Chapter 3
They'd put me in a gown that didn't close right in the back and left me in a room that was too bright to be night. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead and the white walls made everything look clean and not quite real.
My coat was on the plastic chair in the corner. Someone had folded it, not well, the beige trench with the belt still looped through but hanging off the side. Under it was the cream knit top and the pants I'd put on that morning when I still thought I was going to a lawyer's office. My light heels were tucked neatly underneath, side by side. It looked like someone else's clothes.
He was sitting beside the gurney in the other plastic chair, the one closer to the door. His dark coat was over the armrest. He hadn't taken off his shirt, just unzipped the coat, and his stubble caught the harsh light. He was holding my purse on his lap like he was minding it for me.
I reached for it without thinking. My throat was dry and I wanted my phone.
"Can I have my phone?" I asked. My voice sounded small under the lights.
He didn't hand it over right away. He unzipped the purse, looked inside, pulled out my phone and my ID together. He held them both.
"You don't need to worry about anything right now," he said.
I held my hand out a little longer. He put the ID back in the purse but kept the phone in his palm, screen dark.
"I need to call them," I said. "The lawyer's office. Before they charge us for the no-show."
"We'll handle it," he said.
That was the moment I realized he wasn't going to give it to me. It wasn't loud or cruel. He just slipped my phone into the pocket of his own coat, the one on the armrest, and zipped that pocket shut. The sound of the zipper was very clear.
A knock came and the ER doctor came in with a computer on a swing arm. She was younger than I expected, hair pulled back, and she washed her hands without looking at us first. She asked me how I was feeling, checked the monitor, pressed on my abdomen over the gown. I breathed the way they tell you to and tried not to flinch.
She asked the intake questions the way people do when they already know the answers will be complicated.
"Any major stress recently?"
I looked at the ceiling tiles. "Yes."
"Are you pregnant now? Could you be pregnant?"
I hesitated. My hands were on the thin blanket and I tucked them under it.
"I don't know," I said.
"Any history of pregnancy loss or miscarriage?"
The word landed hard in the bright room. I could feel him listening from the chair. I didn't look at him.
"I'm not comfortable answering that right now," I said, quiet. "Can we just do the labs?"
The doctor glanced between us, not pushing, just noting. She nodded and typed. "We'll run bloodwork and get a full panel. That will tell us more than guessing. Any dizziness, bleeding, pain level right now?"
I answered what I could in short sentences. She was kind in a practiced way, didn't linger on what I wouldn't say. She said the lab would take a while and someone would be in to draw blood, and she stepped out with the soft click of the door.
As soon as she left, I said, "I need my phone back. You can't just keep it."
He stood, took his coat off the armrest and put it on the back of the chair, phone still zipped inside the pocket. "You're in a hospital gown, Paula. What are you going to do? Argue with a receptionist?"
"I can text them myself. It's my appointment."
"Our appointment," he said. Then he softened his voice like he was being helpful. "You need to rest. I'll take care of it."
He took my phone out, woke the screen with my passcode. I saw him type it without asking. My stomach dropped that he still knew it. He opened my messages, found the thread with the lawyer's office, the one I'd confirmed that morning with the address and the time crossed out on our intake form.
I tried to sit up. "Let me see what you're writing."
He held the phone angled away, typing with his thumb. "Keeping it simple. They don't need details."
He read it aloud after he sent it, flat: "'Medical emergency, need to reschedule. Will call to rebook. Thank you.'"
That wasn't what I would have said. I would have said I was at the hospital, that I wanted to keep the appointment window, that I would call in the morning. I would have kept it mine.
"You sent that as me," I said.
"Someone had to," he said, and zipped the phone away again.
May you like
A tech knocked and came in with a tray and a tourniquet for the blood draw. I watched my beige coat on the plastic chair while she tied off my arm. The needle went in, the tubes filled one by one. The tech labeled them at the bedside and said the doctor would be back when the results were pending. She didn't look at the coat either, but I couldn't stop looking at it. It was the only thing in the room that still belonged to the person I'd been at nine that morning, before the wet pavement and the glass doors.
When she left, he sat back down. My phone stayed in his pocket. The bloodwork was gone down the hall somewhere, pending.
