Chapter 15
604words
Had it all been a lie? Or had something gone terribly wrong along the way?
The darkness pulled me deeper, away from questions without answers, away from pain too great to bear.
Nathan's POV
The hospital waiting room was a special kind of hell. Sterile lights, uncomfortable chairs, and the suffocating weight of helplessness. I paced the small area, unable to sit still while Olivia was in emergency surgery.
Every minute stretched into an eternity. My mind kept replaying the moment she collapsed in the elevator—the shock in her eyes, the blood spreading across her clothes, the way her body had gone limp in my arms. I'd never felt such terror, not even during the most precarious business deals or confrontations with my father.
"Mr. Carter?" A nurse approached, her expression carefully neutral. "Dr. Winters would like to speak with you."
I followed her through double doors into a consultation room where a middle-aged woman in surgical scrubs waited. My heart hammered against my ribs, fear making it hard to breathe.
"Mr. Carter, I'm Dr. Winters. I performed your wife's—" she paused, correcting herself, "—ex-wife's emergency surgery."
"Is she alright?" The words came out rough, desperate. In that moment, I didn't care about anything else—not the company, not my father's schemes, not even the truth about Rebecca's claims. I just needed to know Olivia would survive.
"She's stable," Dr. Winters said, and I felt my knees weaken with relief. "The hemorrhage was severe but we managed to control it. She's in recovery now."
I sank into a chair, running a trembling hand over my face. "Thank God."
Dr. Winters' grave expression told me there was more. "The bleeding was related to complications from her previous miscarriage. There was retained tissue that wasn't properly removed during the initial D&C procedure eight months ago. This can happen, but it's unusual for it to remain undetected this long."
"What does that mean?" I asked, though something cold was already settling in my stomach.
"It means someone made a serious medical error during her initial treatment." She met my eyes directly. "And given the timing of this hemorrhage, immediately after she began investigating a certain patient case... I don't believe this is coincidental."
I stared at her, processing the implications. "Are you suggesting someone deliberately provided substandard care after her miscarriage? That they left tissue inside her that could cause a life-threatening hemorrhage months later?"
"I'm not suggesting anything officially," Dr. Winters said carefully. "But as a colleague of Dr. Carter's, I felt you should know. The timing is... concerning."
My mind raced, connecting dots I'd been too blind to see before. The night of Olivia's miscarriage—the drugged coffee, waking up in Rebecca's apartment, my dead phone. Then the months of Olivia's depression, our growing estrangement, the divorce. All of it felt orchestrated now, a carefully executed plan to separate us.
But why? What threat did our marriage pose to someone?
"Can I see her?" I asked, pushing aside the questions for now. Olivia was what mattered.
"She's still unconscious from the anesthesia. And Mr. Carter," Dr. Winters added as I turned to leave, "there's something else you should know. The damage was extensive. We had to perform a partial hysterectomy. She won't be able to have children."
The words hit me like a physical blow. Olivia had always wanted children. Even after the miscarriage, she'd talked about trying again someday, when she was ready. Now that choice had been taken from her—because of medical negligence that might not have been accidental.
