Two cars collided, and I, along with another pregnant woman, was rushed into the maternity ward. “This patient’s water has broken, she needs emergency care! Quick, get a family member to sign!” Just as I was about to be wheeled into the operating room, I quickly said, “My husband is busy, I can sign myself!” Before I could finish, the other pregnant woman’s husband rushed up, covered in blood and panic-stricken. “Save her first, she’s in worse condition; she has a heart condition!” Despite his blood-streaked face, I recognized him immediately. Dr. Samuel Hartley. My husband. “I’m Dr. Samuel Hartley from Midtown Medical Center. Trust my professional judgment,” he announced confidently. I reached out to him, only for him to push my hand away sharply. “But this patient’s water has already broken,” someone argued. Samuel cast a brief glance my way. “She won’t die. I’m her husband; I can sign the waiver.” The car accident had happened so suddenly, leaving the hospital staff overwhelmed and short-handed. The surgery slot, initially set for me, was quickly redirected because my husband, the highly regarded OB-GYN at Midtown Medical Center, had made the call. Trusting his judgment, they postponed my surgery. As my gurney was pushed aside, Samuel didn’t spare me even a glance. His focus was entirely on Lila Whitmore, his expression a mix of concern and devotion. “Don’t worry, I’ll personally handle your surgery once the paperwork clears,” he whispered to her, his voice laced with a tenderness that stung my heart. Lacking an available bed, I was left in the hallway, forced to watch as he lavished care on someone else. The other patients around me were surrounded by anxious loved ones, arms offering support. But my source of support had been granted permission to help someone else—his ‘goddess.’ He passed by me, pausing for a moment but never turning back. His words echoed coldly as he walked away: “You’re not going to die. Trust my professional judgment.” I didn’t know how long that surgery took. Exhaustion overcame me, and I drifted into a fitful sleep. When I was woken up, a flurry of medical staff surrounded me. “The patient is experiencing acute amniotic fluid embolism! Contact the blood bank immediately!” “Where’s Dr. Hartley? He’s the only one in the city who’s handled this before! We’re not equipped for this!” The rush of footsteps and urgent voices filled the corridor as male nurses wheeled my bed at a breakneck pace, offering reassurance. “Don’t worry. Your husband is the most renowned OB-GYN in the city. He’s handled amniotic fluid embolisms with a 99% success rate. You’re young and strong; you’ll make it.” Bright white lights flooded my vision as I was wheeled into the operating room. Amid the chaos, I heard data about my vitals being read aloud. “No! Her oxygen levels are dropping too fast; she won’t last much longer! Where is Dr. Hartley?” My attending physician’s hand was icy as he gripped mine. “Dr. Hartley finished Lila Whitmore’s surgery and left… said she wanted soup, and he was going to make it for her himself,” a nurse stammered. “Call him!” “No answer…” “The baby! There’s no heartbeat! The mother’s losing consciousness—she won’t hold on!” My attending doctor squeezed my hand with conviction. “As long as I’m responsible for you, I won’t give up. You need to fight, too. Notify Pediatrics—we’re saving both mother and child.” I blinked weakly. If someone in this world wanted me to live, I had to try. Trainee doctors scrambled to reach Samuel, while my attending physician led a team of specialists in a race against time. Bags of blood were brought in, used up, and replaced, as beads of sweat gathered on the doctors’ foreheads. The weight in my chest felt unbearable. Suddenly, one of the interns held up my phone triumphantly. “Dr. Hartley’s calling back!” The speaker was activated, and the whole room heard his voice, sharp and impatient. “Morgan! Where’s your delivery bag? You won’t need it anytime soon, so I’m taking it to Lila.”
I saw my attending doctor’s frown deepen as he handed his tools to the senior physician beside him. He approached the intern and took the sanitized phone. “Dr. Hartley, your wife is experiencing an acute amniotic fluid embolism. We need your expertise immediately to help save her,” he said firmly. The call disconnected with a cold series of beeps. “What’s wrong with him? Ignoring his wife to cater to someone else?” an angry voice burst out. “Some ‘expert’—he’s just a total jerk!” I couldn’t help but smile faintly at the truth in his words. Realizing the potential effect of his outburst, my attending doctor looked apologetic. Through the fog of anesthesia, I managed a silent glance that said it was okay. Because he was right. But that fleeting understanding gave way to a deep, gnawing despair that swallowed the last remnants of my resolve. “Patient’s oxygen is plummeting! Request more blood from the bank!” Riverside Community Hospital began urgently requesting blood from across the city, and news of the embolism spread quickly. Just then, a doctor from Midtown Medical Center entered the room, a familiar face who had handled such cases with Samuel. “Can you believe it? Dr. Hartley’s wife is giving birth here too. I happened to come by and rushed over to help.” Dr. Hartley’s wife? My attending physician instinctively looked at me. Samuel’s colleague, already experienced from assisting him before, took charge smoothly. The tension began to ease, and a light conversation ensued. “I saw Pediatrics bring the newborn back earlier—a chubby little boy,” he remarked. “Strange, though, no dad came to see him. Is she a single mom or something?” The attending doctor cleared his throat. The oblivious doctor continued. “Odd, considering Dr. Hartley’s wife is just down the hall. Why isn’t he here? You’d think he’d prioritize helping his own wife deliver.” Before anyone could respond, an intern snapped, “Dr. Lee, the woman in front of you is Dr. Hartley’s actual wife, Morgan Bennett.” Dr. Lee chuckled dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve worked with Samuel for years. His wife is Lila Whitmore—not this Morgan person.” “Great,” the attending doctor muttered as my previously stable vitals began to nosedive. “We’re not joking; this is Dr. Hartley’s wife. Your careless words just drained whatever willpower she had left.” Dr. Lee smacked his forehead. “I thought you were all kidding!” Just then, the faint cry of a baby echoed in the room. “Bring the baby to the mother,” my attending doctor directed Pediatrics. I strained to open my eyes and saw a tiny, purple-tinged baby. Despite everything, a smile tugged at my lips. He was so ugly, resembling Samuel in every way. But I couldn’t help loving him—a visceral, uncontrollable kind of maternal affection. After a grueling, day-long battle and over 500 units of blood, I survived. Once out of the ICU and transferred to a regular room, the postpartum nurse, Mrs. Evelyn Carter, arrived looking uncomfortable, holding a used diaper. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. Dr. Hartley insisted I help Ms. Whitmore first. I couldn’t refuse…”
I was about to respond to Mrs. Thompson when I heard Samuel Hartley’s voice from the hallway. “Mrs. Thompson, hurry up! The baby spit up again, and Lila’s too weak to hold him.” The door to my room swung open, and Samuel stood there, momentarily taken aback. Our eyes met, and he spoke with a nonchalant tone. “Our son is still in the incubator, so we don’t need Mrs. Thompson for now. I’m letting Lila use her. I assume you don’t mind.” “Oh, and I called your parents to come take care of you. I’m too exhausted from looking after Lila to take care of you too. I hope you understand.” As he finished speaking, a few of his colleagues arrived, their arms full of gifts. “What are you doing here? Lila needs you!” one of them said. “What’s wrong with Lila?” he asked instinctively, already moving toward her room. His colleagues followed, leaving Mrs. Thompson in the room with a confused look on her face. “You’re really Dr. Hartley’s wife, right? Isn’t Lila just a friend? Why does everyone call her ‘Mrs. Hartley’?” she asked, puzzled. I chuckled. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding.” Mrs. Thompson threw her cloth onto a chair in frustration. “He can’t correct them? He just lets people believe it? Seems to me Dr. Hartley wants everyone to think Lila is his wife.” Anyone unfamiliar with Samuel would see his intentions clearly. Lila Whitmore had been his unattainable college crush. He never dared to confess, but everyone knew he was infatuated. If it weren’t for that alumni gathering, I wouldn’t have realized that even someone as proud as Samuel could act so humbly. When faced with Lila, he would always look down, unable to meet her gaze. His old college friends would joke with the newly divorced Lila, saying, “If you’d accepted Sam’s confession back then, you’d be the wife of Midtown’s top OB-GYN now, not someone else.” And I, that “someone else,” would sit quietly at the table, cutting my steak. Samuel’s college friends never liked me. They saw me as the obstacle between him and Lila, the reason their “goddess” was alone. Samuel seemed to agree. After the reunion, he became distant, using work as an excuse. He would come home once a week at most and even stopped attending my prenatal appointments. But he appeared regularly in Lila’s Instagram Stories, painted as her “good friend.” Lila never denied the assumption that she and Samuel were together; she’d just smile and let it pass. Samuel was the same way. He seemed to enjoy people believing that the beautiful and charismatic Lila was his wife. We had argued about this once. He said, “The truth speaks for itself. I don’t need to prove anything. Respect my right to have friends.” Whenever Lila showed even a small hint of affection, he would leap forward eagerly, like an obedient dog. But with me, he assumed he was my best option. He believed that before the baby, I needed him, and now with the baby, I needed him even more. It made him increasingly audacious. What he failed to understand was that I wasn’t like him. I wasn’t going to be a loyal dog that would always come back for scraps. Lila’s room was right next to mine, and a steady stream of visitors, including Samuel’s colleagues and Dr. Mason Wright, who’d helped with my emergency, went in and out. “Samuel! What you’re doing is disgusting! Your wife isn’t Lila, and yet you don’t correct anyone. We’ve all been calling her ‘Mrs. Hartley’ for so long, and it was humiliating when I realized that we got it wrong while saving your actual wife,” Dr. Wright’s voice boomed through the thin walls. Samuel was silent for a while before replying, “I never told you to call her that. You chose to.”
“Can’t you just say she’s your classmate? Your wife just survived an amniotic embolism and barely made it, yet you’re here taking care of Lila Whitmore without even checking on her? Aren’t you afraid she’ll leave you?” Dr. Mason Wright’s voice was sharp as he tried to push Samuel Hartley toward my room. Samuel slammed the door shut, his face cold. “Afraid? I’d be relieved if she left. She chased me relentlessly for years, holding on like I was her last hope. Now that she’s finally married to me and has a kid, she won’t go anywhere,” he said with a mocking laugh. “She’s not like Lila. Lila has heart problems, she’s frail. Morgan’s an athlete; an amniotic embolism is serious for most, but to her, it’s nothing.” “Are you serious? You’re supposed to be an expert in obstetrics! Don’t you know how high the mortality rate for an amniotic embolism is?” “Remember the athlete who died last year during surgery? She was in perfect health. But she still died from an embolism in under half an hour. Morgan’s just lucky. Maybe fate took pity on her because she married someone like me,” Samuel sneered. Dr. Wright’s frustration was palpable. Samuel didn’t even step inside the room. Instead, he sent me a transfer of $20,000 with a curt message to take care of myself. I blocked him and deleted every way to contact him. Later that night, my attending physician visited to let me know that a local news station wanted to interview me. Surviving an amniotic embolism was rare, with a survival rate of only 1%. “Don’t worry, it’ll be a brief interview. Executives from Midtown Medical Center and other major hospitals will be present. It’ll be good for you.” “Okay.” I agreed readily. On the day of the interview, Samuel showed up, dressed in a tailored suit, mingling with the crowd as he recounted how challenging the surgery had been. Dr. Wright stood to the side, looking drained and silent, while several hospital executives looked at Samuel with admiration and dropped words of praise. “Operating on your own family is something no doctor should have to do. But Samuel here had to choose between his wife and unborn son. It takes a strong heart to face such pressure and achieve a perfect outcome,” one executive praised, glancing approvingly at Samuel. Samuel walked up to me. “You know this is a big chance for my promotion. It’s all set up because of this. Don’t mess it up. Just say I performed the surgery, and don’t mention anyone else,” he said, ruffling my hair like he used to. But he quickly wiped his hand, as if noticing for the first time that I hadn’t washed my hair since giving birth. The interview began, but my attending physician was blocked from entering by the hospital staff. A reporter handed me a microphone. “Ms. Bennett, surviving such a life-threatening condition must have been an incredible ordeal. What would you like to say about it?” I paused, holding the microphone firmly. “I want to thank the doctors who never gave up on me, even when I was ready to give up on myself.” The reporter’s eyes lit up, glancing between Samuel and me. “Which doctor would you say you’re most grateful to?” they asked. I saw Dr. Wright turning to leave and quickly pointed to the door. “My attending doctor and the team at Midtown Medical Center…” All the cameras turned to Samuel, who stood ready with a prepared speech. But I continued, looking elsewhere. “…and especially Dr. Mason Wright.” The room erupted in whispers. Samuel’s eyes widened as he looked at me, fumbling with his phone to text me, only for his face to darken when the message wouldn’t send. Dr. Wright looked stunned, almost on the verge of tears. “Anyone else?” the reporter pressed, looking uncertain. I smiled. “Yes. I also want to thank my husband.”
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