Chapter 1The Missing Husband

“The patient is bleeding out. She’s dying. Where the hell is her husband? Didn’t I tell you to keep him on standby?”

I was about to make an excuse for Mark, to tell them he was a doctor, that he’d been called into the hospital for an emergency.

Then my phone lit up with a notification. It was a wedding photo, sent by Anna, Mark’s closest friend.

“Thanks for lending me Mark, sis ;)”

“Best 30th birthday ever! Don’t worry, we won’t actually consummate the marriage, lol.”

In the picture, Mark was kissing Anna’s cheek. Their entire tight-knit group of friends surrounded them, all of them beaming with pure joy.

Meanwhile, I was hemorrhaging, in desperate need of a signature for emergency surgery, and Mark was unreachable.

When I finally, miraculously, got through to his phone, his voice was a cold slap. “The baby’s born, can’t you just leave me alone for a second?”

“It’s Anna’s 30th birthday. It’s important. Everyone is here. I can’t just leave.”

“I promised her I’d be with her for her 30th.”

“God, why do you have to be such a buzzkill!”

Just before I lost consciousness, another picture came through from Anna. It was a king-sized bed in a lavish hotel room. Mark and Anna were on it, laughing, as their friends playfully tried to shove them under the covers, whooping and hollering.

…“Blood oxygen is dropping. Patient is in shock. Get more blood from the central bank, now! I want every available specialist in this OR, stat!”

A Code Blue alert blared through the hospital, the frantic, piercing sound echoing down the halls.

Doctors and nurses flooded my room. I could feel my own life slipping away, my body growing so light it felt like it was about to float right off the bed.

Through the haze, a nurse’s voice, gentle but urgent, kept calling to me.

“You have to fight. Your baby was just born. He’s in the NICU. You haven’t even had a chance to hold him yet.”

“Don’t give up. Please, don’t give up on yourself. We are doing everything we can to save you.”

Her voice was thick with desperation, cracking with unshed tears.

I had no strength to respond, but a single thought looped in my fading mind. That’s right. My baby. I have my baby. I can’t die. I can’t…

The hospital was pulling out all the stops, assembling the city’s top OB/GYN specialists for an emergency consultation. They were scrambling to get every unit of my rare blood type from every hospital in the region.

“Still can’t reach the patient’s family?”

“What is her husband doing? His phone is off?”

“The patient’s parents passed away a few years ago. The husband is all she has… We have no choice. We have to operate. The patient’s life is the priority.”

The voices around me faded in and out. The moments of silence were terrifying. Were they giving up on me? Was I going to die on this table? Would I ever see my baby? No. I couldn’t die. Mark would never take proper care of our child. If I died, my baby’s life would be ruined.

I willed my body to heal, to just be okay.

But the only thing I heard was a nurse’s panicked cry. “Where is that blood? We’re losing her!”

“Have you reached Dr. Hunter at Central General? He’s the authority in this field. If we had him here, her chances would be so much higher.”

Dr. Hunter? Mark Hunter? I wanted so desperately to speak. To tell them that the unreachable Dr. Hunter was my husband.

But I had no voice.

Someone sighed in frustration. “Dr. Hunter’s not coming. He took a special seven-day leave. Said it was his honeymoon. He married his childhood best friend.”

“I thought he was going to be a bachelor forever,” another voice chimed in. “Whenever anyone asked if he was married or dating, he’d always say he wasn’t interested. Turns out he was in love with his best friend all along.”

So. He had never even told his colleagues he was married. No wonder he’d insisted I never go to his hospital for my prenatal check-ups. He’d said it was to avoid troubling his coworkers. The truth was, he was afraid they’d find out about his wife of seven years.

“Forget Dr. Hunter. He’s busy with his new bride. Let’s focus on keeping this woman alive!”

Their words were so clear, but the anesthesia kept me pinned down, a prisoner in my own body. It dulled the pain but didn’t grant me the mercy of unconsciousness. It was a special kind of torture. I could feel the cold steel of their instruments, sense their rising panic, and feel the profound, chilling cold seep into my very bones.

Just as I felt myself slipping away for good, the head nurse shouted, “Dr. Hunter’s on the phone!”