As I watched him hurry Nancy off toward the medical room, my chest felt cold and hollow.
When I had been bleeding out from the miscarriage, he hadn’t looked half as worried. Now, all he saw were Nancy’s reddened fingers—never the blistered skin on my arm, already breaking out in a rash from the seafood.
I took a taxi to another hospital’s emergency department.
The doctor frowned at the bruised, vein-marked mess of my arms, unable to find a spot for an IV. In the end, he gave me only two tubes of ointment to apply externally.
Just weeks earlier, when I’d been too sick from morning sickness to keep food down, I’d gone to Edwin’s hospital for a nutrient drip.
Nancy as the intern nurse, had used me as practice, jabbing both arms more than thirty times without finding a vein.
When I’d asked for a more experienced nurse, Edwin had scolded me. “If you can’t handle a little pain, how will you ever give birth?”
By the time I got home that night, it was nearly eleven.
There was a message from Edwin on my phone.
[Working late tonight. Not coming home.]
I opened my social feed on a whim.