Married My Ex-husband’s Father

2

Morana’s POV

The first thing I felt was the pounding in my head. It was dull at first somewhere behind my eyes but it grew worse every time I tried to move. My body felt heavy almost like it did not belong to me anymore. When I finally managed to open my eyes, the ceiling above me was white and unfamiliar. For several seconds I simply stared at it, trying to understand why I was there.

Then everything came back in a rush. The road and horn and car impact. My stomach feels somehow so I lowered my trembling hand to it.

“Julian?” I whispered, my voice barely audible but it’s filled with hope that made me want to cry.

A nurse who has been checking something beside my bed looked up immediately. She walked over in her dusty pink scrub and adjusted my pillow before looking at me with a small, reassuring smile.

“You’re awake. Take it slowly, Mrs. Volkov. You’ve been unconscious for about three hours.”

Three hours? My eyes moved around the room again. There was no one there. No Julian or Bianca or even Helen. Not a single person from the family.

“Did my husband come?” I asked, trying to sit up despite the ache that spread through my body.

“No, I’m afraid not.” The nurse’s expression changed slightly.

“He didn’t?” I stared at her dumbly as if that would change anything.

She shook her head gently and something in my chest gave out. I could hear the sound of my heart bleeding the wrong way. Like the organ is slowly breaking one part after the other.

“We tried contacting the emergency contact listed on your phone but we haven’t had anyone come in yet.” Her smile told me everything. They called, they knew but they didn’t show up.

I looked toward the door. Maybe Julian was on his way after he managed to escape the party. Or maybe someone had told him the wrong hospital. There had to be a reason. This is too serious for Julian not to show up. He doesn’t even like when I nick my finger with a knife.

“Can I have my phone?” I asked quietly.

The nurse hesitated before reaching for it from the small table beside the bed. “Of course but you should try not to strain yourself.”

I took it from her with trembling fingers. The screen lit up with the missed calls I gave Julian. Nin of them in total and he hasn’t returned a single call.

For a moment, I stared at his name waiting for some sort of magic. I remember making the calls and how frightened I was when he didn’t answer. I remember gripping the phone and thinking that if he heard my voice, if he knew I was hurt, he would come no matter what.

There were no messages asking where I was from him. I opened my messages. My heart sank almost immediately because Helen left messages regarding her granddaughter’s gift.

Helen: Where are the gift bags?

Helen: You were given one simple thing to do. How can you be this incompetent? I knew we shouldn’t have given you this. You just proved how much of a disappointment you are.

I swallowed hard and looked away from the screen. Not once did anyone ask where I was or what happened. Nobody knew that I was lying unconscious in a hospital bed and I nearly died. Nobody seemed to care.

I pressed my lips together as my eyes began to burn, refusing to let myself cry. I have been married to Julian for three years. I spent years learning the little things about him, remembering his meetings, preparing his clothes, knowing how he liked his coffee, remembering every important date because I wanted him to feel cared for.

And when I disappeared, all they wanted to know was where the gift bags were. My thumb moved across the screen again and I opened the family group chat. I regretted it almost immediately. There were dozens of messages from the birthday party.

Lena sitting in front of her birthday cake with a crown on her head, her face covered in icing as everyone laughed around her. Bianca was beside her in almost every picture, fixing her hair, feeding her cake and holding her when she opened her presents.

Helen was there too along with my husband Julian. I stopped breathing for a second when I saw him because he was smiling wide.

Not the small, polite smile he gave me when I asked him to take a picture with me these days and I thought it was entirely because he was grieving his brother. He looks genuinely happy to be where he is.

In one video, Lena was sitting on Bianca’s lap while Julian stood behind them laughing as Lena tried to blow out all five candles at once. Bianca laughed too and Julian reached down to fix the little girl’s crown when it slipped sideways. They looked like a real family.

My eyes blurred. I wiped them quickly but another picture loaded.

Julian was standing beside Bianca, one hand resting casually against the back of her chair. She was looking up at him with a smile and he was looking down at her.

I stared at the picture until my chest hurt. I couldn’t remember the last time Julian looked at me like that. Other memories began forcing their way into my mind.

Bianca had always been beautiful. Julian told me that himself while we were getting ready for a family dinner. He casually mentioned how much he liked her hair. He had said it looked elegant and that she always knew how to style herself properly.

Another time, when Anton was still alive, Julian told me his brother was lucky to have Bianca.

“She’s so sophisticated,” he had said with a shrug when I asked why he kept talking about her. “You should learn something from her.”

I laughed then and pretended it didn’t hurt. There had been so many little things.

Bianca was graceful. She understood family.

Bianca knows how to dress.

Bianca is a wonderful mother.

I had spent years convincing myself that Julian was simply careless with his words. That he didn’t mean anything by them.

But sitting alone in that hospital bed and looking at the pictures of him smiling beside her, I suddenly wondered if I was simply too afraid to understand what was in front of me the entire time. My fingers tightened around the phone.

He was in that house celebrating Lena’s birthday while I was lying here dying. He did not even noticed that I was gone.

I looked at the nine unanswered calls again and my vision became watery. Maybe he hadn’t seen them. Maybe he would come rushing through that door. I hated myself for still hoping.

The nurse returned a few minutes later and noticed the tears slipping down my cheeks. She quietly placed a cup of water on the table before looking at me.

“Mrs. Volkov, there is something the doctor needs to discuss with you.”

“What is it?” I wiped my face with the back of my hand and looked at her.

She exchanged a brief glance with the doctor who just entered the room. My stomach tightened because it doesn’t look good. The doctor came closer and pulled the chair beside my bed forward before sitting down. His expression almost too gentle and immediately I knew something was wrong.

“Mrs. Volkov,” he said carefully, folding his hands in front of him, “before the accident, were you aware that you were pregnant?”

My heart stopped as I clocked the pregnancy spoken in past tense. For the first time since waking up, I forgot about Julian. My hand moved slowly around my stomach.

“Yes,” I whispered and it wasn’t a lie.

I was going to surprise Julian after the birthday party because we have tried for years and he will be overjoyed. Maybe he is doting on Lena and Bianca because he doesn’t have a child of his own. The doctor once told us Julian had issues and he is the one wit the problem. I didn’t mind. I already zeroed my mind that we’d adopt some day then the morning sickness came and I took pregnancy tests four times to confirm.

“I see.” The doctor lowered his eyes for a moment.

“Why are you asking me?” I watched him carefully.

“I’m very sorry but there has been a complication.” He took a breath before looking back at me.

“What complication?”

“Mrs. Volkov, you miscarried.” His expression softened.