Sweet Romance14 min read
My Unexpected OB-GYN, The One Who Called Me “Wife”
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I was only supposed to be the quiet cousin in the gray plastic chair, the one who held the umbrella and pretended to read magazines, the one who didn't make a scene.
"I said, this is obstetrics and gynecology. If you want surgery, go to gynecology," a cool male voice announced from the consultation room.
I froze. I blinked. I thought of the white sign and the fluorescent light and the low hum of the clinic.
"Can we keep the baby?" a hysterical female voice whined. "We can figure out the marriage later. Please."
"Baby?" a man answered, his voice pressed low, raw. "We agreed to wait until marriage. This is not up for discussion. Don't cry here."
My jaw tightened. Wait—what kind of man?
I stood up, drawn by the voices. I leaned around the corner.
I saw him. I saw them.
Gunnar Berger.
My stomach went cold like an unused freezer. Gunnar. The man who had texted me last night asking if we could get back together. The man I had thrown out of my life in a single, furious message. The man I had blocked on everything.
And the woman with him—Jana Bryant. The same Jana who, the day after I broke up with Gunnar, had posted grocery-store-cute pictures with him and a caption that said, "New beginnings."
I felt something foul in my mouth and shoved my hand into my bag to check my phone, to confirm I had indeed ended it with him, that I had been right to slam the door.
I had.
I stepped forward before I could stop myself. Gunnar dragged Jana toward the corridor and blinked when he saw me.
"Andrea?" he said, that smirk already softening into something poisonous. "You here for surgery too?"
"Not surgery," I snapped. "I'm here for the prenatal checkup—I'm with my cousin."
Gunnar's eyes slid, hungry for an audience. He smiled the way a man smiles when he wants to make someone small.
"Oh?" he said. "No wedding, no man, huh? Someone playing single and pregnant?" He scoffed. "No wonder you didn't get back with me. Girl, you should at least keep some self-respect."
The words scraped me raw. A man who had caused this mess lecturing me about respect.
"Actually," I said, loud and flat, "I have a husband." I didn't hesitate. I thrust the word out like a shield.
Gunnar's grin split open like a cracked mirror. "A husband? Really?"
Everly Stewart, who had been standing at the doorway with a fixed smile, cleared her throat and pushed forward.
"He's with me. Zane is here. You know Zane, he's the doctor."
Gunnar scowled and Jana stopped crying long enough to stare.
I walked up as if I'd been invited. I looped my arm around the nearest doctor, the man happily munching on a candy bar and half-dangling on the consultation counter.
"Zane," I said, bright as a stage light. I squeezed his forearm. "Right?"
He blinked at me over his mask, those clear, gentle eyes—Zane Richardson. He looked familiar in that way people who are quietly excellent in public look familiar. Zane's name tag did the rest.
Zane's voice was small but surrendered to the joke. "Andrea?"
I leaned in to his ear and lowered my voice. "Help me out here, Dr. Zane. Fight the good fight."
He bent, suddenly playful, and ruffled my hair like a man who could be dangerous by doing nothing at all.
"Wife," he murmured in a tone that made Jana stop sobbing and stare as if she'd seen a ghost.
"She calls me 'wife'?" I said, loud enough for the corridor to hear.
Zane played the part with a slow, theatrical tenderness. "Wife, don't be showy. Not everyone can handle it."
"Who are you?" Jana sniffed.
"She's my wife," Zane said simply.
He didn't say it like a parody. He said it like someone who believed it—like someone who had been pretending and found he didn't mind at all.
I laughed. I was proud and smug and a little dizzy with triumph.
Zane slid his gaze down to my hands. I suddenly realized one of my fingers was playing absentmindedly at the curve of his bicep.
"Oh," I said, letting go. "Sorry."
He looked down at my hand, then at me, then smiled that thin smile that told me he saw me and thought I was absurd and adorable.
"Let's sit," he said. "Have you registered in our system? Are you sure you're not the one who actually needs the prenatal appointment?"
I put my hand against my own belly, a ridiculous reflex.
"Not pregnant," I said. "Here for my cousin. But thanks."
Zane blinked and then, with the economy of someone used to dealing with awkwardness, said, "Give me her registration. I'll take a look."
This is when Everly appeared properly—big-hearted, buoyant, a woman who could give you a home just by smiling. "Andrea, this is the one I promised you'd meet. You two should get along."
Zane looked at Everly. He extended a white, perfectly shaped hand and shook. "Nice to meet you."
"Andrea," Everly said. "He is excellent."
And then, because I always make a lot of noise, I leaned in and sweetened my tone.
"Zane," I said, holding out my phone, scanning his code as if I'd planned to. "Can we be friends? I'll add you as 'Zane the Handsome OB-GYN.'"
Zane put up his hand in mock outrage. "Noted," he said. "But you should use fewer exaggerated remarks on medical professionals."
He took off his mask, and my breath went out of my chest. Not just the eyes—his jaw was clean, his nose precise, his mouth the kind that could break your resolve if you let it.
So I added him on WeChat—silly, ridiculous, fast. I changed his name to "Super Handsome Dr. Zane" before anyone could protest.
In the week that followed, my life got smaller and sharper. I started meaning my days around one appointment: the next time Everly had to go for a checkup. I told myself I wanted to be there for her. I told myself a dozen reasonable things.
I also told myself I would look like an S in that little dress, and I would be worth Zane's attention. I tried to diet.
"Text from Zane," my phone buzzed every night right at nine p.m., like clockwork.
"Did Gunnar give you more trouble today?" the message would say.
"No," I typed, proud and weak. "He didn't."
"Don't stay up late. Take care of yourself," he'd reply.
"Yes, doctor."
It wasn't much. But it was everything.
The first week of self-restriction, I lost five pounds. I felt holy and thin and ridiculous. I measured my waist every morning like a criminal counting days.
During Everly's next appointment, I tried to be graceful. I smiled at Zane. I let him play the role of doting "husband" and laughed at his small theatrics.
Then—I fainted.
The world tilted. I woke to the taste of sweetness on my lips. Zane was leaning over me, his hands calm, the scent of sanitizer and something sweet and safe.
"What are you drinking?" I croaked.
"A little glucose," he said. He dabbed my lips with a cotton swab. "I've put an IV up, don't be dramatic."
"That's cheating," I said, embarrassed. "I'm supposed to be thin."
He sighed. "Stop trying to be a stereotype. You're scaring me."
And then everything got intimate in the soft way hospitals make intimacy seem pure: his hand on my wrist, the way he flicked my bangs out of my eyes, his head dipping as he told the nurse, "She needs to eat."
The nurse—Kayleigh May—snorted, delighted. "Doctor, be gentle with her. We don't all get a personal drama every day."
"You are a drama," Zane told me, in a voice that made my knees go weak for very different reasons. He fed me a spoonful of porridge with all the casual possessiveness of a man who'd already decided he cared.
"I want you to like me," I whispered between mouthfuls.
He paused, then smiled. "I already like you."
Those words should have been small, but they pried open something that made the air change. He poked the soft part of my belly.
"It's cute," he said, and I felt a little ridiculous again. But more than ridiculous—warm, safe, seen.
We started to spend time together in odd ways. He insisted on checking up on Everly, and I began to make appointments for myself "just to accompany her." He insisted I allow a full physical. For reasons I didn't trust, I agreed.
A day after I had complained about him being distant, he surprised me by taking off his mask and sitting with me in the hospital garden, wind trailing a sterile scent.
"Tell me about Gunnar," he asked.
So I did—astonishing how easy it was to talk to someone who wasn't asking for anything in return.
"He cheated," I said. "He'd been going to those places. He thought he could come back when he wanted. I told him off and blocked him."
"Good," Zane said.
"You didn't say much," I said.
"I don't need to say much," he said. "I notice."
I liked being noticed.
Two days later, Jana Bryant sat alone near the hospital flowerbed. Her face was puffy and her hands clutched a sheaf of papers like a lifeline. Everly's eyes softened. "I think she needs help," she said.
"Don't go near them," Zane said quietly.
"I will," I countered. "Women should help women."
Zane was silent for a moment and then sighed. "Okay. But don't do anything reckless."
He took my hand and walked me over, and something in that act—his hand warm around mine—was a permission and a tether both.
Jana looked up like someone who'd been waiting for a rescue. She clutched my hand and told me everything: the surgeries, the pain, the follow-up tests. Her voice broke on words that translated into one thing.
"He infected me," she said. "He won't come to see a doctor. He won't—"
The blood left my face. I felt bile rise. The man who called me unclean, who told me to be ashamed—had left scars on someone else.
Zane read the reports with a grave face. He looked at Jana, then at me, then said quietly, "This is serious. I'm going to help."
"Are you sure?" Jana whispered.
"Yes," he said.
I felt pride like a bright, hot coin in my chest. This man—he wasn't all light—he was fierce, patient, direct. He leaned in and told Jana exactly what to do. He said the words a doctor says to someone who has been hurt and needs courage: "We can treat this. Report it."
Jana nodded and clutched my hand. "He hit me when I said he should get tested."
"Report him," I said suddenly. "I'll go with you."
"No," Jana said. "You already left him. You don't have to—"
"I do," I insisted. "I know what he did."
When Gunnar saw us coming back into the lobby, he swaggered and puffed out his chest, trying to look big.
"See?" he said, loud and ugly. "She looks fine. Are you trying to make trouble?"
"Keep your hands to yourself," I snapped.
He laughed. "Oh, Andrea, getting all moral on me. That's rich."
I felt my blood shift into a dangerous, hot place. I grabbed an IV pole nearby—the metal handle gleaming—and walked toward him.
"Don't talk to me about morals," I said. "You should check yourself."
Gunnar stepped forward, aggressive.
"Back off," Zane said from behind me, his voice calm but there was a cord of ice in it.
Gunnar shoved Jana. She stumbled. The lobby breathed in. People watched.
"Enough," Zane said. He moved like someone who had thought things out. He put his hands on Gunnar's shoulders. Gunnar pushed him and spat, "You think you're all that?"
I picked up on the smell of alcohol, of arrogance, of stale excuses. My voice rose.
"You told Jana to be ashamed. You told me to keep to my 'self-respect.' You infected someone. You hit her." I had never been so loud in public.
Some voices in the crowd took up my words like a chant. Others gasped. A mother whispered to her child. A receptionist hit the bell by the security desk.
Zane's calm face changed. He closed the distance. "You are leaving," he told Gunnar.
Gunnar laughed, nasty. "And who's going to make me? You?"
Zane moved first. He didn't strike. He used his weight and training, a firm hand at the back of Gunnar's neck, then a steady hold on his arms. Gunnar lashed out. A nurse, Kayleigh May, stepped forward and took Jana's arm away from Gunnar's reach.
From somewhere, security came—two broad men who smelled of coffee and authority.
"Sir, come with us," one of them barked.
Gunnar tried to pull free. He struck out, punching the air. People pulled out phones and filmed. Someone laughed; someone cried; someone clapped.
"Don't touch her!" a voice shouted.
"Get off!" someone else shouted back.
I saw fear bloom in Gunnar's eyes. He wasn't used to being alone in a crowd that wasn't nodding toward him. He tried to regain control by yelling about having the right to complain and the right to sue. Nobody listened.
One of the receptionists pointed at the CCTV monitor. "You did this in front of cameras," she told him. "We have recordings."
Gunnar tried to sneer. He tried a last, desperate maneuver—he lunged, trying to shove past security. He slipped on the polished floor. There was a sickening sound as his head hit the corner of a bench. He started to howl.
"Stop recording him," someone whispered, oddly tender. "He deserves it and he doesn't. It's complicated."
People were talking now, a chorus of witnesses.
"How could he?" an older woman said. "He should be ashamed."
"How could men be like that?" a young man muttered.
A girl snapped pictures. Her thumb trembled.
"They should shame him," someone declared.
Zane kept his hands steady, but his jaw was tight. He waited with a kind of professional patience until the security officers cuffed Gunnar's hands with plastic restraints because he'd tried to resist. Gunnar wailed, "You don't understand, she cheated—" but no one wanted to hear his wordless cowardice.
Then, like a gust, the hospital's public relations team arrived, and a uniformed police officer stepped in—Eldon Williams, who listened with a clipboard and quiet eyes. Eldon asked Jana if she wanted to file a report.
Jana nodded slowly. "Yes."
The crowd leaned in. Someone filmed Gunnar being escorted out of the hospital with his jacket askew, his voice hoarse. "You're ruining my reputation!" he cried.
"You ruined lives," someone replied.
The security guards shoved him out into the cold. He fell in front of a cab and a local man pulled the driver back by the sleeve.
"They'll call the police," someone muttered.
A week later, the story made local news. Gunnar was suspended by his work for investigation—rumors spread online about "the man who couldn't keep his private life clean." The person who had mocked me in the lobby found himself on a video that had gathered tens of thousands of views.
But that was not the end. Gunnar, who had bragged about connections, had been filmed. The footage showed his hand raised at Jana. Witnesses corroborated. Eldon Williams, the officer, had a steady manner. He told them, plainly: "We have evidence of assault and of willful neglect regarding health. There's an investigation." The town watched as Gunnar's world shrank like a sweater left in a hot wash.
In the hospital atrium where he'd been dragged out, people replayed the scene. There was embarrassment, but there was also a hard satisfaction in the air—a collective recognition that some men did become small when their actions were exposed.
Gunnar tried to call me, his tone wheedling. I let his call go to voicemail, then deleted it. Jana, more resolute than I expected, pressed charges. She worked with Eldon, gave the statements, named the places he'd visited, the invoices, the violent messages he had sent her.
The punishment that followed was as public as the offense had been.
At the city courthouse on a bright Tuesday, Jana and I sat together as people from work, friends, and strangers filled the benches. Cameras were outside. The prosecutor read a list of evidence. There was Gunnar, flanked by a lawyer, mouth set too hard. Jana stood up and spoke—her voice small, then stronger. She told the truth of the nights he'd been cruel. She read who he'd been when no one was watching—and the room listened.
When the judgment came, it wasn't grand opera; it was the long, slow, legal machinery that humiliated the proud. Gunnar's name went into a public docket as someone convicted of assault and negligence in matters of health. His employer suspended him. A public report singled out his conduct. He was ordered to undergo counseling and to make restitution. Local social groups compiled lists of businesses that would not hire or advertise his name.
But the real punishment was the way people looked at him.
At the courthouse steps, as he walked out, someone shouted, "Shame on you!" Then others joined. A woman handed Jana a small bouquet. A man who had been at the clinic that day shook Jana's hand with visible relief. Teenagers snapped photos and posted them. In the weeks after, Gunnar's social media was a theater of scorn—no allies, only people who had commented on the video we had shared.
He begged on camera in private messages to be forgiven. He tried to appear contrite in front of the wrong people—cameras and many unforgiving eyes. When he attended an arranged mediation, he crumpled under the weight of his own contradictions. He tried to deny, he tried to minimize, then finally, when the stack of evidence was placed in front of him, his face cracked and his bravado dissolved.
"Please," he said at one point, sounding like a child. "Please, I didn't mean—"
The prosecutor, in a voice that didn't need fever or show, replied, "You meant what you did."
That was the point when I understood: punishment wasn't only physical. It wasn't just the handing over of his freedom. It was the collective change in the air. People who had once nodded at his swagger now shook their heads and turned away.
By the time the hearing moved to consequence, Gunnar's image had become smaller than his deeds.
I went home that night and cried—not because I wanted to see him suffer, but because the world could be fair in small ways: Jana's courage, the witnesses' grit, Eldon Williams' even temper. The city had watched a man be reduced by his own choices.
After that, things settled into something gentle and startling.
Zane kept coming around. He kept checking—messages, visits, careful hands on my shoulder. He lectured me about nutrition like a professor. He held my hand when I wanted it and pulled away when I needed space. He was careful in ways that made me feel safe, not trapped.
One night in the quiet after my graduation ceremony, Zane drove for an hour and a half to meet me by the library. The city lights made the night like a warm photograph. He opened a small box with shaking fingers.
"Andrea," he said, breathless, "will you marry me?"
I laughed, then cried, then said yes. It was over in a blink—his mouth, the ring on my finger, the promise that was actually only the start.
The wedding wasn't big—just family and a few friends. Everly came in a silk dress. Jana was there, pale and steady, smiling as if the weight she had carried had lightened. Eldon Williams even nodded from his seat, a quiet presence after all the shouting.
Days later, in the soft domesticity of our first shared apartment, Zane pinched my waist the way he always had and said, "I told you to stop starving yourself."
"You told me to be healthy," I corrected.
He smirked. "I told you to be mine. I told you not to leave your health in anyone else's hands."
We laughed and argued like two people who had been stitched together with different threads but who fit now. He teased me about my "pet-cat" behavior; I berated him for being a man who kept his feelings like documents in a drawer. He kissed me until my protest turned into giggles.
One night, under the dim kitchen light, a stray hand found my belly and squeezed.
"Stop," I groaned.
"You're mine," he said, and his voice was a promise.
We rotated through ordinary things—bills, doctor's appointments, the way a spoon grazed the counter. At night, when the world was quiet, he'd make me eat soup and complain if I cut a crust off my toast.
We wanted to grow old in small increments—a toothbrush at the sink, a shoe left in the hall.
As for Gunnar? He went through his consequences. Jana rebuilt. The city talked about the case for a week and then moved on to other dramas. But the change remained. People who had shrugged at abuse found a spine. Women who had whispered about men's misbehavior whispered instead about truth and accountability.
And me? I learned a lesson that didn't come with grand statements. I learned that love could be both soft and sharp; that a man who protected you could also be the one who forced you to love yourself; that humiliation could be public and restorative at the same time if you had the courage to stand.
"Promise me something?" Everly asked once, at the bridal shower, a conspiratorial grin on her face.
"No," I answered. "I'll surprise you."
"It isn't always about being cute," she said. "Sometimes it's about being brave."
"I'll be brave," I said. "For the right reasons."
In the hospital where it all had started, they still called him "the hands." Zane was that and more: a healer and a partner and the man who had taken my scattered noise and made quiet out of it.
One evening, when the city had quieted and the hospital lights were like constellations, I found myself back where it had begun—standing by the clinic window, Zane at my side.
He tied his fingers with mine, thumb over thumb. In the glass I saw us two as reflections and real.
"Do you ever regret any of it?" I asked.
"Only the nights you starved yourself," he said, squeezing my hand. "And maybe the nights you didn't let me hold you."
"Then hold me now."
He kissed my temple and the hospital lights blinked like pages in a story. Outside, a mother walked past with her newborn, humming.
We stood there a long time, the two of us and a small hospital that had witnessed a lot—fear, folly, healing, and a ridiculous little lie that became the truth.
My life had started as a supporting role in my cousin's appointment.
It turned into a marriage, a rescue, a punishment scene that changed one man's path, and a quiet habit of eating soup at night.
And every time I pass the clinic now, I smile at a name tag that reads "Zane Richardson — OB/GYN," and I remember how a joke—"wife"—grew into the most ordinary, extraordinary thing I ever had.
The End
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