“Where’s her family?” the doctor asked. “A procedure like this needs a family member to sign and stay with her.”

I stayed quiet for a long time, and in the end I still dialed Rhys’s number.

It rang and rang before it connected.

In the background, Delia’s voice, thick with a coddled little sob: “Rhys, my foot’s swelling up even worse, come back and look, please…”

Rhys’s tone softened instantly. “Don’t move, I’m coming right now.”

On my end, I spoke up. “Rhys, come to the city hospital.”

His voice cooled a few degrees. “If you really don’t feel well, just have the doctor handle it by the book. What good would my being there do?”

“The doctor says a family member has to sign.” My voice was faint, so low I could barely hear myself. “I don’t have any other family. You’re the only one I can call.”

There was silence on the line for two seconds, then a sigh with his temper barely held under it.

“Fiona, stop doing this all the time. I know you’re an orphan, that you never lived outside that group home growing up, and I understand you feel insecure. But you can’t keep using that to guilt-trip me every single time.”

The words drove into my eardrum like a needle.

The pain doubled me over, and my vision went black.

The call cut off. I stared at the dead screen, my legs weak under me.

He knew perfectly well I had no one in the world, and right now he’d turned that knowledge into his reason for pushing me away.

I braced myself against the wall until I was steady, then scrolled to a number I hadn’t dialed in a very long time.

It picked up almost the instant it rang.

“Fiona?”

My voice shook with the pain. “Can you come to the hospital?”

A beat of silence on his end, then the sound of a chair being shoved back.

“Send me the address. I’m on my way.”

……

That night, Rhys took Delia to a class reunion.

A few rounds in, someone got everyone going with a game of truth, and the bottle spun to a stop pointing at Rhys.

“Rhys, if Delia hadn’t gone abroad back then, wouldn’t the two of you have gotten together ages ago?”

The private room went silent, then broke into knowing laughter.

Delia leaned in against him, dropping her head with a smile to smooth it over. “Come on, quit it. Rhys has been married three years.”

That was what she said, but her hand slid right onto the back of his.

Rhys didn’t pull away.

Someone hooted. “Holding hands and still saying quit it? Dr. Maddox, answer the question!”

He lifted his glass. “Different question.”

The laughter got louder.

Delia seized the moment and picked up his phone to take a selfie, her fingertip pausing over the lock screen passcode.

Six digits. Still her birthday.

“You never even changed the passcode.” She smiled, her eyes curving, and leaned close to his shoulder for the photo. “My back won’t let me bend down, so cover for me a little.”

Rhys frowned, but he still turned to block one corner of the frame for her.

When someone egged him on to post it, he said mildly, “Whatever. My wife doesn’t look at this stuff anyway.”

He paused, then added, “Her temper’s been strange lately. Always complaining she doesn’t feel well.”

The laughter gradually died down.

In the corner, a female colleague suddenly looked up. “Are you saying Fiona’s faking being sick?”

“What else.”

The woman’s expression changed.

“But yesterday I was at the city hospital, and I saw her being helped into the ER by a man.”

“The attending said it was an ectopic pregnancy, ruptured and bleeding. The one who signed was that man. Not you.”