Two Days Before Our Divorce Was Final, He Wrecked His Car, and the Hospital Called His Wife and Not the Fiancée He Left Me For novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Is Mrs. Colvin Here
A nurse calls for Mrs. Colvin and two women stand; Dean's chart, phone and wallet all still name Claire, so she signs for his surgery and the fiancee has to be told it is Friday.
The nurse said, "Is Mrs. Colvin here?" and two women stood up.
One of them was me.
The other was Patty Colvin, who has been Mrs. Colvin since 1987 and has never once shared it.
We looked at each other across the waiting room at St. Vincent's.
It was 11:40 on a Friday night, and the only other sound was a vending machine eating somebody's dollar.
The nurse had a clipboard and a lanyard covered in cartoon tooth stickers from the pediatric floor.
"Mrs. Dean Colvin," she said. "Dean's wife."
Patty's face did something complicated.
She sat back down slowly.
I stayed standing, because I was the one.
For another two days and a weekend, I was the one.
Dean had filed for divorce fifty-eight days ago.
The state of Indiana makes you wait sixty before a judge can sign anything.
Our hearing was Monday at nine.
"I'm Claire," I said.
My voice came out normal, which surprised me.
I had been wiping down my kitchen counters at eleven at night when the phone rang, because counters were a thing I could finish.
A stranger had asked if I was the wife of Dean Colvin, and I had said, before I could think, "Yes."
Then I had driven thirty-five minutes across Indianapolis in my work clogs.
"Come with me, hon," the nurse said. "I need to talk to you about your husband."
"Claire."
The voice came from the corner by the fish tank.
Mandy Quade stood up, and the whole room seemed to rearrange itself around her.
She was twenty-nine, in a camel coat that cost more than my car payment, with her hair pulled back.
Mandy had tracked Dean's phone to the hospital, I learned later.
Nobody had called her.
Nobody had called Patty either.
"Claire, honey," Mandy said. "Come here. You must be exhausted."
She took both my hands.
Her fingers were ice cold, and she squeezed them.
"We're all family tonight," she said. "Patty and I have been here an hour. Why don't you let me handle the paperwork and go home and rest?"
It was a lovely offer.
It was so lovely I checked her face for the catch.
The catch was in her left hand, which was still holding mine.
On her ring finger sat a small dark sapphire in a plain gold band.
I knew that ring.
It had belonged to my great-grandmother and then my mother, and it had gone missing from my jewelry dish in March.
Dean had told me he'd taken it to be cleaned and lost it somewhere.
I looked at it for a moment.
Then I decided it could wait until he was out of surgery.
"That's kind," I said, and took my hands back. "I'll go with the nurse."
"Claire, really, you shouldn't have to," Patty said from her chair. She had her purse in her lap with both hands on the clasp. "Not after what you've put him through."
I turned and looked at her.
"What I've put him through?"
"The papers," Patty said. "A man doesn't wreck his car for no reason."
Four people in the room pretended to read their phones.
Past the glass doors to the ambulance bay, a paramedic stood holding a paper cup.
He wore navy EMS blues, and he looked at me, and then at the floor.
It was Will Barrett, who lives on the other side of my duplex wall and had no reason to be at this hospital at midnight.
He lifted two fingers off the cup and said nothing at all.
The nurse touched my elbow, gently.
I could have gone home right then.
Every person in that room would have understood, and a few might have clapped.
I stood there with my keys in my hand and thought about a man who hadn't spoken to me in nineteen days, lying on a table somewhere down that hall.
So I stayed.
The nurse led me to a little family room with a box of tissues and a painting of a lighthouse.
"Mr. Colvin came in at 10:15," she said. "Car against a bridge pier. His left femur is broken, so are three ribs, and there's a bleed in his abdomen we're taking him up to fix."
She turned the clipboard around.
"He can't consent for himself, so I need his surrogate. That's the spouse."
"We're separated," I said.
"Are you divorced?"
"Monday."
"Then today you're the one."
She read from her sheet in a voice that had done this a thousand times.
"Emergency contact in his chart is Claire Colvin, spouse. The medical ID on his phone says Claire, wife. There's a card in his wallet in his handwriting that says the same."
She turned a page.
"And his insurance enrollment still lists you as his covered spouse."
Dean had been gone since April.
He had a fiancée, a condo downtown, and a wedding venue booked for December.
And every single form he owned still said me.
I picked up the pen and signed on the line.
My hand didn't shake until I'd finished.
Behind me, the door to the family room opened, and Mandy's heels clicked in.
"I'm his fiancée," she said, very quietly and very sweetly. "I have every right to know how he is."
The nurse didn't look up from my signature.
"Ma'am, it's Friday," she said gently to Mandy. "The divorce isn't final until Monday morning, and I can only talk to his wife."
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