The Night I Stopped Waiting for My Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Line Through His Name

Harrison reaches the empty hospital bed and finds the ring, the ultrasound of a daughter he never knew about, and a note. Rosalind arrives to comfort him. Hook: the nurse shows him the emergency form with his name crossed out.

Harrison's POV

My mother called at ten-forty on Tuesday morning, and she used the voice she saves for funerals.

"Lucy has left the hospital," she said. "She went with that old professor of hers. I thought you should hear it from me."

"Left? Left where? She's supposed to be resting."

"Darling, I did offer her the clinic."

I was already in the car.

I had told myself for three days that my wife was fine. The doctors said stable. Lucy always said she was fine.

I called her nine times between the driveway and the hospital.

Every call rang out.

The nurse at the fourth-floor desk knew my name before I gave it.

She did not smile.

"Mr. Merrick. Mrs. Merrick left something for you."

She slid a plain white envelope across the counter, and it was heavier at one corner than the other.

I tore it open standing right there.

A ring fell into my palm.

It was the ring I had put on her finger in a courthouse garden five years ago.

She had chosen the small stone herself, because the big one made her hands look tired.

Behind it was a printed black-and-white picture, grainy, a curved grey shape in a grey field.

On the bottom edge it read: Baby Merrick, 30 weeks, Female.

I read it twice.

I turned the picture over and found Lucy's block capitals, the ones she used on drawings.

Harrison. Our daughter is due in December. I stopped waiting for you on Saturday night.

I'm not angry. I'm finished. Do not tell Rosalind where I am.

My knees stopped working.

I sat down on the plastic chair beside the desk, and I was still holding the ring, and I did not remember sitting.

A daughter.

She had been carrying our daughter for thirty weeks, and I had not seen it.

She had worn loose coats, and I had thought it was the weather.

I had been in Singapore for six weeks.

Every night I told her about the contract, and she said, "That's great, Harry," and went quiet.

I had thought quiet meant fine.

"Sir," the nurse said. "Would you like some water?"

"Is she all right? Is the baby all right?"

"They're both stable. Mrs. Merrick has strict bed rest and she knows what to watch for."

"Where did she go?"

"I can't say, sir. She asked me not to."

My phone buzzed in my jacket.

Rosalind: I just heard from your mother. Where are you? I'm so worried. I'm on my way.

I stared at the screen.

Lucy had written one request on the back of that picture, and it was about Rosalind.

I did not answer.

I did not know yet why that felt like the first thing I had done right in five years.

The elevator opened ten minutes later, and Rosalind came down the corridor in her cream cardigan with her eyes already wet.

"Harrison," she said. "Oh, Harrison."

She put both arms around me.

Rosalind had hugged me exactly like this at Conrad's funeral, and at every hard moment since.

I had never once asked why I was the one she held on to.

"She's hormonal," she said softly. "Don't take it to heart."

She smoothed my lapel.

"She'll cool off in a day or two, and I'll talk to her. Let me call her."

"She asked me not to tell you where she is."

Rosalind pulled back a little.

"Where she is? Harrison, I don't understand. She told you?"

"She left a note."

"May I see it?"

I did not hand it over.

I put the ultrasound inside my jacket, against my chest, before I had decided to.

"She's pregnant," I said. "Thirty weeks. She was bleeding in a restaurant on Saturday and I was in your kitchen."

For a second, Rosalind's face was perfectly still.

Then it crumpled, and she was crying, and her hand went to her mouth.

"Oh, God. Oh, sweetheart. Oh, I'm so sorry. If I'd known, I would never have kept you."

"I know," I said.

I did know.

That was what I could not get past.

Rosalind had never kept me anywhere. I had gone, every time, because she called and I answered.

The nurse had come back around the desk with a clipboard.

"Mr. Merrick, I was asked to give you one more thing, since you're the husband."

She turned the clipboard around.

It was an emergency contact form.

The first line said Harrison Merrick, husband, in Lucy's handwriting.

Someone had drawn one straight, steady line through it.

Under it she had written the name of a woman I had met twice, and a phone number that was not mine.

"She did it herself, Saturday night," the nurse said quietly. "Right after I told her what you said when I called."

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