The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fourth Floor
Thirty weeks pregnant, Beth finds her boyfriend's pregnant wife in the private maternity suite he chose for her, and a birth worksheet naming the wife as her baby's mother; locked in, she pulls the fire alarm and walks out.
I thought I was the woman carrying Oscar Wentworth's baby.
Then I took the wrong staircase and found his wife.
It was my thirty-week checkup, a Tuesday in March.
Oscar had insisted I deliver at Lowther Memorial, the private hospital in Roland Park his family gave money to.
"The fourth floor is like a hotel," he'd said, rubbing my belly in bed. "I want you spoiled."
The fourth floor had its own elevator and a nurse at a marble desk.
Nobody got up there without a keycard.
I had a keycard with my name on it, in gold.
That day the nurse at the desk was on the phone, laughing, and I really had to pee.
So I didn't wait. I took the stairwell door behind the plants.
The bathroom sign pointed left.
I went right, because the baby was sitting on my bladder and I wasn't thinking.
The corridor on the right was quieter than mine. Thicker carpet. Fresh white lilies in a vase.
Every door had a brass plate.
The third one said, MRS. OSCAR WENTWORTH.
I stood there and read it again.
The door was open a few inches.
Inside, a blonde woman sat up in a bed with cream sheets, one hand on her round belly.
She was pregnant. Maybe as far along as me.
A man sat in the chair beside her, holding her other hand.
He had his back to me, but I knew the back of that neck.
I had kissed it that morning, before he left for "a board meeting."
"You should eat something," Oscar told her. "Your father will have my head if you skip lunch again."
She laughed a little. "My father will have your head regardless."
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
On her finger was a diamond the size of a sugar cube.
I backed away from the door before either of them looked up.
My heart was going so hard the baby kicked back.
Two years.
He told me he was single.
He told me his family wanted him to marry a donor's daughter, and that once our baby came, he'd make them accept me.
I'd believed him because I wanted to.
I walked until the corridor opened into a little nurses' station with nobody at it.
A clipboard lay on the counter.
I don't know why I looked. Habit, maybe.
I'm a birth registrar at Mercy General, the county hospital across town. Every baby born there, I fill out the worksheet that becomes the birth certificate.
I know that form better than my own face.
This one was half filled in, in neat blue ink.
Expected date of delivery: May 26.
My due date.
Mother's blood type: O negative.
Mine.
Father: Oscar James Wentworth.
Mother: Philippa Lowther Wentworth.
The baby inside me rolled over.
There was a sticky note on the corner of the clipboard in a doctor's hand.
"Per E.L., both files ready. Use whichever delivers healthy."
I took out my phone and photographed the worksheet, the sticky note and the clipboard's label.
My hands didn't shake until I'd put the phone away.
Then I walked back to my side of the floor, calm.
The nurse at the marble desk was off the phone now.
She smiled at me too brightly.
"Beth! There you are, Ms. Fairweather. We were worried."
"I'm finished for today," I said. "I'll see myself down."
"Oh, honey, no. Dr. Wentworth's orders." She caught herself. "Mr. Wentworth's. He's asked us to admit you for precautionary bed rest. Your room's all ready."
"I'm not on bed rest. My blood pressure's fine."
"Just to be safe. For the baby."
I pressed my keycard to the elevator panel.
The light blinked red.
I pressed it again. Red.
The nurse came around the desk, still smiling.
"Those were deactivated this morning. Mr. Wentworth wants you comfortable. You'll have everything you need up here."
Two orderlies were coming down the hall with a wheelchair.
I looked at the elevator, the locked stairwell door I'd come through, the windows that didn't open.
A gilded cage, with lilies.
On the wall beside the elevator was a red box.
PULL IN CASE OF FIRE.
I'd never done anything like it in my life.
I put my hand on the handle and pulled it down hard.
The alarm went off.
Strobe lights flashed white on every wall.
The nurse's smile finally fell off her face.
"You can't do that!"
"I just did."
Every door on the floor opened at once.
Patients in silk robes. Husbands with coffee. Somebody's mother with a tiny dog.
The emergency stairwell doors unlocked with a loud clack.
I walked into the crowd and let it carry me down four flights.
Nobody stops a pregnant woman in a fire evacuation.
Outside it was cold and bright.
Everyone gathered on the lawn across the circular drive while fire trucks pulled in with their sirens going.
I kept walking toward the gate.
"Wait."
I turned.
The blonde woman from the bed was standing on the grass in a cream cashmere wrap, one hand under her belly.
Philippa Wentworth.
Up close she was thinner than she'd looked lying down, and very pale.
Oscar wasn't with her. I looked for him anyway.
"He went back in for my bag," she said, reading my face. "He'll be out in a minute."
"Then I'll be gone right away."
She looked down at my belly, then up at my eyes.
She didn't look angry.
She had the hollow, exhausted look of someone waiting for a blow to fall.
"You're the other one," she said. "Aren't you?"
My mouth went dry.
"I didn't know he was married."
"I know. He's very good at that." She glanced back at the hospital doors. "Listen to me. Whatever they told you, don't go back to your apartment tonight."
"Why?"
Philippa pulled her wrap tighter.
"Because my father has a key."
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