He Secretly Married My Sister, So I Left Him and Started Over novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Exam Room Four
Hazel hears her mother laughing behind an exam room door and finds her fiancé holding her sister's hand; she hands back the ring and walks out, and the clerk tells her her insurance was cancelled that morning.
At two o'clock on a Tuesday, in the second-floor hallway of a women's clinic, I heard my mother laugh.
I had not heard that sound in seven months.
It came from behind a door at the end of the hall.
I was thirty-three weeks pregnant, walking back from the restroom with a paper cup of water and my chart under my arm.
My own appointment was at 2:30.
My fiancé had texted me at noon: "Closing in Dayton ran long. Don't lift anything. Back for dinner. Love you both."
I had been looking at that message for two hours because it was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all week.
Then my mother laughed again, and I stopped walking.
The door stood open a hand's width.
My sister lay on the exam table with her shirt pushed up over a belly that was nearly as round as mine.
My mother sat in the chair beside her in the navy cardigan she wears to every school board meeting.
A man in a charcoal suit stood at the head of the table, holding my sister's hand.
He had told me he was wearing his grey suit to Dayton.
He was stroking her knuckles with his thumb.
I knew that thumb. He had done it to me in every waiting room since February.
The sonographer turned the screen toward them.
"There's your daughter's heartbeat," she said. "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Wodehouse."
"Our first grandbaby," my mother said, and her voice cracked with joy.
Her first grandbaby.
I had been carrying hers for seven months.
I pushed the door open with my shoulder.
Nobody noticed me for a full second. The heartbeat filled the room, fast and strong.
Then Darla saw me, and her face emptied out.
"Hazel," Otto said.
He did not drop her hand.
He said it gently, in the voice that had talked me down off a roof, and that was how I knew he had practiced.
"Sweetheart. Let me explain in the car."
My mother's face went hard.
"You are not supposed to be here," she said. "This is your sister's appointment."
"I know," I said. "I saw the sign on the door."
I looked at Otto.
"Is this Dayton?"
He opened his mouth.
"It isn't what it looks like," he started, and then he heard himself and tried again. "It is. But I can explain why."
"Mr. and Mrs. Wodehouse," I said to the sonographer, who was holding the wand in the air and looking at the floor. "How long?"
"Since February," Darla whispered.
"We went to the courthouse on the fourteenth," Otto said quickly. "Darla was frightened and the family was coming apart. I did what I could to keep everyone together."
February fourteenth.
The dates lined up in my head before I could stop them.
He had stood on a hospital roof on the tenth, with his hand around my wrist and a prenatal report held out in front of my face, and begged me to live for our baby.
Four days later he married my sister.
"You held my hand in therapy every Thursday," I said.
"I never stopped caring about you," Otto said. "I'm still going to take care of you. Both of you."
I looked at the ring on my left hand.
It had a small, clean diamond. He had chosen it himself and told everyone he'd chosen it himself.
I worked it over my knuckle. It took a second, because my fingers had swollen.
I put it in his free hand and folded his fingers shut around it.
"Keep that for your next wedding," I said.
"Hazel," my mother said, "do not make a scene."
"You're the one laughing in a hallway," I said. "I only opened the door."
Nobody answered that.
So I stepped out.
At the front desk the clerk asked for my insurance card.
My bag was heavy. When I dug for my wallet, a stiff white envelope slid out and landed on the counter between us.
The return address in the corner read Department of Trauma Surgery, St. Brigid's Hospital.
It was the fifth one. I hadn't opened any of them.
I do not open mail from that building.
I pushed it back into my bag and found the card.
The clerk typed. Her smile slipped.
"I'm so sorry, Ms. Coughlan," she said. "Your domestic partner coverage was cancelled this morning."
"By who?"
"By the policyholder. Mr. Wodehouse. It took effect at nine."
I had forty-one dollars in my wallet and a baby turning over under my ribs.
The clerk asked, very kindly, how I would like to pay for today's visit.
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