The Night I Stopped Waiting for My Husband novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Empty Chair
On their fifth anniversary Lucy waits at a table for two while Harrison plays hero for Rosalind, until blood on the booth seat sends her to the hospital, where she takes his name off her emergency form and writes in Margaret's. Hook: Rosalind texts that she'll keep Harrison busy, though Lucy never told her where she was.
The waiter took Harrison's place setting away at nine-forty, and the whole room watched him do it.
I let him. I had stopped pretending the chair would fill.
It was our fifth anniversary, and the corner booth was the one I had begged the hostess for in August.
I had asked for the seat with its back to the window.
Across the square, lit up all night, stood the Conrad Merrick Memorial Library.
Harrison called it the best thing his family had ever built.
I had not set foot inside it in five years.
In my purse, folded in an envelope, was a printed ultrasound.
Thirty weeks. A girl.
I had worn loose coats since spring and kept the news back for a night when Harrison was home and awake and looking at me.
He had been overseas for six weeks of it. Then he had been at Rosalind's.
My phone buzzed on the tablecloth.
Harrison, 6:52: Rosalind's alarm is going off, the house system is glitching. Twenty minutes, tops. Order the wine.
Harrison, 7:40: Her car won't start either. Almost done. You know I'd never choose anyone over you.
Harrison, 8:55: Stay put. I'm making it up to you tonight, I promise.
I read them in order and put the phone face down each time.
At nine-twelve it lit up again, and this time it was not Harrison.
Rosalind had posted a video to her story, public, the way she posted everything.
Harrison stood in her kitchen with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, stirring a pot, laughing at something off camera.
The caption said: Couldn't get through tonight without him. Best brother-in-law alive.
I had the volume up. I had forgotten to turn it down.
His laugh filled our corner of the restaurant.
The woman at the next table looked over, then at my empty chair.
"Honey," she said gently. "Is that your husband?"
"Yes," I said. "It's our anniversary."
Her husband stopped chewing. Two girls at the bar turned around on their stools.
The waiter set a glass of water down in front of me, very quietly.
Then the cramp came, low and sharp.
I put my hand under the table and pressed.
It came again, and this time it brought something warm.
I stood up too fast. The napkin slid off my lap.
There was blood on the seat of the booth.
"Oh, no," the woman at the next table said. "Oh, sweetheart. Somebody call someone."
The manager called an ambulance.
The waiter held my coat and my purse and my arm all the way to the door, and he did not let go until the paramedics did.
In the ambulance I pressed the envelope against my stomach and said the baby's name in my head, though she did not have one yet.
I did not call Harrison.
I let the hospital do it.
The doctor was a tired woman with a clip in her hair, and she spoke fast and plainly.
The placenta had partly pulled away from the wall of my uterus.
The baby's heartbeat was strong. I was not in labor yet.
But I was staying, flat on my back, and if the bleeding came back I would be in surgery within minutes.
"Is there someone I should call?" she asked. "Family? Your husband?"
"The nurse already has his number," I said.
The nurse stepped into the corridor with my phone.
She came back after four minutes with her mouth pressed thin.
"I told him you'd been admitted and were stable," she said. "I said the details needed to come from you."
"What did he say?"
"He asked if it was serious. I said you'd tell him yourself."
She looked at the floor.
"He said his sister-in-law was in a very bad place tonight, and he'd come in the morning."
Nobody in the room said anything.
On the table at my bedside lay the emergency contact form, with Harrison Merrick, husband, printed on the first line in my own handwriting from last spring.
I picked up the pen.
I drew one line through his name.
Underneath I wrote Margaret Doyle, the woman who taught me to draw a roof that stands, and I put her number beside it.
"I'll call her myself," I told the nurse. "From now on, I decide who gets called."
It was one line, and it cost me nothing, after five years of paying.
So I stopped waiting.
My phone buzzed against the blanket at eleven forty-one.
It was Rosalind.
Lucy, I'm so sorry about tonight, it's all my fault. Don't be upset with Harrison. Rest, sweetheart, I'll keep him busy tomorrow so he doesn't fuss over you.
I read it three times.
Then I read the top of the screen again.
I had not told Rosalind where I was.
Harrison had.
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