HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

No One Came for Her

Brett's POV

The drive back took twelve minutes.

I parked and walked in and found the first nurse I saw at the desk.

"Victoria Temples," I said. "My wife. What's her status?"

The nurse typed something. Looked at the screen. "I don't have an update, sir. The team is with her.

I sat.

The chair was the same one I'd left an hour ago.

Twenty minutes later.

I watched the ICU bay doors. A nurse went in and came back out. Another followed.

At thirty minutes, a nurse came out of the bay moving faster than normal. Something was wrong.

I sat up.

Another nurse followed.

I stood.

Through the small window in the bay door, I could see too much movement, too many people for a patient. Someone was calling out numbers. Someone else was responding.

I walked toward it.

A nurse stepped into my path. "Sir—"

"That's my wife in there."

"Mr. Temples, we need you to wait—"

"What's happening? What's wrong?"

"Sir, the team is working, if you could just—"

I looked at her.

I don't know what my face was doing. Whatever it was, she stopped talking mid-sentence.

I pushed through the door.

A doctor I didn't recognise was over her with the defibrillator paddles, calling clear, and then the charge and her body lifting from the mattress and falling back and I heard myself make a sound that didn't feel like it came from me.

I saw white foam at the corner of her mouth.

My heart stopped.

"Victoria—"

Someone grabbed my arm. "Mr. Temples."

Justin. He had come from somewhere in the room. His face was the controlled, careful face of a man about to say the worst thing.

"We need to move to the side," he said. Not a suggestion.

"What happened—why is she—you said she was—"

"Brett." He held my arm and moved me two steps back. His voice was steady and quiet. "Her heart went into ventricular fibrillation. Sudden. We responded immediately."

The doctor with the paddles called clear again.

The line on the monitor moved once.

Then flat.

Justin looked at the doctor. The doctor looked at Justin. A long second passed between them that I understood completely and could not accept at all.

The doctor set the paddles down.

He turned to me.

"Mr. Temples." His voice was even. "I am so sorry. We did everything we could. Everything available to us tonight. I'm so sorry."

I looked at Victoria.

At her face. At the stillness of her.

I had cleared that ICU bay for her. I had made that decision — the one that I had been turning over in the chair in the corridor for the last hour — I had made it for her. So she would live. So she would be in the best possible care with the best possible resources and come back to me.

I walked to her.

Justin said something behind me. I didn't hear it.

I sat on the edge of the bed. I took her hand.

"I got you that slot," I said quietly. "A child is dead because—I—I did everything I could. I got you in there. Why—" My voice stopped. I looked at her face. "Why didn't it work, Vicky."

The room slowly emptied around me. Justin stayed longest. He put his hand on my shoulder once, briefly, and didn't say anything. Then he left, too.

I sat with her hand in mine and thought about the seven-year-old child whose slot I took.

This is what you wanted, something in me said. This is what your decision bought. You moved her out so Victoria could have the slot. And now they're both gone.

This is your punishment.

The memories came all at once.

I remembered the first time I saw her.

I remembered our wedding. I cried. She laughed at me.

I remembered how much she wanted a child. How she talked about it all the time. How she picked out names long before we even started trying.

I remembered the IVF. The shots. The appointments. The hope.

I remembered bringing her home two days ago. She was weak but she was smiling.

Now she is gone.

I stayed with that thought. I didn't push it away. I didn't argue with it. I let it sit on my chest where it belonged and breathed through it and stayed beside my wife until there was nothing left to stay for.

***

Two days passed.

Two days of phone calls. Two days of arrangements. Two days of telling people that she was gone.

Her family. My family. I sat in the dark and felt nothing and everything at the same time.

I was drowning.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Vicky's face. Every time I opened them, I saw the little girl's mother.

I hope you're satisfied.

You killed my daughter.

I couldn't breathe.

I had seen Jace Riggs carry her — limp, bleeding from the head — and put her in a car.

Two days had passed and I wanted to know if she was alright.

I wondered if she was still in the hospital. If anyone was with her.

She's not your responsibility. You don't even know her.

But I felt responsible.

I told myself it wasn't my business. I told myself she had Jace Riggs. I told myself I was in no condition to be responsible for a stranger's wellbeing when I was barely keeping hold of my own.

The next thing I knew, I was on my feet. Car keys in my hand. Walking out the door.

***

I drove to the hospital.

The same one. The one where Jace had brought her.

This is crazy. You don't know her. She's nothing to you.

I got out of the car.

I walked to the front desk. A nurse looked up.

"I'm looking for a patient," I said. "She was brought in two nights ago. By Jace Riggs."

The nurse typed. "Oh." A small sound. "Yes. Mr. Riggs's housekeeper."

I paused.

The woman on the pavement had said, "Jace killed our daughter." That was what she'd said. Daughter. The child who died. Jace's daughter, from what I'd understood — a child he'd had with his housekeeper.

Could that be right? Jace Riggs and a housekeeper?

"Yes," I said. "That's her."

The nurse looked at the screen with an expression that shifted slightly. "I'm glad someone finally came in for her." She said it quietly. Almost to herself. "We thought—" She stopped. "Since she was brought in, the only contact has been payments coming through from Mr. Riggs's accounts. No visits. No calls. Just money arriving."

Something cold moved through me.

"No one came?"

"No one." She looked at me. "Are you family?"

I thought about what to say.

"I'm a friend," I said.

She nodded slowly. "Your friend's name is Roberta." She closed the file. "I'll have someone take you up."

Roberta. I said it in my head.

"What really happened to her?"

The nurse's face softened. "She has a severe head injury. They had to remove a piece of her skull to relieve the pressure. She's been unconscious since she arrived."

I felt sick.

This is my fault. All of this.

I had made the call that moved the child. The child's mother had driven home alone in a state no one should drive in. Whatever happened in that house had happened because of a chain of events that ran, at some point, through a selfish decision I made to save my wife.

The nurse opened the door.

The room was dim. Machines. The sound of monitored breathing. The particular stillness of a person who is present but entirely unreachable.

She looked smaller than she had on the pavement.

I pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. I looked at her face for a long time. At the bandaging around her head. At the lines and tubes.

Nobody had come for her.

Not in two days.

"What happened to you?" I said. I wasn't expecting an answer. I just needed to say something into the room. Something that wasn't the sound of machines. "What did they do to you?"

The monitors beeped.

She didn't move.

I looked at her.

"I'm going to take care of you," I said.

The words came out before I'd decided on them.

"I'm going to make sure you wake up."