He Got Engaged During My Labor, So I Chose His Rival novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Billing Desk

At the county hospital Chase's cancelled card and insurance leave Janie quoting clauses at the billing clerk, and Lyle pays the deposit against a written IOU. Lacey arrives with a gift basket and a photographer, then the room's TV shows Chase announcing that his wife hid another man's baby.

The county hospital took us in through the ambulance doors with Lyle jogging behind the stretcher.

He was holding the shower curtain.

He had folded it into a square the size of a pillow, and no one had been able to make him put it down.

By ten that night I was in a bed with my son asleep on my chest and a rib that gasped whenever I did.

A woman from the billing office came in with a tablet and a tired smile.

"We just need a card for the four hundred dollar deposit, Mrs. Holloway."

"It's Janie Hendry," I said. "Use Chase's black card. Clause 14(b) says I can for wife-related emergencies."

She tapped the tablet and waited.

Then she tapped it again.

"It says the card was cancelled at seven forty-two."

Chase's side had cancelled my card while I was in a stranger's backseat, trying to breathe through a contraction.

"Then try the insurance," I said. "Clause 12 says my coverage ends when the divorce is final."

"Final?"

"I haven't signed anything. It's not final until I sign."

The clerk made a call.

The hold music was a piano playing a song I was fairly sure was meant for elevators.

Lyle sat in the corner chair, the folded curtain on his knees, and listened to the whole thing with his reading glasses on.

When the insurance company finally picked up, the clerk put them on speaker.

A man told us that the policy holder, Chase Holloway, had removed me from his plan earlier that evening.

"He did it before the papers," I said. "Which clause lets him do that?"

"Ma'am, I don't have your contract."

"I do," I said. "Page forty-one. The sixth paragraph. It says thirty days' notice."

The man typed for a while.

"I see a note that says it was done by his agent."

"His agent isn't a husband," I said.

The clerk turned her face away, and I think she was laughing.

Lyle put his hand into his plaid shirt pocket and brought out a thick fold of cash.

"Four hundred," the clerk said.

"Lyle, no."

"Ma'am, I never got paid the cleaning fee, and the card I billed it to is cancelled."

That was true. The hundred and fifty dollars he had been promised was billed to the same black card.

I took a pen from the clerk and wrote on the back of a billing form.

"IOU Lyle Baumann, four hundred dollars, plus the hundred and fifty. Repaid in full. Signed, Janie Hendry."

Lyle looked at it.

"You write that fast."

"If it isn't in writing, I don't owe it," I said. "If it is, I pay it to the penny."

He folded it carefully and put it in his wallet.

"I'm framing this," he said.

The door opened before I could answer, and a gift basket came through it first.

It was the size of a toddler.

Lacey McClintock walked in behind it in a cream coat with her blonde hair pulled over one shoulder.

Behind her was a man with a camera, and behind him was a second man holding a light.

"Oh, sweetheart," Lacey said, and her eyes were already wet. "You're okay. You're both okay."

She set the basket on the foot of my bed.

It held a blue blanket, a silver rattle, and ginger tea in a tin.

It was the same tea she had been handing me all season.

"I wanted you to hear it from me and not from the screen," she said. "I had no idea Daddy's publicist would announce it tonight. It was a surprise to me, too."

"You were on the screen," I said. "You were smiling."

"I was smiling because they told me to."

She took my hand with both of hers.

Her hands were warm. They always were.

"You were due Tuesday, weren't you?" she asked. "You told me Tuesday."

"I did."

"Gus came early, then," she said. "Gus. That's such a good name."

I had said the name to nobody but Lyle.

Then my rib twisted, and I lost the thought.

"Now," Lacey said, and she lifted the baby from my chest before I had said yes. "One picture. Just one, for the family. Chase wants the world to see that you're all right."

"I haven't signed a photo release," I said. "Page forty-four. Everything I'm in has to be signed."

"It's just a picture."

"It's just a clause."

The man with the camera had already lifted it.

I put out my hand and covered the lens.

"If that flash goes off on my son," Lyle said from his corner, "I will put this shower curtain over every one of you."

Lacey laughed, a bright, sweet laugh, and she handed Gus back to me.

"We'll do it another day," she said, and she touched my hair. "Call me when you're home. Please. I mean it."

They left. The basket stayed.

The television on the wall had been muted since I came in.

Lyle stood up to turn it off, and he stopped with the remote in his hand.

The screen showed Chase in a gray suit at a podium, his eyes red, his jaw working.

The banner underneath read: HOLLOWAY HEARTBROKEN: WIFE HID ANOTHER MAN'S BABY.

Lyle turned the sound up.

"It's the hardest night of my life," my husband told the nation.

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