Divorcing the Husband Who Chose Her

When a patient dispute broke out in the hospital director hospital, Sidney Harding's first instinct was to pull his intern, Cecily Swanson, into his arms.

His shove sent me stumbling into the corner of the desk, and I felt a warm trickle low in my belly.

He didn't notice. He just scooped up the trembling intern and threw an order at me.

"You've got experience handling this kind of thing. The poor girl's scared out of her mind. Cover her night shift, the usual arrangement."

Face pale, I reached toward him. "Sidney, but my stomach really hurts right now..."

His gaze dropped to the red spreading across my white coat, and his steps jerked to a halt.

Cecily, tucked against his chest, said in a small, careful voice,

"Dr. Harding, I'm fine. Since Sheila's just having her period, you should go take care of her first..."

Disgust flashed across Sidney's eyes in an instant. "Sheila Simmons, drop the act. You've never had cramps in your life. Getting jealous over a girl at a time like this, don't you think that's beneath you?"

With that, Sidney carried Cecily off without a backward glance.

Watching him walk away, it hit me all at once.

This marriage had reached its end.

...

A heartbeat after the pain crashed through me, my vision went black and I dropped to the floor.

When I came to, my colleague Patricia Dickerson handed me the miscarriage report.

She looked like she wanted to say something and couldn't. "Sheila, try not to take it too hard. You're still young... there'll be other babies..."

I took the report calmly, my eyes moving to the line marked with how far along I'd been.

That was how I learned I had been a month pregnant.

That whole month I had been run off my feet.

Because Sidney was always finding some reason to dump Cecily's work on me.

"The girl scrubbed in on her first full surgery today. I promised I'd treat her to a big dinner to celebrate, so write up her post-op report and submit it for her."

For the academic conference that by the rules only full physicians could attend, Sidney said,

"I'm bringing the girl to the specialist conference this time. You take over all her clinic hours and rounds next week."

Cecily sneezed a few times, and Sidney said,

"The girl was out having fun and caught a chill. She's got a weak constitution. You cover the emergency shift tonight and let her rest in the on-call room."

And so I did the work of two people alone.

Worn down until my feet never touched the ground, so busy I didn't even know I was pregnant until the day I lost the baby.

I laughed, but the tears slid down my cheeks anyway.

I opened my phone, and the first thing to pop up was Cecily's post.

Dr. Harding says a little one like me who's had a fright needs sweets and fireworks to feel better!

In the photo, Sidney had Cecily perched on his shoulders, biting into cotton candy, the theme park castle rising behind them, a sky full of fireworks blazing as bright as the two of them were smiling.

Sidney and I had fought our way up together, all the way from a small town to Los Angeles.

Right after we married, not long after we'd both moved to this hospital, our salaries were low, and everything we ate, wore, and used had to be stretched to the bare minimum.

It pained Sidney to see it. He held my hand and promised,

"Baby, next year on our anniversary, let me take you to that theme park you've always wanted to see, okay?"

But after that he got busier year by year, and the anniversary usually came and went with nothing more than a cheap meal.

Today he had kept that promise and gone to the theme park at last. Just with another woman, in the very moment I lost my child.

I lay on the hospital bed for a while with my eyes closed.

The hospital director heard about the dispute and my collapse and came to check on me.

When he mentioned the recent staffing transfer to the European branch, I suddenly spoke up.

"Director, let me take the transfer."

His face filled with surprise. "But Dr. Harding is still here... Sheila, living apart from your husband is no small matter. Have you talked it over with Dr. Harding?"

I slid the wedding ring off my finger and told myself quietly:

"There's nothing to talk over. Soon enough, I won't be his wife."

Dragging my body through the aftermath of the miscarriage, I stayed up the whole night and got the transfer paperwork submitted as fast as I could.

When I came back to the office, Sidney passed by my desk and set down a container of congee.

"Brought you this."

It was the first time he'd ever brought me breakfast, and I wasn't about to punish my own body over it.

I lifted the lid, only to find the congee buried under a thick layer of chopped scallions.

Back when we first started dating, the first time Sidney cooked for me, he accidentally seasoned the food with scallion powder.

I went into anaphylactic shock and ended up in the hospital, and Sidney sat by my bed crying, blaming himself, slapping his own face.

After that, checking what I couldn't eat before every meal became the most important thing in the world to Sidney.

But now, he didn't remember.

Then Cecily's delighted voice rang out beside me:

"Wow! Marlowe's Diner breakfast dumplings! Dr. Harding, you're way too good to me!"

Then I remembered. Marlowe's was a famous place near the hospital, an hour in line at least.

The congee was the free side that came with the dumplings.

Sidney ruffled Cecily's hair, his eyes soft with indulgence.

"Little glutton. If you like them, I'll get you more next time."

Then he went back to his seat, saw the bare desktop, and abruptly frowned.

At last Sidney turned his gaze to me and asked:

"You were busy last night?"

Every workday until now, I'd brewed Sidney his herbal tea to keep him sharp, and had his patient files and schedule sorted out for him ahead of time.

With none of it there today, no wonder he found it strange.

As for busy, I'd spent the whole night running to the bathroom, waiting for the miscarriage blood to finish draining, while I put together the transfer materials and the divorce papers.

I nodded and said flatly, "I was busy, yes."

But Sidney's face darkened at once, and he slammed a drawer shut.

The colleagues in the office all flinched at the sound and turned to look.

"Was that necessary? All I asked was for you to wrap up some work for that girl. What's with the face you've been putting on this whole time? Who's it for?"

"Sheila, you're not some little girl anymore. It's just your period. Don't tell me you still think everyone has to coddle you?"

I'd thought my heart had gone past the point of hurting, but my eyes still stung before I could stop them.

I looked straight at Sidney. "Did I say anything?"

At work, I rarely let Sidney see any weakness in me.

He faltered at the red rims of my eyes and turned his head away, irritated.

That was when Cecily stood up and started apologizing to me through tears:

"I'm sorry, Sheila, I didn't know you'd mind covering my shift this much... Please don't fall out with Dr. Harding over me..."

With that, Cecily ran out looking wronged, and Sidney went straight into a panic:

"Look at what you've done! Cornering a young girl like that. I can't believe you."

He shoved hard past my shoulder and rushed out after her.

The colleagues watched the whole scene and traded glances, throwing me looks of pity and quiet dismay.

Right then my phone buzzed with a message. I let out a long breath and opened it.

It was a notice from the European branch:

Dr. Simmons, your transfer application has been approved. Please report to the European branch within one week. We look forward to having you!

Good. Sidney, soon I'll be able to leave you completely.

Sidney didn't come home all night.

The next day, I printed the divorce papers, signed them, and took them with me to the hospital.

I'd just found Sidney and hadn't said a word yet when Cecily came running over, holding up her phone, her face full of panic.

"Dr. Harding, what do I do? That family from the other day, the ones making all that noise about their mother dying, they put it online. That I gave her the wrong medication and killed her."

"Everyone online is trying to dox me now, and the family said they're bringing reporters to drag my name through the mud. What if I can never work as a doctor again?"

"Don't panic. You've got me. I won't let anything happen to you."

Sidney comforted Cecily, and when his gaze shifted to me, something in it hardened, like he'd made up his mind.

"Sheila, when the reporters get here, you tell them the medication error was yours. That none of it had anything to do with Cecily."

"You're her supervising physician, after all. This is on you either way for not doing your job and reviewing her work. You should be the one answering for it."

I stared at him, unable to believe it. "Sidney, have you lost your mind?"

"You know that the second I own this, my whole career is finished!"

He clicked his tongue, impatient.

"So you'd rather ruin a young girl's entire life out of your own selfishness?"

"Cecily isn't like you. She's still so young. Her career in medicine hasn't even started."

"Even if you lose this job, worst case you've still got me to provide for you. What more could you possibly want?"

I stepped back without thinking, and the man in front of me slowly blurred into the eighteen-year-old face I used to know.

The day we filed our college applications, Sidney and I both hit confirm on the same major. Medicine.

His eyes were so bright back then. He held me tight and said that for the rest of his life he'd climb to the top of medicine hand in hand with me, that we'd become the couple everyone in the field envied.

In school I wasn't as smart or as gifted as he was, and I fell behind on the dense, difficult material more than once.

He spent every hour outside class organizing my notes and tutoring me, night after night.

Countless top hospitals came after him, and his one condition was always that they had to take me too.

The man who'd once been so certain he'd never leave me behind. How had he turned into someone I couldn't recognize anymore?

My eyes focused back on the Sidney standing here now, and I shook my head.

"No. I won't agree to it."

Sidney, I'm begging you. Don't turn what's left of our happy memories into hatred.

But he was out of patience for persuasion.

A wave of noise came closer. The family had arrived, with a TV crew.

"You quack, give me back my mother's life!"

Before I could react, Sidney had already reached out and pushed me forward.

"Everyone, this accident was indeed my wife Sheila Simmons's momentary carelessness. She wrote the wrong prescription for the intern. As her husband, let me apologize to you all on her behalf first."

I denied it at once. "That's not true. I'm not the one who got the medication wrong!"

The family was frantic, several of them crowding in around me, refusing to hear a word of my defense.

"So it was you, you quack, who really killed my mother!"

"Your own husband came out and named you. Who else could it be?"

"You nearly had us blaming the wrong person. Today you're paying for my mother's life!"

Fists came down on me, hard, and I was beaten to the floor, curled in on myself.

In the middle of the despair I struggled to reach out. "Sidney... help... help me..."

But through the legs of the people hemming me in, all I could do was watch Sidney gather Cecily against him and stride away.

He never once looked back.

When I opened my eyes again, it was the familiar hospital ceiling.

Sidney sat at the edge of my bed, and when he saw me wake, he let out a breath.

"How are you feeling? I didn't think they'd get so worked up and start hitting you."

Was he surprised? No. He'd seen it. And for Cecily's sake, he chose not to.

At least the pain in my body had gone far enough to numb everything in my chest too.

I had no interest in dragging this out. I tucked the divorce papers into the shift schedule and handed the whole thing to him.

Sidney gave it one glance and picked up a pen. As he signed, he asked, in a tone that pretended to be offhand,

"By the way, that clinical study you've been doing on cardiovascular diseasethe data's almost wrapped up, isn't it?"

"The girl needs a paper in a top journal to graduate. Just package up all the data from that project and send it to her."

Two years of my life, and Sidney's first request was that I hand it over to Cecily.

I looked at him without a word. He slid past my eyes.

"You won't have any use for it anymore. It'll just sit there going to waste."

"Better to give the work to someone who actually needs it"

"Fine."

I agreed so easily that Sidney actually froze.

After a moment his face softened, and he reached out and patted my head.

"I knew you'd always be the reasonable one."

"Once this blows over, you can step down from the hospital while you're at it. Just focus on the home from now on. You've always wanted a baby, haven't you? I think it's about time."

A baby? Sidney, we did have one.

Except you killed it with your own hands.

He handed me the signed papers. His gaze moved over my hand, and something flickered across his face.

"Where's your wedding ring?"

I put the divorce papers away and answered without thinking about it. "Must have fallen off in the lobby earlier, in all the chaos."

Sidney made a small "Oh" and let it go.

My colleague Patricia happened to come in on her rounds.

She scolded me the way you scold someone you can't help caring about. "You know you had a miscarriage the day before yesterday. Your body's still weak. How could you not take better care of yourself?"

At that exact moment, a voice message from Cecily came through on Sidney's phone.

Dr. Harding, I missed a step on my way downstairs just now and twisted my ankle, it hurts so much... can you take me home? sniff...

Sidney grabbed his coat and was gone almost instantly.

So he didn't hear it.

I picked up my phone and booked a seat on the earliest evening flight.

As I walked out the hospital's front doors, an egg hit me square in the forehead.

The slime of it ran down my whole face.

A few worked-up people had been waiting for me, aiming their livestream cameras while they pelted me with rotten leaves and rotten eggs.

Sidney's Mercedes rolled past in front of me. Cecily was in the passenger seat, mouthing the words at me, taunting.

"You lost, you old hag~"

Back home, I washed myself clean and pulled out the luggage I'd packed long ago.

What Sidney didn't know was that my clinical project had already reached its final stage: polishing the paper.

The most prestigious international journal in the medical field was very interested in my research, and they had reserved this paper for publication a long time ago.

I sent the finished paper to the journal. Its official publication date fell exactly one day before Cecily's thesis defense.

Sidney wanted me to give her all the data, didn't he?

Then I'd hand over every last bit of it. I wanted to see whether she could carry the charge of data plagiarism when it came.

After I sent the zipped data file to Sidney, a voice message popped up on the screen.

I opened it. It was Cecily's bragging, the kind she couldn't hide.

"Thanks for the data, Sheila~ Dr. Harding's busy cooking for me at my place right now, no time to look at his phone, so I'm replying for him~"

Expressionless, I pressed block.

I wheeled my luggage out the door, got into the Uber, and headed for the airport, leaving this city and everything with Sidney behind me in the rearview mirror.