My Sister's Baby Was My Husband's, So I Wed Beside Them novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Deathbed
Hailey bleeds in labor and asks for Marina; Marina promises to raise the baby, Hailey says he is Dalton's, and Dalton kneels. Marina takes off her ring and learns the bleeding stopped before Hailey called her.
The nurse shouted my name down the whole maternity ward at three in the morning.
"Family of Hailey Holloway! Her sister, please! Now!"
I ran.
Four hours earlier, my husband had texted that Hailey's labor had started and he was driving her in.
*Stay home with Ivy. I've got this. She's in good hands.*
I stayed, because Ivy was five and had a fever.
Then Hailey called me herself, crying, and told me to come.
I woke the neighbor to sit with Ivy and drove here with my coat over my pajamas.
The delivery room smelled of blood.
It was soaked through the sheets and running off the side of the bed into a steel bucket.
Two nurses held bags of blood over my sister while a doctor called out numbers.
Hailey lay in the middle of it, her face white against the pillow.
"Marina," she whispered.
I grabbed her hand.
It was cold and wet.
"I'm here. I'm right here."
"Don't go."
"I won't. I swear I won't."
Across the bed, my husband Dalton stood in the shirt he had worn to dinner, with blood on the cuff.
He didn't look at me.
In a warmer by the wall, a baby screamed, small and red and furious.
"That's your nephew," a nurse told me, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
I was crying too hard to answer.
Hailey squeezed my fingers with what strength she had.
"Promise me," she said. "If I don't wake up. Promise you'll look after him."
"I promise. I'll raise him like he's mine. I'll love him like Ivy."
I meant every word.
She shook her head slowly on the pillow.
"You don't have to," she said.
"Don't say that. You're going to be fine."
"Marina, listen. He isn't only your nephew."
The doctor stopped calling numbers.
The nurses stopped moving.
The only sound left was the monitor, beeping steadily over my sister's head.
"He's Dalton's," Hailey said.
I looked at her.
I looked at my husband.
Dalton lowered himself to his knees on the tile, right there in front of the doctor and both nurses.
He took my hand off Hailey's, and his own was shaking.
"Marina, we never wanted to hurt you," he said. "It just happened. Eleven months ago. We didn't know how to tell you."
"Eleven months," I said.
"I love her," he said. "I'm sorry. I do."
"Our daughter is home with a fever," I said. "Tonight you told me to stay with her."
"Hailey needed me here," Dalton said.
He said it plainly, and he did not apologize for it.
Hailey started to cry again, soft and sorry.
"Please don't hate us. I couldn't die without telling you."
Nobody in that room said a word.
The nurse who had wiped her eyes now stared at the floor.
On the tray beside the bed, among the gauze and the empty vials, lay a man's steel watch.
A nurse reached across to clear the tray.
"Leave it," Hailey snapped.
It was the strongest thing she had said all night.
The nurse pulled her hand back.
Then Hailey's voice went small again, and she looked at me with her wet, sorry eyes.
I had held that face when she was four and afraid of thunder.
I had paid her tuition.
I had stood in the yard at her college graduation with my husband's arm around my shoulders.
Dalton was still on his knees, holding my hand and waiting for me to forgive him.
I pulled it away.
So I took off my wedding ring.
It slid off easily. I had lost weight, and I'd never noticed.
I put it in his open palm and closed his fingers over it.
"Keep it," I said. "You two have a baby to raise."
"Marina, please," Dalton said. "Let me explain."
"You can explain to my lawyer."
I walked out and let the door swing shut.
In the hallway my knees gave out, and I caught the wall.
The doctor came out after me, pulling off his gloves.
He was a tired man with kind eyes, and he did not look at me when he spoke.
"Mrs. Pflueger, I'm sorry for all of that. Your sister is going to be all right."
"She's what?"
"The bleeding was stopped before two-thirty. Her pressure has been steady since. We've been giving her blood to be safe, but she was never in danger after that."
"She called me at ten to three," I said. "She told me she was dying."
The nurse behind him took a breath.
"Mr. Pflueger asked us not to say anything," she said quietly. "He wanted her to talk to you first."
Through the small window in the door, I could see my sister.
She was propped up on two pillows, sipping ice water through a straw.
Dalton sat on the edge of her bed with my ring still in his fist, and he was smiling at her.
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