“We’re here to visit James Devlin.”
Her eyes flick to her screen, her smile tightening slightly.“I’m sorry, but Mr.Devlin’s visitation is restricted to family only, at his parents’ request.”
Her statement is a solid wall between me and my objective.
The lie feels heavy on my tongue, but I know it’s the only way.“I’m his fiancée.”
The nurse’s expression immediately softens with sympathy.“Oh, of course.My apologies.Go right on back.It’s the last room on the right, 610.”
“Thank you.”
When we’re halfway down the corridor, I give Matthew an apologetic look.
“You said what you had to,” he reassures me, reading my mind.
We stop at the closed door.I turn to Matthew.
“I’ll be right here, love.”
I nod in gratitude, give two light knocks, and step inside.
“Can I help you?”A woman’s voice stops me in my tracks.
The older woman rises from her chair beside James’s bed.She is impeccably dressed in a tailored tweed suit, her posture ramrod straight, her silver-grey hair perfectly coiffed.Her assessing eyes rake over my jeans and sweater with undisguised derision.
“I… sorry, I’m here to see James,” I reply, forcing my voice to remain steady.
“It’s okay, Mom.This is Amy,” James says from the bed.
He’s sitting up, dressed in a simple patient gown.He looks pale and tired, a thick white bandage wrapped around his forearm.
“We specifically requested no visitors other than family,” the woman says dismissively.
Before I can say anything, James shifts in his bed, his voice weak but firm.“I said it’s fine.Leave us, please.”
His mother’s head whips toward him, her lips pressed in a thin line of disapproval.
“She’s not a stranger.Just give us a minute,” James insists.
My cheeks flush.The humiliating truth settles over me with crushing weight.
I almost married this man, and his own mother doesn’t even know who I am.
She grabs her designer handbag and walks toward the door without another glance in my direction.The scent of her strong floral perfume lingers long after the door clicks shut.
An awkward silence fills the private hospital room.James won’t meet my gaze, his attention fixed on a loose thread on the crisp white sheet covering him.I take a few hesitant steps closer, stopping at the foot of his bed.
He looks smaller here.Stripped of his expensive suits and his arrogance.
He shifts uncomfortably, wincing, and lets out a bitter, self-pitying scoff.“Look at me,” he mutters, raising his heavily bandaged forearm.“They’ve already sent two shrinks in here to talk to me about some AA-type shit.”
I just stand there, my purse held in front of me like a shield.
The silence stretches, and I can see him growing more agitated by the second.
“So, you’re the one who found me and called 911,” he says finally, his gaze lifting to me.A faint smirk on his lips.“Could’ve just let me bleed out.”He shrugs indifferently.
“How could you even think that?”I look at him, at this broken man trying to wound me with his own self-destruction, and I feel only a great, weary sadness.
