Chapter 11 - Papers He Signed
The waiting room smelled like coffee that had been sitting too long. I counted the tiles on the floor because I didn't want to look at him. Daniel sat two chairs down from me, elbows on his knees, his suit jacket folded over his lap. He still had his cuffs undone from where the nurse had taken his blood pressure at the desk.
Emily's mom sat across from us with her purse clutched tight against her stomach. She hadn't taken her coat off. Every time the double doors buzzed, she looked up.
A nurse came out with a clipboard and called, "Family for Emily Carter?"
We both stood. That was the first stupid part. I stood because I'd followed him here, because I didn't know where else to go on my wedding night, and she stood because she was her mother.
The nurse glanced between us. "I need the consent confirmation for the second unit of blood and the updated contact sheet. Are you Daniel?"
"Yes," he said.
"Can you confirm you signed as her emergency contact? We have a D. Reyes as fiance on the form from March. I need initials here that you're still the consenting party present."
My breath caught in a way I tried to hide. March. I did the math without meaning to. March was five months before he'd put the deposit down on our venue.
The nurse turned the clipboard toward him. I saw it before he took the pen. The top sheet was pink. Emergency Contact / Medical Proxy. In his handwriting, the block letters he used on checks. Daniel Reyes. Relationship: fiance. Phone number I knew by heart.
I didn't say anything. My veil was gone — I'd left it folded on the front seat of the cab — but I was still in the lace gown under my coat, and the nurse looked at me and then looked away fast, like she didn't want to make it worse.
Daniel initialed. His hand didn't shake. "That's still me," he said quietly.
Emily's mom exhaled. "Thank God you came. I told them you'd come."
Daniel glanced at me, then back at her. "What did the doctor say?"
"They said it turned. It was supposed to be routine and then it turned." She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. "I called you at eight because she put you down. She told me, if it gets bad, call Daniel, he promised he'd come."
I felt the words land in my chest before my head caught up. Promised. Not tonight. Not a last-minute text. A promise made long enough ago to be on a hospital form.
"When did he promise that?" I asked. My voice sounded thin.
Her eyes flicked to my dress, to the coat pulled tight over it, and she understood all at once. "Oh, honey. I'm sorry. I didn't — she had the surgery consult in the spring. He drove her. She didn't want me to worry."
Spring. The word sat there between us. Spring, when Daniel had started working late on Thursdays. Spring, when he'd said he needed to clear his head and took his duffel to his brother's. I thought of my black suitcase by the suite doorway, packed neat with his shirts folded, his shaving kit already zipped. I had told myself he'd thrown it together after our fight. He hadn't. The zipper had been closed too clean for a rush.
The double doors buzzed again and a tech wheeled a cart through. Nobody we needed.
Daniel leaned forward. "Mrs. Carter, I told Emily I'd — " He stopped. He looked at the floor.
"You told her what?" I said.
He didn't answer me. He answered her. "Is she stable right now?"
"They won't tell me stable. They say critical but holding." She twisted the strap of her purse. "You said if they called you, you'd come. That's what she held onto."
I sat back down because my knees felt strange. The lace sleeves itched my wrists. I could hear the wall clock ticking and the ice machine humming down the hall. I kept looking at that pink sheet on the nurse's clipboard as she walked it back through the doors.
May you like
He'd signed fiance in March. He'd stood in my doorway tonight in his black suit and said he needed to see Emily, and I'd thought it was a choice he was making in that second. It wasn't. It was a choice he'd kept filed away for months, folded like those shirts in the suitcase.
I didn't cry. I just folded my hands and realized I wasn't the only woman who had counted on him showing up.
