Chapter 17: Yeah

Nobody in the auditorium made a sound.

Three hundred faces were turned toward the seat three rows behind me, where my husband sat with his hands flat on his knees.

I knew what Janelle was doing.

She had waited for the one moment when I could not take it back, and she had put his worst word in front of a crowd.

She wanted the room to turn on both of us.

Ansel stood up.

He walked down the aisle slowly, and every step landed in the silence.

He climbed the stage steps, and he did not look at Janelle.

He stopped beside me and held out a hand for the microphone.

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I gave it to him.

"She's right," he said.

His voice came out of the speakers, rough and low.

"I said Yeah, and then I let Janelle talk me out of calling my wife again."

A woman in the front row put her hand over her mouth.

"At 8:41 my wife's kidnapper sent a photo of her hand with her father's ring on it. Janelle told me she had deleted it, and I said, Good."

He drew a breath.

"At 9:38 I said, Then you called the wrong surgeon. At 9:41 I said, Block it."

He turned to the chief of staff.

"I was the one who said all of it. She held the phone. I made every choice with my own mouth."

"Dr. Erickson," the chief of staff said weakly. "This is not the place."

"It's exactly the place."

Ansel reached up and pulled the lanyard from around his neck.

It carried his badge, with TRAUMA CHIEF in blue across the top.

He held it out to the chief of staff.

"I resign as chief of trauma, effective now. A man who hangs up on his own wife has no business deciding who lives in this county."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Dismissed Seven Ransom Calls as AI from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.