Chapter One:
Devin’s POV
I was utterly exhausted, getting home late, way later than I had planned. We had an emergency at work right as I was about to finally clock out and leave. I had texted Caleb that I’d be home‘soon’,but that wasthree hours ago. I felt bad, and I was hoping that he wouldn’t hold it against me. Opening the door to our flat, I didn’t see him in the living room or kitchen where he normally was when I got home on late nights I worked. I made my way back to the bedroom and heard loud snoring.
Damn.
I was hoping to be home before he’d gone to bed, but such is the nature of the job I guess. I wanted to talk to him about my day, and maybede-stressa little in that fun, naked kind of way. I turned around without waking him and went back out to the kitchen for a snack.
I set down the takeout I’d bought for lunch and took a couple of bites. I opened my bag, checking to see what I needed to repack. Thankfully, it was my last day of work for the week, because I was more than ready to be done. I’d already worked almost fifty hours in just the last four days, and had worked six days total for the week. I wasbeyondexhausted, but such was the life of an emergency room pediatrician. Somewhere between broken arms from falling off bicycles, two auto accidents, and an abuse case, I had the thought of needing a vacation.
After stuffing my face as fast as humanly possible, while also repacking my bag with extra scrubs, double bonnets, swapping out the dead pens for fresh ones, and adding a fewmore snacks, I finally stripped down, out of my scrubs and got into a hell-hot shower.
By the time I stepped out, steam rolled from the bathroom like a tide rolling into the beach, and I was more than ready for sleep. I probably should have gotten out after cleaning the day off of me, but the thought of letting the hot water run down my aching muscles was too much. That, and I felt like the longer I spent under the hot water, the more the hospital smell washed off of me. I hated smelling so sterile, or like whatever bodily fluids had been splattered on my scrubs that day.
My muscles always hurt more after getting car crash victims who needed to be checked out. You had to roll them slowly, carefully, and at some point, your muscles become sore from overuse. I especially hated seeing the kids who were in the auto accidents. It took so much more out of me, especially emotionally, getting them through Trauma and up to Surgery. Sometimes, all you could do was hope they would actually make it through the surgery and to recovery, in the more serious cases. Too many times, we’d had Peds patients come in, and they looked like hell from the accidents. Broken bones, broken blood vessels.
It broke my heart every time.
And telling the parents or the authorities about the extent of the damage? That was always theworstpart of this job. These kids were so dang small and shouldneverhave to be in the hospital. I knew accidents happened, but still. Kids should be exempt from this kind of pain. There were other things we had the displeasure of seeing as doctors in the emergency room. Mainly the abuse cases we would see walk through the doors.
Those were the kind of cases I secretly loved because I got to call the cops, CPS, and have them deliver justice forthose innocent little ones. I also made sure that my team always followed procedure because there was no way they were getting off on a technicality from me or the nurses I worked with. We all took child safety extremely seriously, even more so as mandated reporters.
Stepping out of the shower, I checked my phone. It was almost ten-forty-five. I had stepped into our room, toweling off, and lotioning up my legs when I heard a ping.
No! Please. I literally just got home.
I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as possible as I picked up my phone to check it, in case they needed me tomorrow. I was praying they didn’t. When I looked though, there was no notification. Nothing on my phone at all. I was relieved, ready to crawl into bed. I finished my nightly routine when a phone pinged again. Looking at my phone again, double-checking it wasn’t mine, and also what time it was.
Almost eleven at night.
On a Tuesday.
Too late for most of his friends, and definitely too late for someone other than work to be texting either of us.
This was where I had either most likely, royally fucked up by checking his phone, or saved myself from heartache, divorce, and possibly a child custody battle, years down the road. It depended on how you looked at it, and your take on phone privacy. We had an open phone policy in our relationship. There was nothing we didn’t show each other. We had each other’s passwords and free reign to check it whenever. It had always been like that. So, I did what anyone in my position would do.
I opened his phone.
When we got serious, he saved my face ID as a secondary, a back-up, to be able to access his phone if I forgot his password. It was less than six months into dating that he did that. He never changed it. I checked his notifications first and saw three unread text messages from his coworker, Becky. Hesitantly, I clicked on the thread and it was full of flirty, and somewhat explicit, messages, back and forth between them.
Bothof them.
I felt my heart seize in my chest, clenching like it was in a vince grip. He was flirting back. The pain was physical. It wasn’t just in my head, and as a doctor, it didn’t make sense how I was still functioning when my heart was being clenched so tightly. I should have been on the floor. It felt like I couldn’t breathe, my heart couldn’t beat, and nothing was making sense.
I looked at where my husband of only six months lay sleeping in our marital bed, like he wasn’t having an emotional affair with some woman namedBeckyfrom his office. If the messages were anything to go by, it seemed like she was pulling him in, seeming gentle, fragile, delicate and in need of a ‘big strong man’ to help her.I could feel the bile rising in my throat. I was sure her name was something prettier like Rebecca, or pretty like that. Or maybe it was plain, oldBecky, since that’s what he’s always called her. I hated this woman even more now. I scrolled up to the very top of the thread to seewhen and whostarted this affair.
I knew I would get a lot more answers this way than I was going to get if I asked my husband. Again, I did what any semi-sane wife would do in my shoes, and I unplugged his phone, taking it with me back into the bathroom. I didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping for, but I knew I had to hurry in case he wokeup. He usually woke once or twice a night, and I didn’t want him to catch me snooping.
After I saw the extent of it, I knew I was going to need time to think of what I was going to do. I grabbed my phone from the sink and started taking a video of all the texts between them. Aside from the outright flirting, there were no pictures exchanged, no videos, and nothing that came right out and said they’d been physical with each other.
Thank god for small miracles, I guess.
Then I checked the usage, seeing what apps he spent the most time on. All of them looked like apps I had seen on his phone before, except for one. I went to the unknown app he had downloaded, and kept hidden, buried on his homescreen. Opening that app, I saw that it held texts and sharedphotosfrom each of them. Dirty, nasty photos. Photos I never wanted to see in the first place, but were now seared into my mind for what I assumed would be the rest of my life. The contents of my stomach were rolling, all my take-out trying to violently come back up.
Reading through all the conversation on the app, it seemed that they talked about more than justwork.Tears filled my eyes as I saw the dirty photos started to come in, roughly three weeks ago, and progressed quickly.
I hurled. Everything came up.
