Reborn: This Time, I'm Divorcing Him First novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Bed Nine at 4:17
At 3:50 he was in the doorway of my room in a gray sweatshirt.
He'd brought a wheelchair.
"No," I said.
"Natalie."
"I walked to my own transplant. I'm walking to this."
So we walked.
Me in my gown and the pink cat socks, holding my IV pole in one hand and his arm with the other.
Down the hall. Into the elevator. Down three floors.
The night nurse at the transplant desk watched us go and pretended she didn't.
4 West was dark.
The machines stood in their row with plastic covers over them.
The only light came from the nurses' station and the window at the far end.
The dialysis nurse was at the station, early, priming the first machines for five o'clock.
She looked up and saw us.
She didn't say a word. She just turned down the radio.
We walked the length of the ward.
Bed one. Bed two. Bed eight, with an old newspaper folded on the chair.
Bed nine was made up tight under the window, the thin blue blanket square at the corners.
The white clock hung over it.
4:12.
"Sit," Ethan said.
I sat down on the edge of bed nine.
The mattress crackled under me.
He didn't sit beside me.
He stood in front of me and looked at the clock, then at me.
I watched him put down every joke he'd brought with him.
4:14.
"I've had this since the night of the gala," he said.
He took a small box out of his sweatshirt pocket.
"It's been in my desk drawer. Next to your old locker label."
4:15.
He got down on one knee on the floor of 4 West, in front of bed nine.
His hands weren't steady.
I'd never once seen his hands not be steady.
He opened the box.
A plain gold band with one small stone, old-fashioned, a little worn on the inside.
"It was my grandmother's," he said. "She'd have liked you. She hated everybody."
I laughed, and it came out wet.
4:16.
"I'm not going to make a speech," he said. "You'd grade it."
"I would."
He looked up at the clock.
The minute hand ticked.
4:17.
"Natalie Lane," he said. "Marry me."
The machines hummed under their covers.
Somewhere down the hall a monitor beeped once, the ordinary way, for somebody else.
I looked at the clock over my head.
Then I looked at him, on his knee on that floor, holding my hand at 4:17 in the morning.
"Yes," I said.
He smiled, his eyes wet.
He slid the ring onto my finger, over the place where another one used to be.
It fit.
From the double doors there was a sound like somebody trying very hard not to cry, and failing.
I looked up.
Maeve was in the doorway in her night-shift scrubs with both hands over her mouth.
Behind her stood three nurses from the transplant floor, and the dialysis nurse had come around the station with a box of tissues.
"I swapped onto nights," Maeve said through her fingers. "He told me on Tuesday. I've been dying."
"Bad choice of words, Maeve."
"I know. I'm a nurse, I'm allowed."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–8 of Reborn: This Time, I'm Divorcing Him First are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend