Sweet Romance13 min read
Six Years Later, In His ER
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I never expected to sit in his emergency room six years after we broke up.
"I need to see Conway," I said, showing the folder like a weapon.
Conway Sorensen looked up from the chart as if I were a memory he had ignored for years. "Morning clinic's done. Come back this afternoon," he said without surprise.
"I already paid," I told him and set the paper down, "I'm pregnant. It's yours."
He blinked like someone waking from a dream he didn't want to own. "What child? We broke up six years ago."
"Not a memory problem," I said. "Not a joke. The ultrasound is here."
He glanced once, then tapped the report with a bored finger. "You think I will take responsibility? You're asking me to be a father after six years? Do you think I'm a charity case?"
My face went cold. "You don't want to admit it? Fine. Then I will find him a father."
He barely looked up. "Go ahead. Find him a father for our child. I'm not taking pity."
"You're not even pretending," I whispered.
He shrugged as if it were my performance. "I—" then he snapped his pen and turned away. "We're done here."
I left his office with the report in my hand and the kind of anger that people write songs about.
"Then I'll find a father for him," I said out loud on the corridor, and the words sounded like a slap.
Two months before, at a reunion, Conway had come late and drunk. I had helped him home because I couldn't turn away. That night was messy and memory-fogged, but some promises are not made by consent so much as by chance. The pregnancy surprised me. Being pregnant by Conway surprised me more.
At home the matchmaker had cursed at my mother as if reputation were a plate she could smash. "You said your daughter was an unmarried virgin!" she shrieked. "Which unmarried girl comes with a two-month belly?" Her voice echoed like a bell.
"Which unmarried girl, indeed," my mother said, furious and ashamed at the same time.
"Who is the father?" my mother demanded when the matchmaker finally left, leaving a hole of embarrassment behind her.
I did not answer.
"You are twenty-eight, not eight," my mother said, words like brass. "Don't you have any sense?"
I turned away, locked my door, and tried to breathe.
I had not planned on being pregnant. My period had been late. I had felt out of sorts and had mistaken nausea for stress. But a B-scan made it certain. The man I had been with six years ago was Conway. The man who had been an iceberg with a heartbeat. The man I had loved and then let go.
At the clinic, he tried to act surprised. "Jean?" he said. His voice hit something like remorse and then smoothed over. "You lost your mind? We are six years apart."
"You don't have to make it into a morality play," I said. "The ultrasound shows a ten-week embryo. Look."
He did. His eyes narrowed. The paper shook in his hand. "Ten weeks? You think I will play father now? Do you really imagine I'd be the one to take on this? I have a life. I have a career."
"You don't want to own this," I said. "So I'll go and find a father for him."
"Find a father," he repeated, as if testing the words, and then he wrote something on a chart. "I have patients waiting."
His dismissed tone was worse than his words. "You think I asked for you to take me back by being patient twenty-four hours?" I said.
He didn't look at me. He didn't have to. He was a specialist who kept feelings under a separate lock.
So I left.
Over the months, life smashed me and stitched me back in small increments. I moved from office desk to market salespeople, running between supermarkets, inventory sheets, and midnight buses. The money I saved made my mother's hair go less white at the temples. My father put down the work that kept the house safe, and on quiet nights he told me the truths he never said while we were poor.
"People do what they can," he said one night, handing me a plastic bag of warm peanuts from the market. "Don't make the world harder than it is. Live it, then change it."
When Conway finally saw the ultrasound report, he smirked. "You think I'll pay? A monthly support? Go find someone younger."
"You're the only man it could be," I said. "We slept together that night. One man or another has to claim it."
He looked at me like a man filing a drawer. "Fine," he said after a moment. "Three thousand a month, and I'll help with the hospital. Draw up a paper, and we will register. No promises about dinner or affection."
"A paper," I said. "Make it look legal then. We need a birth certificate for the child."
"You sound like a lawyer," he muttered.
When he asked to come to my house and meet my family, his parents in their neat clothes and my mother with her hands that never stopped moving, the air became a chessboard. Conway's mother was pleasant in a way that felt like merchandizing, and his father—Flynn Popov, a quiet, famous neurologist—sat and examined my sister like she was a case file, not a child. He knew about epilepsy in a way that made my mother's face pinched with guilt.
"She's my daughter's sister," my mother said. "A diagnosis from when she was a child."
Flynn's face didn't change, but his eyes took in details like an experienced tide. "I will see," he said. "We will discuss medication, safety."
The meal ended with Conway's mother gently saying, "We'll wait on the wedding. The virus makes gatherings hard," which meant, in polite terms, "We don't want to showcase our son marrying into your family with that condition."
"This leaves leaves," my mother whispered when they left, angry at the way the conversation had slid like a hand over the truth.
We registered as husband and wife because the law required a signature to secure a birth certificate and because Conway was sharp enough to see the paperwork as armor if anything went wrong. He left minutes after the signing, explaining an emergency at the hospital.
"You can go through the motions," he said. "There is no need for ceremony."
I felt like a stranger in a dress I had been forced into. We were married on paper. Conway lived as if he had given me a transaction: the house, the paper, the monthly transfer. He would appear, take another shift, then vanish. He paid three thousand into my account every month. I paid my mother less worry with it. We were not a story people told; we were a solution.
But life rearranged itself around strange moments. One afternoon in the staff cafeteria, when Conway's colleagues were being jocular, he told a nurse without looking, "She's pregnant." The whole room turned, surprised and then sheepish. "No way," one of them laughed. My cheeks burned at being announced like a curiosity.
"Didn't notice," another murmured. "She's so thin."
The truth was that pregnancy made me thinner; nausea ate my appetite. My mother fretted, my father rerouted his life into the city to live a few minutes away because he couldn't sleep with me alone.
Days thickened into a routine. Conway was still the kind of man who managed crisis as if it were an operation: precise, contained. He had no time for small tendernesses. But then a test result came that flattened me.
"The NT looks normal," said my OB, Emma Weber, with a glance at my chart. "But we should do the trisomy screening and then if anything shows abnormal, we will do a cell-free fetal DNA test."
I nodded and left. A day later a terse call from the hospital told me my triple screen returned high risk for Down syndrome—my chest fell out and I clutched the phone as if hugging the last good thing.
I went home. I sat on the floor. I cried like an unlocked faucet. My father came in after work and sat beside me without a word, his rough hand on my shoulder making the world less a storm.
"It's okay," he said with dry eyes. "There are tests. There are choices."
"Choices," I repeated. "As if this hadn't been a choice at some point."
I went to the emergency room, because Conway lived in it. The accident that day was a monstrous thing—cars came in like waves. He was stitching a man when I slid the paper across the counter.
"This says high risk," I said. "What now?"
He looked at me, and for once he did not flinch. "I'll be honest. High risk doesn't mean the child is affected. It means we need confirmatory testing: cffDNA or amnio."
I wanted to strangle relief out of him. "Then do the test."
"I will," he said. "I'll arrange it."
He did more. He stayed, even when the call roster was screaming. He sat in my kitchen and asked about morning sickness and recipes my mother had taught me. He learned to make steamed egg custard in the precise way my grandmother had, and he made small, clinical jokes like someone practicing warmth.
But life in a village doesn't always leave quiet bones. Someone in the village—Bryson Cain, a lonely single man with a reputation for being intrusive—had touched my sister in a way that made my mother's mouth twitch into a betrayed smile. My sister Isabelle was ten, with an innocent grin that sat on the wrong places. She was the kind of child that made you stop breathing; she could not talk like others or read danger. She was a home of soft things.
"Bryson touched my girl," my mother whispered, a tremble in her hand. "He said he would give her candy."
I took a breath like a struck bell. The night I went to his house with the wooden stick in my hand I told myself I would be brave. He laughed when he saw me. "Jean, what are you doing here?" he said, as if I had come to borrow sugar.
"Why did you touch my sister?" I asked. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
"She comes by," he said. "I fed her candy. What's wrong with that?"
His voice made a circus of the words. "You touched her wrong. You touched her like she was your pleasure."
He tried to make himself a martyr. "You shouldn't say that. I didn't do anything."
"No," I said. "You did it."
He became loud. He threatened me with village men and reputation and the kind of ugly honor that smells like vinegar. I couldn't let terror say the last word.
I went to the market Sunday with my mother and Isabelle. The central square was a hive of heads—bamboo hats, plastic bags, people exchanging gossip like currency. I held Isabelle by the hand and walked straight to his stall. Bryson had a small table of vegetables, tomatoes like dull coins.
"Bryson!" I announced, as if I were selling bread. People looked up. "You remember my sister? She brought you candy." I let it hang like an accusation.
"What do you mean?" he said, surprised, then angry when the crowd stilled.
"He touched her," I said. "He put his hand where hands don't go."
There was a hush that sounds like a held breath.
"That's a lie!" Bryson yelled, red flaring at his neck. "Who told you that? I never—"
My mother did not hide when she stepped up to my side. "He did," she told the market. "He gave my child candy to get her alone. He touched her. He did it."
Around us people started murmuring, cameras—phones, curious eyes—swiveled to the accusation. A group of women closed in.
"Isabelle, did he touch you?" asked a neighbor like a lawyer opening a case.
Isabelle did not answer with words. She reached out and touched Bryson's wrist, then flinched. Children show truth with bodies when language is stripped.
"You touched her!" someone shouted. "You can't do that."
Bryson's face went from anger to an odd, mortal kind of vulnerability. "I didn't—"
"Stop!" A voice I knew as Conway's shattered the murmur. He had come with calm like a steel door. He stood between Bryson and everyone else, hands steady.
"What is going on here?" he asked.
"That's him," I said. "That's the man who touched my sister."
Bryson tried to laugh. "She came running to my place, she ran in and—"
"Shut up!" I said. "You are exposed. You had no right."
Two market vendors stepped forward. "We saw him too the other day. He was too friendly with the children by the well."
The crowd changed. Sympathy slid away from the accused like water off oil.
Bryson's expression sagged through a cycle: proud, then petrified, then furious, then terrified. He tried to deny, and then the denial was weak and slippery.
"You are making a scene," he said. "This is gossip. You will kill me. I'm a good man."
"Good men do not follow little children to corners," my mother said. Her voice did not tremble. "He is not a good man."
More people came. "Bring your proof," someone demanded.
"I will go to the station," Bryson said, trying to make magnanimity like a shield. "You have no proof."
"You have enough proof," I said. "Your presence at my home, the candy, the guilt on your face. And people heard you threaten her."
His face twisted. He started to shout and stomp, making his case like a live animal.
Conway leaned in, and his voice cut like a scalpel. "You will apologize to this family now in front of everyone. You will say you touched Isabelle. Say it."
Bryson spluttered. He denied. He tried to pull a rumor board into his favor. The crowd was a tidal press, getting louder. Phones were out. "Say it!" people urged. "Confess!" someone else cried.
His trucker cap fell off. For a split second his bravado was stripped and he flashed the face of a small, scared creature. He tried to laugh helplessly. "I didn't mean—"
"You will say it now," Conway insisted.
Bryson's voice wobbled. The market watched his change: from proud predator to frightened man trying to salvage himself. He squinted through the crowd. He started to blame my family. "You're making it up for money," he cried.
"Enough." My voice surprised me with how loud it could be. "You assaulted a child. You will not do it again. You will leave this village and never come back."
People had come with their phones out. "Record him," one neighbor said. "Make sure he can't deny it later."
He tried to wave them off. "I didn't—"
"I saw you," my mother said. "My child cannot tell you with words, so I will speak."
Then Bryson hit a new note—panic. He reached for his stall, looking for something to throw, to break, to distract.
Conway moved with a motion practiced in trauma bays and operating rooms. He put both palms flat on Bryson's shoulders, then pushed him gently but firmly to a bench. "You are under the observation of a village," he said. "People will not let you come near children again. Apologize."
Bryson's breath hitched. There were murmurs in the square: some sounded like pity; some like disgust. A younger man started reciting the names of the local elders who would make a complaint. "We'll write a petition," he said. "We'll bring this in front of the town assembly. We won't let him escape."
Bryson's face broke. "I'm sorry," he whispered, finally.
The word was thin, an apology that was more a defense than a remorse. The crowd roared either for justice or spectacle. "We will see the elders," someone cried. "We will sign a statement."
A crowd gathered as if forming a wall. They pressed close, eyes fixed on him. A woman shook her head and spat, "How low."
Bryson's initial cheeky aggression slid into frantic denial, then to pleading, then to collapse: his hands covered his face, and for the first time since I had known him, he was a small man swallowed by the market's size.
"My husband is a doctor," Conway said quietly. "We will make sure this is recorded. You will be banned from contacting children. You will issue an apology on record and leave town. If you ever come near Isabelle or any child, we will press charges."
Bryson's eyes bulged. He said something about being a lifelong resident, about being wrongly accused. People jeered. "Wrongly accused—what a line," a vendor shouted.
His reaction was an ugly show: pride trembling into despair. Some people took photos; others filmed. Phones whirred. A few ladies hovered, muttering, "We will make sure our children are safe."
Conway took my hand in the open square, a small grip steadying me. "You did the right thing," he told me.
"I did it because of Isabelle," I said. "I did not want more mothers to look at their daughters and find reasons to worry."
The crowd did not dissolve into a mob of vengeance. It was a public unmasking. It was the kind of punishment that stung: exposure, public shame, the slow pecking away of a man's anonymity as each witness told one small piece of truth. They signed a letter at the market office, recorded statements.
Two days later, the elders told him to go. They did not lock him up that afternoon. They made a public ban and took his produce stall for a week. They forced him to stand on the stage in the village hall and read the apology in front of everyone. His voice shook; people shouted; some applauded; some spat. He begged for forgiveness and received none.
I watched him go from the market to the road with a plastic bag of vegetables he had not sold. People watched him leave. His shoulders were smaller.
He tried to steal back respect, but the village had judged and found him wanting. "It's for the best," my mother said when I told her later. "This way we don't have to lock him away. The town will keep eyes on him."
"It wasn't vengeance," I said. "It was an armor for my sister."
Conway stood with me in the market afterward while the vendors resumed trade like a life rethreading itself. "You did right," he said. "We will always protect Isabelle."
He did more than say it. He brought our petition to the police station. He called the counselors. He sat with my mother and described safety plans for Isabelle. The bad man had been forced out of his little place in the market and into a narrower life. He returned sometimes to collect what little he could, but the word had been spoken. The public nature of his exposure meant there were witnesses everywhere—no easy escape. His expression shifted over time from arrogance to bitterness to the small, slow breaking of a man who realized he had no one to believe him.
We had not only protected my sister but also shown my village that a child's safety matters more than petty reputations. The process was not a dramatic arrest. It was the public, slow dismantling of a man's freedom because his acts had been small and cowardly but dangerous. People noticed. The villagers repurposed his stall as a reminder.
After that day, Conway was a different man with me too. He did things that were the equivalent of small acts of mercy. He learned how to order the right prenatal vitamins. He sat through music I played in the evenings and asked which song the baby seemed to like. He read aloud from the children's books I had downloaded. He made a home a place you could breathe in.
When the definitive DNA test came back, the science did what the bureaucrats couldn't: it wrote the truth. The embryo's DNA matched Conway's. He was the father. There is a strange honesty in a lab result; it does not lie.
Conway came to me with the printed sheet in his hand like a man offering an apology with footnotes.
"I'm responsible," he said. "I will be responsible in ways that matter. I want to help raise this child. I am your husband in every legal sense, but now I want to be your husband in the humane sense."
"You mean more than the monthly transfer?" I asked.
He looked at me like a man serious for the first time in months. "I mean staying. I mean being present for checkups. I mean calling home. I mean listening."
So we learned tenderness in fragments: him unbuttoning my coat when I was cold, him bringing soup when I had a wretched night, his thumb rubbing my hand while I tried to sleep through contractions of worry. We found small, ordinary ways to fold ourselves into a family.
The high-risk alarm faded with more precise tests. The child was not diagnosed with Down syndrome. The relief was a second breath. I sat in the hospital bed and learned how to let go of that particular terror.
"Thank you," I whispered once, when the worry had lifted enough for my voice to be a small reed.
He kissed my forehead and said, "You didn't need thanks. You saved your sister. You saved us both."
When the baby was finally born, life was reduced to essential light. The operating room smelled like medicine and the strange sacredness of new life. "It's a boy," the pediatrician said, and for once I let myself smile at the roundness of it.
Conway stood beside me, exhausted to the edges of his face, and we heard that first small cry like a bell.
"He has your mouth," I said, leaning in.
"He has your stubbornness," he replied. "And my luck."
"Do not call it luck."
He laughed a small, raw laugh. "Fine, our shared curse."
We named him—after both of us and for what he represented. "Gabe" was what we used in private at first, and then the paperwork decided on Conway and Jean as the parents on his tiny bracelet.
The village watched and adjusted. My father went back to the fields with less of the long worry in his shoulders. The little crowded kitchen continued to generate feasts. Isabelle learned new ways to play, taught to notice where strangers could not. Bryson's life was smaller; his public punishment had been the slow stripping away of options.
The last night before discharge, Conway came into the room with a folded, tiny bracelet in his hand. He slid it over my fingers.
"Keep it," he said.
I wrapped the bracelet into the pocket of a stuffed bird I had kept since I was a child—the same toy that had been my comfort through nights of thunder, that same bird Conway had helped when he first impressed me years ago by saving a fallen sparrow in our college days. The bird's threadbare wing looked absurd next to the hospital's humming machines.
"This bird has seen me sick and scared," I said.
"It will see him grow," Conway said. "I will see him grow."
I closed the hospital's small bracelet in the plush pocket and placed the bird on my breast. "We will," I told him, "we will all grow. Together."
The End
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