Broken Oaths in White Coats novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At her husband's Surgeon of the Year gala Laurel sees a text on her mentee's phone, puts her ring beside his award in front of the hospital and walks out, then learns he filed her medical leave an hour earlier.
They called my husband's name at the hospital gala, and four hundred people in evening wear stood up to clap.
He took the stage with one hand raised, the way he did at every hospital event.
The hospital had set a livestream camera on a stand beside our table. A small red light glowed on top of it.
I stayed in my chair for the first few seconds, because Janelle had her hand on my forearm.
Janelle was twenty-seven, the best fourth-year resident in the building, and I had written her fellowship letter myself.
I had asked her to sit with me tonight. Alastair's table was full of donors, and mine had an empty chair.
She had arrived in a blue dress and hugged me at the door.
"Thank you for inviting me, Dr. Falkland," she had said. "I'd have gone home and eaten cereal."
An hour ago, over the salad, I had asked her whether Alastair had seemed off at work lately.
"No, never," Janelle had said. "You two are the couple everybody wants to be. Honestly."
I had wanted to believe it, so I did.
Now she leaned toward me while the applause rolled on.
"Don't cry," she whispered. "He's so proud of you."
"I'm not crying," I said.
On my lap, my clutch held a folded legal envelope I had carried since March.
I touched its edge with my thumb and did not take it out.
My husband, Dr. Alastair Falkland, reached the podium. The crystal award sat there under the lights, shaped like a heart in a glass hand.
"Thank you," he said, and waited for the room to settle. "I'm going to keep this short, because the real work in this hospital is done by other people."
The room laughed warmly.
"My wife is one of them. Laurel runs the heart transplant program, and she has never once asked me for anything."
He found me at table nine and smiled.
More applause. A few people turned in their chairs to look at me.
I smiled back. I had smiled at him in rooms like this for twelve years.
Beside my bread plate, Janelle's phone lit up.
She had left it face up on the tablecloth. She was busy waving at someone across the room.
The preview was two lines long, from a contact saved as G.
"Tell her you have a migraine. Room 1207, I already have the key."
I read it twice.
Only one person had ever signed his texts to me with a single letter.
Alastair's thumb was still resting on the podium. His phone sat beside the crystal heart, face down, where he could reach it.
Janelle turned back and saw where I was looking.
Her face did not change at all. She did not even look surprised.
"Dr. Falkland," she said softly. "It's not what it looks like."
"It's exactly what it looks like," I said. "It's in your hand."
At the next table, a donor's wife had stopped clapping and was watching us.
The livestream light stayed red.
I could have taken the phone and gone to the ladies' room to cry. I could have waited until the car, or the house, or never.
So I stood up.
I walked the whole length of the ballroom between the tables. Nobody stopped me. They thought I was going to hug him.
I climbed the steps to the stage.
Alastair leaned in for the kiss on the cheek. I took a step back.
I took off my wedding ring. It had been loose for a year, and it came off easily.
I set it down on the podium, next to the crystal heart.
Then I pulled the microphone toward me.
"Congratulations, Alastair," I said. "You told her to say she had a migraine. Room 1207."
The ballroom went completely silent.
"She's at table nine. Go on up."
Alastair's mouth opened. He had no line ready, and I had never seen that before.
I turned, and the whole room parted for me as I walked out.
At the coat check I did not wait for my ticket. I took my black wool coat off the rack and walked out in it.
Outside, the cold off the lake stung my face.
A cab pulled up, and I got in and gave the driver the address of my friend Norma, because I could not name a single place that was mine.
My phone buzzed against my leg.
I thought it would be Alastair.
It was an email from Human Resources, sent at 7:41 that evening, an hour before the award.
"Dr. Alastair Falkland has requested a medical leave on your behalf for exhaustion, effective 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. Your badge access will be suspended pending review."
He had signed my leave papers before he ever stood up to thank me.
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