Chapter 3 - The Confession on Speakerphone
I stared at the screen, watching the letters pulse against the dark glass.
“Answer it,” Zachary said quietly, his eyes fixed on mine. “Put it on speaker.”
I swiped the green icon and laid the phone flat on the table, hitting the speaker button.
“Samantha?” Gemma’s voice came through, high-pitched, laced with a frantic, defensive edge that she always used when she knew she was cornered. “Sam, please don't hang up. Andrew and I... we didn't mean for it to happen like this. You have to understand.”
“Understand what, Gemma?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. “That while I was elbow-deep in a child’s abdomen keeping her alive, you were slipping into my wedding dress?”
“It wasn't your dress!” Gemma snapped, her defensive veneer cracking instantly. “It was my fitting. Andrew called me two weeks ago when you kept canceling your fittings because of your hospital shifts. He said... he said the wedding was falling apart anyway, and if you didn't care enough to show up to the rehearsals, someone else had to step in to save the deposits!”
The diner around us seemed to blur. My chest tightened until breathing felt like swallowing glass.
“Save the deposits?” I repeated, the words tasting like poison. “You planned an entire wedding behind my back?”
“It wasn't behind your back!” Andrew’s voice suddenly broke into the line, harsh and desperate. He must have snatched the phone from Gemma. “Sam, be reasonable! You haven't been home before midnight in four months! You missed our anniversary dinner, you missed my parents' anniversary, and today, on the most important day of my life, you chose a stranger's kid over standing at the altar with me!”
“She wasn't a stranger, Andrew,” I said, every ounce of warmth draining from my tone. “She was a six-year-old girl bleeding to death on an operating table. And you knew that. You knew exactly what I was doing.”
“We gave you an out,” Andrew hissed over the speaker, his mask of polite exhaustion completely gone. “Brenda told you to stay at the hospital. We knew you wouldn't leave the operating room. That’s why we had the backup license ready. Gemma was there. Gemma actually wanted to be a wife, not a surgeon married to a hospital.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
In the quiet booth of the diner, the air felt completely exhausted. I sat frozen, staring at the glowing screen.
Zachary reached across the table, his hand covering mine. His touch was warm, steady, and entirely grounding. “You didn't lose a husband today, Doctor. You lost a parasite. But something tells me this isn't just about a wedding. That architectural firm he built... whose name is on the commercial lease?”
May you like
I looked up at him, the pieces of a much larger, darker puzzle finally clicking into place.
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