Chapter 3

I couldn't leave my mother alone, so I stayed at the hospital with her for a week before I went home for a change of clothes.

The front door wasn't properly shut. It occurred to me, too late, that neither Claire nor Noah was on shift that day.

I pushed it open and found the two of them wrapped around each other in the living room, Noah's mouth on hers.

Neither of them had expected me. Claire pulled back from him fast, her lips moving like she meant to explain. A few years ago the sight would have destroyed me. Now I only looked away from her swollen mouth and found I had no appetite for any of it.

Before I could say anything Noah was on his feet and across the room, blocking my way. "Adrian, Claire and I were just messing around. We've always been like this. When I was little she used to— Look, don't let me wreck things between you. She really does love you. I'm the one with nobody else."

He kept going, the self-pity thickening as he went, and I couldn't make myself care. "Sure. Are you done? I've got somewhere to be."

He stood there looking foolish, and whatever Claire had been about to say stuck in her throat. She frowned. "It isn't what it looked like." Then, stiffly: "How's your mother?"

I stopped. I thought about her, still not awake. "Thanks to the pair of you, she still hasn't opened her eyes."

I pushed past Noah to get my clothes, and my not caring seemed to get under his skin worse than shouting would have. He cut me off again, his eyes going red.

"Adrian, you're Claire's husband. I've always respected you. Why can't you stand me? Your mother was already in that condition. If I hadn't operated she'd be in a coffin by now. Someone that far gone taking up a bed is a waste of hospital resources—"

I hit him before the thought finished, and when I came back to myself half his face was swollen with the print of my fist on it.

Claire was there instantly, pulling him behind her, staring at me with something close to hatred. My palm was stinging; I put my hand behind my back.

"Apologize. That's twice you've hit him, so apologize, now. Adrian, people are supposed to know what gratitude is. He saved your mother's life, and you questioned him, you hit him, and you've never once said thank you. Where were you raised?"

Each sentence went in like a splinter and stayed there.

For ten years she had come down on Noah's side, every time. She called it a debt to her mentor, but I knew what was in her face when she looked at him.

I looked down at the long scar across my palm. I have never been able to forget that day. The rain had my car sliding on the highway until it rolled, and a steel bar went through my shoulder. The hospital issued three critical-condition notices and there was nobody to sign any of them, because Claire was at Noah's eighteenth birthday party. They called her more than a dozen times and she never picked up.

I used to tell myself that once Noah was grown and able to stand on his own, Claire and I would get our life back. It never once occurred to me that she would fall in love with him.

Looking at her face now, the last of that hope went out.

"Isn't that your job as a doctor?"

Claire blinked at me.

"Or does every patient you've ever treated owe you their undying gratitude? Doesn't the hospital pay you? Did I sign that consent form? Did either of you ever treat my mother's life as a life?"

Her face went through several colors. She laughed, furious, and picked up her phone.

"Aren't you something now. If you won't apologize, don't blame me for teaching you a lesson. Ten years of marriage, and you know exactly how much I've done for that woman. I'm having her bed cleared right now. She's taken up this hospital's resources long enough."