irony not lost even through my pain.
The ER erupted into frantic activity when they recognized me. Someone grabbed my file, calling my emergency contact—Ethan.
First call—no answer. Second call—rejected mid-ring. Third call—straight to voicemail.
They tried finding other contacts, but I had no one else in this city. I'd built my life around him.
The golden hour for trauma care ticked away, each minute decreasing my chances.
Meanwhile, Ethan sat at Vivian's bedside, holding her hand.
Grief-stricken over her lost baby, Vivian oscillated between sobs and hollow silence, her fingers digging into Ethan's palm like he was her only anchor.
Ethan's chest ached with grief for their unborn child and guilt toward Vivian. He couldn't bear to leave her.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Hospital number. He glanced at it and dismissed the call—he'd already taken emergency leave, and Vivian needed him.
Eventually, he silenced his phone and tossed it aside. His only priority was comforting the woman who'd suffered such loss carrying his child.
"Ethan," Vivian looked up, her face tear-streaked, her voice fragile but laced with venom.
"Your wife... did she do it on purpose?"
Ethan's brow furrowed. "Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm not!" Vivian's voice rose sharply.
"She's your wife! Why would she want to save me or your baby? She was in that OR forever—who knows what she really did? Embolisms are dangerous, sure, but she's supposed to be the best. She hated me. Hated our baby. She let our child die, Ethan! She murdered our baby!"
"Vivian." His voice was quiet but sharp. Yet in his mind, he saw Sophia's cold eyes after he'd slapped her, heard her silence in the face of his rage.
A poisonous thought took root. Could Sophia have actually... out of jealousy...
He remembered Sophia's icy determination when she'd said they were done. If not guilt, if not hatred, what else could explain her behavior?
Vivian watched his face, noting his lack of denial. She pressed harder, her sobs more theatrical: "Ethan, our baby never even got to take a breath... because of her... God, I hate her!"
His phone screen illuminated on the sofa—an emergency alert from the hospital—but silenced, it went unnoticed.
Vivian's sharp eyes caught the preview: "multi-vehicle accident... Dr. Sophia Spencer... severely injured..."
Her heart stuttered, then flooded with vicious satisfaction. Finally, karma's catching up with you, Dr. Spencer.
She immediately slumped against him, her grip tightening on his arm. "Ethan, everything's spinning... my chest hurts... please don't leave me..."
Ethan gazed at her pale face, thinking of their lost child and Sophia's possible betrayal. Any lingering guilt about slapping his wife vanished, replaced by cold disgust.
He stroked her back gently. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay right here with you."
He ignored the outside world completely—the missed calls, the urgent texts, the wife bleeding out on an operating table floors below.
