My Husband Left Me in Labor for My Best Friend and Her Baby novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fox Blanket
Brent leaves Corrine's emergency C-section to take her daughter's blanket to Summer, and a photo and a hidden page tell her why. She takes his name off her door, and Summer's husband texts to ask who is holding his baby.
The nurses were wheeling me to the operating room when my husband walked the other way with our daughter's fox blanket.
I saw it over my shoulder from the gurney.
Orange fleece with a white tail, folded over his arm.
I had washed it twice and packed it myself.
"Brent!" I said. "Where are you going?"
He turned around at once and jogged back to the gurney, still holding the blanket.
The monitor beside my head was beeping too fast, and a nurse was saying my name.
"Your friend is in 4B," Brent said. "Her husband's on a ship and can't get home, and she's alone in there."
"I'm having an emergency C-section."
"I know, babe. You've got the best team in the building."
He touched my hair, quickly, with two fingers.
"Twenty minutes. I'll be back before you're even out of surgery."
"The blanket is for our daughter."
"It's a blanket, Cor. Her baby has nothing to be wrapped in."
Her name was Summer, and she was my best friend.
I had picked this hospital so we could have our babies on the same floor.
Brent had called me selfish for asking him to stay.
The doors swung open, and the cold air of the operating room hit my face.
The last thing I saw of him was the white tail of the fox going around the corner.
I woke up in recovery with my hands strapped down and a nurse saying my daughter was fine.
I had named her Posy months ago, in my head, and Brent had never asked what I was calling her.
Six pounds, two ounces, pink and loud.
She was in the nursery under a warmer, and they would bring her to me when I could hold her.
"Where's my husband?" I asked.
The nurse looked at the door and then at the clock.
"He hasn't come back yet, honey."
It had been five hours.
My father walked in a minute later, still in his work jacket.
Norm had driven two hours after the nurse called him, because nobody else had.
He held my face in both hands and cried without making a sound.
My phone was on the tray table, and I woke it up with my thumb.
A dozen missed calls from my mother-in-law.
Nothing from Brent.
Then a notification from a woman I barely knew, Summer's cousin, who had tagged me in a photo by mistake.
I opened it.
My husband sat in a hospital chair, grinning at the camera.
He was holding a newborn baby boy with a thick head of black hair.
The baby was wrapped in an orange fleece blanket with a white fox tail.
Under the photo, Summer had written: "Our boy is here. Thank you for being the best husband and daddy, Brent. I love you, my husband."
I read it three times.
Norm took the phone out of my hand, gently, and looked at it.
His jaw moved once.
"Open her page," I said. "Please, Dad. She's blocked me, I think. Use yours."
He pulled out his own phone with his big careful fingers and typed her name.
His face changed while he scrolled.
"Corrine," he said.
"Read them to me."
"I don't think you should."
"Dad."
He turned the screen toward me.
Summer had posted an anniversary for every year, always on the same date in June.
A beach dinner, with Brent's watch on the table.
The watch I had given him for his birthday.
A ski cabin I had never been invited to.
A sonogram, posted in the spring, with a heart drawn around it.
The newest one was from three weeks ago.
"Three years with my person," it said. "Soon we'll be a real family."
Three weeks ago I had been thirty-seven weeks pregnant, folding tiny socks.
He had told me he was working late.
Every one of those posts had been set so that I could not see it.
She had sat on my couch eating my cooking and held my hand at my baby shower.
I thought about the thirty-six-week scan.
I had begged him to come.
I had texted him three times in a row, and he had sent back a thumbs up and never showed.
I looked at my father, who was waiting for me to fall apart.
I didn't.
"Dad, go find the charge nurse, please."
"Corrine, you just had surgery."
"I know. Please."
She came in with a clipboard and a kind face.
"Brent Bozeman is on my chart as my husband and my daughter's father," I said. "I want him taken off every list you have."
"I can restrict visitors, but as the father he's usually entitled to see the baby."
"Then restrict me from him. He doesn't come into this room, and he doesn't touch her without me saying so."
"Mrs. Bozeman..."
"It's Lawton. Corrine Lawton. Please write that on my wristband."
She looked at my father and then at me, and she wrote it down.
I had never been this calm, and it frightened me a little.
So I took my husband's name off my door.
My phone buzzed as the nurse left.
A number I didn't know.
It was a screenshot of the same photo, the fox blanket and the black-haired baby and my husband's grin.
Under it, a message.
"My name is Ward Delaney. Summer is my wife. I'm on a ship in the North Sea, and I just got this. Who is the man holding my baby?"
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