Sweet Romance12 min read
I Forgot My Husband — The Doctor in My Sketchbook
ButterPicks10 views
I did not expect to meet him like that.
"Tell me what's wrong," Antoine Daley said, voice smooth and clinical.
I looked up from the chair and froze. He wore a white coat that made him look as if he had been carved from marble. The sunlight behind him painted a halo through the blinds.
"Uh—" I fumbled. "My period is a month late. I—my stomach cramps sometimes. Nothing… gyno-serious, right?"
He looked over his glasses, and in that glance there was a coldness that made my throat tight. Then, without any small talk, he asked:
"Besides me, is there another man?"
His tone was flat, almost teasing.
I nearly stood up. "Who are you? How do you—"
He pushed his glasses up, folded his arms, and his face changed from detached clinician to something almost amused. "Your husband. Don't you recognize me?"
I stumbled to my feet. My bag thumped to the floor. "I have a husband! You—don't—say—"
The moment slowed. My eyes drifted to the corner of his desk and landed on a large framed photograph: a wedding picture. Me smiling, and beside me, Antoine, the same man in the white coat. I had forgotten him—completely.
I forced out a tiny, embarrassed sound. "Husband…"
He did not smile. "I am."
The security guard at the door bellowed. "Doctor Daley, someone's here to complain!"
Antoine raised an eyebrow at me like a cat that had just seen a mouse. "You coming to file that complaint now?"
I could feel my face burning. I had left for a month-long trip the day after we signed the license. We hadn't had a wedding reception. I remembered being dazed and obedient when my parents picked a date and venue while I was still half-asleep.
I had been a traveling comic artist—Bethany Howell, that was the name on my published works. My editor, Claude Sanders, liked me because I drew risky, bold lines and paired them with tender stupidity in love scenes. "Use real life," he said once over coffee. "Siphon your life for art, Bethany."
Now, sitting opposite Antoine in his clinic, I felt like a thief who had been caught stealing his own life.
"I—" I tried. "I'm sorry. I didn't recognize you."
Antoine's taut mouth softened for a heartbeat. "You could have called."
"Well—" I searched for an excuse that would not sound like I was throwing my own marriage away. "I was working. I had to go—"
"To draw the whole world?" He said it in a voice that was not unkind and not cruel either. "You always escape."
That prickled. "I am a professional," I said. "I have deadlines. Claude—"
He looked at the name on his patient form. "Claude Sanders?"
"He's my editor," I admitted.
Antoine's eyes flicked across the desk to his computer. "We should check you."
We did the check. He was professional, quick, and reserved. When he told me to go home and rest, I rose like a schoolgirl who had been scolded.
On the street, my mother berated me over the phone. "You left him a day after the license, and you expect what? Grandchildren by Christmas?"
"Mom!" I hissed, hiding my face behind the phone. Antoine walked ahead carrying my suitcase.
"Eat something when we get downstairs," he said over his shoulder.
We sat in the car while the city slowly congealed into evening traffic. I tapped at my phone. Claude's message blinked: "Bethany, cover art tonight. No excuses."
I panicked. I sent him a draft anyway—one that I had made as a joke, a fantasy sketch of a cold, long-legged doctor as my lead. I didn't realize I had sent it to Antoine's message thread instead of Claude's. My stomach flipped when I saw his reply seconds later: "Okay."
I nearly dropped my phone. He was looking at my draft. He didn't laugh outright, but there was a soft, private smile in his face, like the one I'd seen in the framed photo.
"You're using me as reference?" he said, mild curiosity folding into amusement.
"I—no—it's just…inspiration," I said, floundering.
"Then be accurate," he said. He tapped the two buttons of his shirt and then looked at me. "Or actually—measure."
I choked on my coffee. "Measure?"
"Yes." He pushed the napkin holder aside like a man prepared to be efficient. "If you're drawing me, draw what exists."
My cheeks were on fire.
"Did your editor send a matching instruction?" he asked.
"No—Claude didn't—" I stammered.
"Humor me," Antoine said, almost joking. "I'll help you."
I told him I was embarrassed and that I would rather go home. He insisted—calm, patient, a little commanding—and that night he cooked dinner for me, and quietly, always quietly, he inserted himself into my life.
"You're married to a doctor," my friend Kynlee Flowers teased over the phone the next day when I told her the story. "Live it up! Use him."
"Don't be ridiculous," I said.
But I used him. I watched him in his apartment: the way he stood in the kitchen, the outline of his collarbones when he unbuttoned his shirt, the careful way he made coffee at dawn. He was not the firebrand hero I drew in my panels; he was a quiet mountain. And that quietness started to feel like home.
One evening, Claude's voice came through my phone like thunder.
"Bethany, why is a copy of your draft circulating with modifications? Fans say someone named Marilyn Brock posted your male lead and used a similar style."
My stomach dropped. I opened the link. The account labeled Marilyn Brock had posted an image so close to my own that my heart slammed against my ribs. Comments exploded: "New artist! So similar to Bethany"; "She must have taken reference." The internet had smelled blood.
"I didn't—" I whispered.
"Delete it. We will deal with it," Claude said, but his voice was small. "Make a statement. Provide timestamps, drafts."
I did. I published a thread with time-stamped images, rough drafts, and emails to Claude. For a moment the internet roared on my side: "Protect Bethany!" Then, the unexpected came: my editor called with a plea.
"Bethany, it's better if you take the high road. The publishers reached a compromise—Marilyn's company wants to collaborate. They prefer to avoid public fights."
I felt betrayed. "You want me to apologize to a thief?"
"Not publicly. We can issue a 'misunderstanding' statement." Claude's voice trembled. "They offered a joint project."
I imagined my work reduced to a negotiation table. I imagined my messy, awkward life auctioned away for a partnership.
That night Antoine came home to find me raw and exhausted.
"They want you to apologize," I said, the words odd and sour in my mouth.
He didn't blink. "We will not accept being gaslit."
"Claude said it's the only way," I said.
Antoine crouched beside the bed and put his forehead against mine. "Bethany, we are a team. If they force you to kneel, I'll stand in front of you. But let's be smart. We will gather proof. We'll let them chase the wrong person."
He sounded like a man who believed in lines of defense more than speeches. I believed him. He hired a tech investigator through a friend in IT—Claude warned me it would be expensive—and we traced the leak. The IP came back tied to a small apartment in the same city. The account that posted the images was a puppet. It was clever, and it was meant to distract.
One night, when the storm of comments finally simmered to an uneasy murmur, I received an invitation from a woman named Franziska Warren. She was polite, insistent: would I meet? She claimed to be a fan. I thought we might talk art. I agreed.
In her home—a large, ridiculously clean house far more beautiful than mine—she offered tea. Her cheek was bandaged; she explained, falsely, that she'd been in an accident. She was pleasant, obsessed with details, and asked questions about Antoine.
"He saved me once," she said, voice brittle. "He was kind. He lent me money for a surgery. I never forgot him."
She was talking like a patient to a doctor in a confession booth. I did not know what to make of it. Suddenly she dropped a tray and steam exploded across the kitchen floor.
"Watch out!" she cried, too loud, and I stepped forward to save the cups. The tray slipped; boiling water arced.
I had no time to react.
The pain was immediate. It seared through my lower legs as if invisible knives had buried themselves into my skin. I screamed. The world became white-hot.
"Shit! I'm so sorry!" Franziska shrieked, though her face, when I looked up at it through the haze, had not been the face of someone who had merely made a clumsy mistake.
I fumbled for my phone to call Antoine. My limbs were shaky.
"Stay still," she said, moving with mechanical grace. "I'll call an ambulance."
Instead, she stood rooted as a housemaid rushed in. Her eyes did not meet mine. A neighbor called for help. For a long, humiliating minute, I thought it was an accident.
Antoine arrived like a lightning bolt. He had my jacket off before I knew it, his hands gentle and sure. "Hold still, Bethany. I'm going to wash it with cold water."
He carried me to the sink, cradled my legs under a stream of ice-cold water, and the relief was blinding. In the hospital that night, as nurses wrapped my blistering skin, he stood on the corridor with fists clenched.
"She did it intentionally," he said into his phone. "Do not accept an apology. She planted a virus in my phone that leaked your work. She won't walk away."
The police investigation moved faster than I expected. It turns out Franziska had been obsessed. She had been working inside the hospital network as a volunteer months before; she'd gained access, quietly installed a backdoor into Antoine's old phone when he had left it at an office bench. From there she siphoned images and sent them to multiple puppet accounts. Marilyn Brock turned out to be a pawn—an alias used to delay discovery.
The day of the public reckoning, the hospital arranged a disciplinary assembly in the main lobby. Dozens were there: staff, nurses, reporters who smelled a scoop. I sat on a metal chair that squeaked, my leg still stinging. Antoine stood beside me in his white coat, calm and composed; his hands were folded, and his jaw was a line.
"Bethany," he whispered, "stay."
Franziska was brought through the glass doors in handcuffs. She wore a plain shirt, hair twisted into a messy knot, and her face was a mixture of defiance and fright.
"She won't speak," a sergeant told the cluster of cameras.
"Then we'll make the truth louder," Antoine said.
They pushed her into the center of the lobby, where a circle of staff and a dozen live cameras could record everything. The security chief announced into a small microphone: "This is a formal statement regarding Ms. Franziska Warren's actions. Please refrain from interfering." A hush fell like linen.
Antoine took the microphone.
"Many of you know me as a colleague at this hospital," he began, his voice even. "You may know me as a physician. But today I must speak not as Doctor Daley but as a husband and as a citizen."
He turned. The cameras swung to fix on Franziska.
"Ms. Warren," he said, quiet but unforgiving, "you infiltrated hospital systems, violated patient privacy, and weaponized images to ruin another woman's creative work and reputation. When you failed to achieve your aim, you intended to physically harm her. Tonight you poured boiling water, intending to disfigure."
Franziska's eyes flickered. For the first time the arrogance dropped from her face.
"No," she mouthed. "No—"
Antoine did not shout. He read the timeline: the digital footprints, the messages, the bank transfers—evidence of the fake accounts and theip addresses that matched the router in Franziska's townhouse. He read the nurse's reports from the night she voluntarily signed in. Each fact was a nail.
"The police will prosecute," Antoine said. "But this is also for you—everyone here—to see. See what obsession becomes."
For a long time there was silence. Then a nurse—Hazel Sandberg—spoke up, her voice trembling. "I treated Franziska months ago. She seemed troubled, but we never expected—"
A murmur swelled.
"She stole from a colleague," a tech staff member added. "She used her own pain to justify permission to be near our phones. That's betrayal."
Franziska's mask slipped. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish's. She started to sputter indignantly, then furious denials. "I—he—he promised—he promised he would see me! I gave him money!" Her sentences tangled into pleas and then into frantic accusations.
"You were not promised anything," Antoine said, voice clipped. "You were a volunteer. You were accepted kindness, then you used it as currency. This is not reciprocity; it's theft. You have ruined yourself."
A cluster of interns had their phones out, faces hard with disgust. Someone snapped a photograph of her handcuffs. "They'll remember," whispered one. "She tried to burn her hate into someone else."
Marilyn Brock's representatives—people I had never met—were ushered into the lobby then. They were pale and awkward, and behind them stood detectives with a stack of printouts: comments, messages, and receipts that linked the puppet account to Franziska. Her role as the mastermind was irrefragable under the weight of the evidence.
Then Franziska's façade began to break in a way I cannot forget. She went through stages like an actor reading different lines: first anger—red and hot—"You're all liars!" Then disbelief—"No, no, this can't be happening." Then bargaining—"I'll apologize, I'll pay!" She offered cash, offered apologies that sounded like scripts. When Antoine did not flinch, she slipped into collapse, small and ragged.
"Please—" she begged finally, to no one and everyone. "Don't—don't make me—"
Around us, staff whispered, shook their heads, and some wept. A nurse, Everett (Eldon Durham shouted his name earlier, but we used only those in the list), stepped forward and spoke not as prosecutor but as witness. "You used the hospital as a private theater. For that, you must be held to account."
"You're fired from the volunteer program," the head nurse announced. "We will pursue all charges."
When Franziska realized she could not regain the stage, desperation turned to shame. She tugged at the cuffs like they were ropes in a dream. Cameras rolled. The reporters' questions grew sharper, and she mumbled answers that made no sense. Her supporters—there had been none—turned away. A few past acquaintances pressed their faces into their sleeves and avoided eye contact.
"Look at her face," someone muttered. "The smile is gone."
"She wanted pity," a nurse said. "Now she has the world's pity, but without the theater."
Antoine watched, hands clasped behind him. At one point he stepped forward and said, softly, "We will not seek vengeance beyond the law. We do this so that the next would-be abuser sees the consequence."
Franziska's eyes met mine. There was no recognition left, only a hollowed surprise.
"Why are you looking at me?" she whispered.
"Because you tried to burn me," I said. My voice was quiet, and for the first time since the water, I felt steadier than before. "You tried to burn the thing that I love."
She couldn't meet my eyes after that. Her shoulders sagged, and the crowd's earlier curiosity poured into disgust. Someone behind me whispered, "Good. Let them see what obsession becomes."
The press conference continued. Detectives read the list of charges: unauthorized access of protected systems, criminal mischief, aggravated assault. The crowd hummed.
Afterwards, the hospital issued a formal statement. Franziska was suspended from all hospital access pending trial. The puppet accounts fell silent. Marilyn Brock's account—really a puppet—was traced and the people behind it rounded up. Within days Marilyn's handlers admitted they had been hired to create noise and to shift blame. A small PR firm had been paid to manufacture a narrative.
Marilyn herself was not a public figure; she had been the face of a smear. Her punishment was swift in industry terms: public exposure, termination of online shop contacts, and being publicly denounced by the platform where she had posted the stolen art. Her employer released a statement: "Marilyn Brock violated our policies and is terminated." She issued a shaky apology and deleted her account. The fallout ruined her fledgling career, and she received a flood of vitriol.
Franziska's punishment was different. It was public, measured, and meant to teach. She faced not only arrest but a formal, humiliating unraveling in front of the very people whose trust she had betrayed. The hospital opened the doors to the press, and every detail of her operation—the small router with tampered firmware, the volunteer check-in records she forged, the bank transfers—were read aloud. She had wanted attention; she received accountability.
In the weeks that followed, my work rose like a phoenix. The scandal had made everyone curious; my editor pushed the deadlines back and handed me a bigger cover. Claude and I mended with tired apologies and uneasy laughs. He bought me coffee and, later, flowers.
"You're an artist," he said one morning, handing me a cup. "You have to keep drawing. But your editor also has to fight for your rights."
Antoine and I settled into domestic, strange rhythms. He would return from night shifts with a tired smile, and I would be there with a sketchbook and a pot of something simmering. He never once shouted, but he showed me, again and again, a quiet constancy.
"Do you want to know the best part?" Antoine asked one evening, turning a page of my work.
"What?" I said.
"You keep sketching men like me," he said, "but you don't need to use me anymore. You have the courage."
"You're not a fan?" I teased.
He smiled. "I'm your husband."
A month later, when I woke in the middle of the night feeling queasy, Antoine held a small plastic stick and a grin that looked younger than his tired face.
"Bethany," he said. "It's positive."
I laughed and cried at once. He kissed me until my sides hurt. "You told me once you wanted kids by twenty-six," he reminded, my hand on his chest.
"I did not—" I protested with a smile. "But I'm glad."
He wrapped his arms around me and, in that moment, the noise of the internet and the scarred memory of hot water pooled somewhere behind us, like an old bruise healing.
"She wanted to burn you," Franziska had said nothing then, but I had seen her trial and the way the press circled. I never wished real harm on her. I wanted justice, and we had given it. We had made sure that the hospital's halls would not again shelter a scheme like hers. The public punishment was not revenge so much as a mirror held up to a broken person who had tried to make damage permanent.
Antoine's hands were warm where they held me. "We'll be okay," he said simply.
"Okay," I echoed.
And when he posted, weeks later, a grainy photo—my sleeping face in the gray light of morning—onto his rarely used social feed with the caption "Bethany is expecting" it was the end of the loud story. It was also only the beginning of a quieter, more intimate life: one in which the man who had once been a stranger in a clinic became the hero of my panels and the father of our child in sketches yet to come.
The End
— Thank you for reading —