I labored for ten straight hours in the delivery room, nearly dying to bring my daughter into the world.

When they wheeled me back to my room, I found my husband, Nolan Gilbert, handing our baby to his childhood sweetheart, Renee Simmons.

"Renee, aren't you childfree? Here, hold her, feel what it's like to be a mom."

Renee was wearing the nursing pajamas that should have been mine, propped up against my hospital bed, smiling all soft and coy.

I bit down against the searing pain and stared at Nolan, refusing to believe my own eyes.

He only frowned and lowered his voice to scold me.

"Can you not be so petty?"

"Renee's never going to have kids in her whole life. She just wants to borrow your baby to feel a little maternal love. It's not like she's taking her from you."

"Once she's had enough, the baby's still going to call you Mom, isn't she?"

Then he gently tucked the blanket around Renee, and even pulled out his phone to take a mother-daughter photo of the two of them.

My heart plunged straight into ice.

It had been like this from the moment I got pregnant.

Because Renee was childfree, because she'd never have children of her own.

So she got to pick the hospital first. She got to name the baby first.

And now, even the child I'd traded my life to bring into the world, she wanted to steal the very first embrace.

The nurse who'd wheeled me in hesitated for a long moment, then asked me what I wanted to do.

Looking at the three of them, so cozy together, like a perfect little family, I touched my sagging belly.

"Get me a private room, please."

A bed someone else had slept in, a man someone else had used. Both left a bad taste in my mouth. I could do without them.

...

The nurse's face was written all over with reluctance.

She looked at me, then at the man and woman chatting and laughing in the room, and finally nodded, turning my wheelchair to leave.

"Ms. Fox, the regular rooms are this way. Let me take you over."

The wheelchair had barely turned when a large hand clamped down hard on it.

Nolan blocked our path, his brows knotted tight.

"Prudence Fox, what are you making trouble over now?"

"You just gave birth. Instead of resting properly, you're running around everywhere?"

I looked at him and repeated it, word by word: "I want a different room."

"What do you mean, a different room!"

Nolan's voice shot up, then, as if he caught himself, dropped low again.

"You just share a room with Renee, that's all. Renee's frail, so she gets the bed."

I almost laughed out loud.

"Nolan, I'm the one who just gave birth, and you want her to have the bed?"

"Is there a problem?" he answered, without a shred of shame.

"Renee's childfree. She's never going to have kids in her whole life, but she's always wanted to know what it feels like to be a mom, to have a proper postpartum rest."

"So what if you let her stay half a month? It's just one bed."

He bent down, leaning close to my ear, and spoke in that tone of I'm only doing this for your own good.

"Once she's had enough, you're still the one raising the baby, aren't you? You're weak right now anyway, so let her get you through the hardest first two weeks. Isn't that great?"

I turned my head away, not wanting to breathe in the scent of Renee's perfume clinging to him.

My gaze slipped past him, landing on the room, where Renee had already scooped up my daughter.

Her hold was clumsy, but that didn't stop her from putting on a show, having the aide snap photos of her and my daughter from every angle.

Nolan followed my line of sight, and something almost like approval crossed his face.

"See? Look how much maternal love Renee has."

"Prudence, giving birth is just a biological process. What difference does it make who raises her?"

"After Renee finishes these two weeks of postpartum rest, you can officially take over. It won't keep you from being a mom."

My heart sank, inch by inch, to the very bottom.

The hallway was full of people coming and going.

Other new mothers were surrounded by their families, fussed over, asked how they were feeling.

Only me, sitting alone in the wheelchair.

Inside the room, Nolan was tenderly coaching Renee on how to hold the baby. The three of them framed together made a picture so harmonious it hurt to look at.

I ran my hand over my own belly, empty now, laced with stretch marks, the loose skin still sagging from the delivery.

"Let's go," I told the nurse.

"Are you really going to... leave the baby here?" the nurse asked, unable to believe it.

I looked at my phone's lock screen, at the photo of the cozy little nursery I'd decorated with my own hands, and gave a bitter little laugh.

"They won't let me take her."

A family passing by peered through the crack in the door, murmuring with envy.

"That mom's so lucky. Her husband looks so considerate, treats her like a queen."

"Right? This VIP suite must run a few thousand a day. Same kind of people, completely different luck."

Another family member's eyes settled on me, full of pity.

"Look at that one. Had her baby all by herself. Her face is white as a sheet."

I swallowed the sourness rising in my throat and repeated to the nurse.

"Please, take me to the farthest standard room. As far as possible."

I'd barely settled into the room they'd scrambled to free up when Nolan's message came through.

"Are you done throwing your fit? Get back here already. Don't put Renee under any stress."

I stared at the message, shaking with rage.

"Nolan, I'm done with this marriage."

I was about to send it when a group chat popped up, filling the screen. The family group chat.

Renee had posted nine photos in a row.

One of her kissing my daughter's forehead.

One of her and Nolan with their heads pressed together, playing with the baby.

The caption read: "Blessed with a baby girl. Mother and daughter both doing well."

The chat exploded in an instant.

Nolan's aunt: "Oh my, so Renee's official now?"

Nolan's cousin: "Congrats to my brother and his wife! Oh, wait—congrats to the godmother!"

Nolan's mother went straight for a big cash gift, addressed specifically to Renee.

"Renee's worked so hard. This godmother cares more than the real mom."

I couldn't hold back anymore, and I fired off one line in the chat.

"Do you all think this is funny? I'm the child's mother!"

The next second, a notice popped up on the screen.

【Group admin Nolan has muted all members.】

Nolan's call came chasing right after.

"Prudence, what the hell has gotten into you?"

"Delete that line you just posted, and then apologize to the relatives."

His talent for turning black into white made me laugh in disbelief.

"Apologize? I just came back from the brink of death. Why should I apologize?"

"Is it because I won't hand over my newborn daughter for your childhood sweetheart to play with like a toy? Or because I interrupted your happy little family fantasy?"

My voice trembled with fury.

On the other end, Nolan only sighed, his tone dripping with weary patience.

"I knew it. Your postpartum hormones are all over the place, you're too sensitive."

"Renee meant well. She just wanted to share the load, take some weight off you. And the relatives were only joking. Do you really have to blow it up like this?"

"Do you have any idea? The second you posted that line, you scared Renee into tears."

He paused, then said in a commanding tone.

"Now, right now, send a cash gift in the group. Say you were just in a bad mood and misspoke."

"Then publicly acknowledge that Renee is the child's godmother. And we'll call this whole thing over."

So it turned out that in his heart, a single tear from Renee weighed far more than the ten months I carried this child, more than the life-and-death ordeal I'd just been through.

I gathered every ounce of strength I had and choked out the two words.

"Divorce."

“Nolan, let's get a divorce. I keep the baby.”

On the other end, a long silence.

But the next second, what came through wasn't his answer. It was Renee's fake, tearful little voice.

“Nolan, did I do something wrong…… Does she hate me even more now……”

Then I heard Nolan cover the mouthpiece, though his voice still came through clear as ever.

He soothed her gently “Don't cry. This has nothing to do with you.”

Only after he'd finished comforting Renee did Nolan pick the phone back up, his voice thick with irritation.

“Prudence, can you not go looking for trouble on a good day like today?”

“I'm warning you. Get back to your room right now and apologize to Renee. Don't push me.”

As if that still wasn't enough, he let out a scornful laugh.

“Divorce? You think I don't know what's going through your head? You just want to use the baby to twist my arm.”

“Let me tell you, you dare bring up divorce, and I'll make sure you never see this child again in your life. Can you afford that?”

I hung up.

One more word and I would have thrown up.

I dragged his number into my block list.

The postpartum contractions and the stitched episiotomy throbbed in waves, a reminder of just how absurd everything I'd just been through was.

“Honey, are you all right?”

The nurse making up my bed couldn't hold back. She'd heard the whole thing.

“That man is a real piece of garbage! When I had my baby, my husband was so worried about me he ran out overnight to borrow money and bought a whole hen to make me soup.”

“How can you put up with this?”

Her words pried open a memory I'd sealed away.

I thought back to that brutal car accident.

Both my legs had been shattered. The doctors said I might spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

It was Nolan who cared for me at my bedside, cleaning up after me, never once leaving to change his own clothes, for a full six months.

To scrape together the steep cost of my surgery, he even sold his family's old ancestral home.

The day I was discharged, he carried me on his back, stepping down the hospital stairs one at a time, and said in my ear.

“Prudence, don't be afraid. From now on, I'll be your legs.”

That devotion, that refusal to leave me, once moved everyone. It made me love him with my whole heart for all these years.

But this devotion, when did it change?

Maybe everything changed the moment Renee, under the pretense of being childfree, moved in near our home.

Nolan said she was lonely on her own, that we had to look after her.

So when Renee couldn't sleep, he could drive me out of the master bedroom in the middle of the night and stay up talking with her until dawn.

When I bled in my third trimester, he could turn off his phone to go see the northern lights in Scandinavia with Renee, leaving me lying alone in a cold pool of blood.

He could even take the money I'd set aside for my delivery and buy Renee a discontinued designer bag she'd been pining over.

Every time, he guilt-tripped me with how lonely she was all by herself.

Every time, afterward he numbed me with double the tenderness and remorse.

Living on my hopes for the baby about to be born, I compromised again and again, forgave again and again.

Until today.

I quietly opened my messages and left that family group chat that made me sick.

Nolan's icon quickly popped up with a warning emoji.

【You'd better not regret this.】

I didn't reply.

He thought I'd come crawling back soon enough, like always, wagging my tail and begging him for the baby's sake.

But he didn't know.

This time, I really was done with him.

I lay back down on the bed.

The tearing pain below, mixed with the raw ache as the anesthesia wore off, left me drifting in and out.