The smell of antiseptic still clung to the hospital room when the door opened for what I assumed would be another nurse checking my chart.
Instead, my husband walked in.
Ethan looked immaculate in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my first car. His hair was perfectly styled, his expensive watch gleamed beneath the fluorescent lights, and there wasn’t a trace of exhaustion on his face.
I had given birth to our triplets less than twelve hours earlier.
I was still bleeding.
Every movement pulled at the fresh stitches across my abdomen, sending sharp waves of pain through my body. My babies—our babies—were fighting for strength in the NICU, surrounded by monitors and incubators instead of resting in my arms.
I hadn’t even held all three of them together yet.
Then I noticed she was standing beside him.
She couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, dressed in an ivory cashmere coat with flawless makeup and glossy hair falling over her shoulders. Resting casually on her forearm was a bright orange Birkin bag that seemed to announce her arrival before she spoke.
She smiled at me.
Not kindly.
Triumphantly.
For a second I honestly believed I was hallucinating from the medication.
“Ethan…” My voice cracked. “Who is she?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he walked to the foot of my hospital bed, pulled a thick envelope from inside his jacket, and tossed it onto the blanket covering my legs.
The papers slid across the sheets and stopped beside my trembling hand.
Divorce papers.
I stared at them without understanding.
“You’ve already been served,” he said calmly. “I figured I’d save everyone some time.”
The room suddenly felt smaller.
My heart pounded harder than it had during labor.
“What are you talking about?”
He sighed as though I were making an ordinary conversation difficult.
“Let’s be realistic, Claire.”
“You’ve changed.”
His eyes traveled over my pale face, tangled hair, swollen body, and the IV attached to my arm.
“You’re too ugly now to keep pretending this marriage works.”
Every word landed harder than the contractions I had endured only hours before.
I looked down at my hospital gown, stained with blood and milk.
I had carried his children for thirty-six exhausting weeks.
I had survived an emergency delivery.
I had nearly died bringing three lives into the world.
And this was the first thing my husband wanted to tell me.
The woman beside him adjusted the Birkin on her arm and smiled again.