HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

A Stranger’s Grief

Brett's POV

The lights buzzed overhead. The clock on the wall ticked too loud. Every few minutes, a nurse walked past. Shoes squeak. Charts rustling. Nobody looked at me.

I kept seeing Vicky's face. Pale. Still. Her chest was barely moving.

Please. Please let her be okay.

Then I heard it.

A scream.

Not a loud one. Not at first. It started low. Then it grew.

"No. No. That's my daughter. That's my daughter."

A woman's voice. Cracking. Breaking.

I looked up.

Down the hall, near the lobby, a woman was being held back by two nurses. She was pulling against them. Reaching for something. Someone.

Her voice broke completely.

I stood up. My legs felt strange.

A nurse walked past me. I grabbed her arm.

The nurse looked at me. Her face was tired. Careful.

"What happened?" My voice came out rough. "That woman out there." I kept my voice low. "What happened?"

The nurse looked at the lobby. Back at me. She hesitated.

"The little girl," she said carefully. "The seven-year-old who was in the ICU earlier tonight." She paused. "She didn't make it. That's her mother."

The words hit my chest like stones. My chest tightened.

She didn't make it.

I let go of the nurse's arm. She walked away.

I stood there. The lights buzzed. The clock ticked. The woman kept crying somewhere down the lobby.

I killed her.

The thought came out of nowhere. Or maybe it had been waiting.

I killed that child.

I sat back down. The chair scraped the floor.

No. No, I didn't kill her. The doctors said she would be fine. They said children are resilient. They said—

No. I made myself think it through. You saved your wife. Victoria was dying. The doctor said she had no time. You made the only decision available to you. Any man would have done the same. Any man who loved his wife would have done exactly the same thing.

The shaking slowed.

I sat with it. The guilt and the justification sitting side by side in my chest, neither one winning, both of them real.

A child was dead.

I had said the words.

Move the child. Put my wife in that bed. Now.

I pressed my palms against my eyes. The darkness behind my lids was red.

I killed a child.

I shook my head. Tried to steady myself.

The child's mother's voice was thick in my ears. I moved towards her at the lobby. I watched from a pillar.

"I hope you're satisfied!"

My heartbeat became louder.

"Is the VIP happy now? Did they get what they wanted?"

Her clothes wrinkled. Her face wet. She was standing in the middle of the lobby, screaming at the ceiling. At no one in particular.

"Whoever you are—the one who took my daughter's place—I hope you're satisfied. I hope you sleep well tonight. Because my daughter is dead. She's dead because you decided she wasn't worth saving."

The woman kept screaming. Her voice cracked. Broke. Rebuilt itself.

"She was kind, and she saved her brother's life, and you—" She stopped. Her chest heaved. "You killed her. You killed my daughter! I hope you never know peace. All of you."

I killed her. I really did.

I wanted to look away. I couldn't.

Then she stopped. Went quiet. Her body went still.

"No," she said, quieter now. "Not you. Not the VIP. Jace. Jace did this. Jace and Irene and Nolan and whoever Nolan's mother is. They killed her. They took her. They used her. They threw her away."

She started walking toward the exit. Talking to herself. To the air.

"They killed her. They're responsible."

Her legs were shaking. Her face was wet. She looked like she might fall at any moment.

She pushed through the automatic doors. The night air swallowed her.

I followed behind her.

She made it three steps onto the pavement. Then her legs gave out. She sat down on the cold ground.

I walked toward her.

She was saying something. Quiet. To herself. To the dark. To nobody.

"Jace. Jace, you killed her. You killed our daughter."

Jace.

The name meant nothing to me. But the pain in her voice meant everything.

I stopped beside her. I stood over her.

Up close her face was — I don't know. Wrecked in the specific way that faces get when the thing that happened is too large to process all at once. Eyes red and swollen. Jaw tight. The look of someone fighting to stay inside themselves.

I put my hand out.

She looked at it. Then up at me.

Something happened when she looked at me. I don't know what to call it. I felt like I knew her frome somewhere but I couldn't remember.

I pushed the thought aside. This wasn't the moment.

"Let me help you up," I said.

I didn't wait. I bent down and got my hands under her arms and lifted, and she let me.

I kept my hands on her shoulders until I was sure her legs were holding.

"I'm sorry," I said. "About your daughter."

She looked at me.

Her eyes moved across my face in a way that was strange. Looking for something. I didn't know what.

She didn't speak.

She turned and walked to her car. I watched her go.

"Can you drive?" I called after her. "Do you live nearby?"

She didn't turn around. "I'm fine."

She got in. She drove.

I stood on the pavement and watched her, and I was not convinced she was fine. Not even slightly.

I watched her car head toward the exit. The way she was driving—too fast - swerving a little—made my chest tightened.

She shouldn't be driving.

I got in my car, started the engine, and followed her.

I kept my distance. Enough that she wouldn't see me. Close enough that I wouldn't lose her.

She ran a red light. Almost hit a curb.

Slow down. Please slow down.

She turned onto a street. Nice houses. Big. Expensive.

She pulled into a driveway. Stopped. Sat there for a long time.

I pulled up a distance back and turned off my headlights and sat there feeling like a man who has made a series of wrong decisions that have led him somewhere he doesn't know how to explain.

I told myself I would just make sure she'd gotten in safely. That she was okay. A woman in that state, driving like that — I just needed to know she'd made it through the door.

Finally, she got out. Walked to the front door. Unlocked it. Went inside.

I should have left.

I didn't.

I sat there. Watching the house. Thinking about the child. About the mother. About the choice I made.

I whispered into the dark.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I prayed for her. For the child. For Vicky.

Minutes passed, I reached for my keys. I needed to go back to Vicky.

Just as I was about to start the engine, the front door of the house opened.

A man came out. Carrying someone in his arms.

I froze.

Jace Riggs.

I knew him. Billionaire. Architecture and real estate. Everyone knew him. One of the most photographed businessmen in the country. I had been in the same room as him at industry events. We had never spoken.

But it was him.

He was carrying a woman. Her head fell back over his arm, a blood stain on the side of her face, her body completely without tension.

That's her. The woman who just lost her daughter. What happened to her? Is she really Jace's wife? That child—was she also Jace's child?

Behind Jace, another woman walked out. Calm. Unhurried. Smoothing her dress as she came through the door like she was leaving a dinner party. She didn't look at the woman Jace was carrying.

I was out of my car before I decided to move.

Jace got her into the backseat of his car. The other woman got in the front. The car started.

I got back in mine and followed.

They drove to another hospital.

They pulled up to the emergency bay and Jace got her out and carried her in and I parked and sat behind the wheel with my hands still on it and watched through the glass doors as they took her inside.

Is that really his wife? I've never seen her. He never shows her.

I got out of my car and took three steps toward the entrance.

Then I stopped. What are you doing.

I stood twenty feet away from the door, and I tried to think straight.

She was inside. She had Jace Riggs with her, whatever that was worth. She was being seen.

Victoria was in an ICU bay that I had cleared for her, and she had no one.

I had been gone over an hour.

Get a grip. I said it to myself the way I would say it to anyone — plainly, without mercy. You don't know this woman. You can not let a stranger's grief pull you away from your own wife while she's fighting for her life.

Her child died tonight.

Yes. And you can not change that. You can not fix it. You can not bring her dead child back.

But your wife is fighting for her life. Go back. Be with her.