My Husband's Secret Baby Was Born on My First Night Shift

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The first night I was transferred to a new hospital for my shift, I ran into my newlywed husband, Maxwell Delgado. The same man who'd told me he was away on a business trip.

He was on his knees outside the operating room. On the gurney beside him lay a pregnant woman hemorrhaging as she went into labor.

Maxwell seized my hand in a death grip, his desperate pleas ringing in my ears.

"Doctor, please, you have to save her!"

The nurse beside me held out the surgical consent form in front of him.

"We need a family member's signature before we can operate. What's your relationship to the patient?"

Maxwell took the pen. His hands trembled so badly the signature came out jagged.

"She's my wife."

The words knocked the air from my lungs. A memory flashed through my mind: Maxwell, just one month ago, smiling as he placed our marriage certificate in my hands.

"Sapphire Simmons, from today on, we're officially husband and wife."

He must have noticed me freeze, because he looked up through bloodshot eyes, a flicker of confusion crossing his face.

I ducked my head quickly, adjusting the mask over the bridge of my nose to hide my expression, then turned and pushed open the operating room doors.

"We'll do everything we can for the patient."

But as for whatever had existed between us, I was fairly certain it had just been pronounced dead.

After a round of emergency treatment, the patient stabilized. The tension in the operating room eased, and one of my colleagues leaned over, whispering gossip under her breath.

"I heard the two of them were going at it so hard that's what caused all this."

"The woman's practically at her due date, and her husband couldn't keep his hands off her. Young people these days really do risk their lives for love..."

My hands slowed for a few seconds. The image of Maxwell kneeling outside the OR doors blurred and merged with another memory: Maxwell down on one knee, a ring in his hand.

"Sapphire, marry me. For the rest of my life, you'll be the only woman I ever touch. I swear it."

Then came our wedding night. He'd picked up every piece of clothing I'd taken off and put it back on me, his face twisted with pain and conflict.

"I'm sorry, Sapphire."

"I made a vow at my mother's grave to observe three years of mourning for her. This is the third year. Just wait for me a little longer."

I'd believed him. And now my reward was standing in this operating room, fighting to save the child he'd made with someone else.

A bitter smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth.

So the reason he never touched me had nothing to do with honoring the dead. He simply didn't want me.

The surgery wrapped up smoothly. I cradled the newborn in my arms.

She barely weighed anything, yet the heaviness pressing down on my chest was suffocating.

When I pushed open the OR doors, Maxwell shot to his feet and rushed over.

His eyes were threaded with red, unable to contain his worry.

"How's Olivia?"

Olivia Walker. The name on the patient chart. The woman Maxwell had just called his wife.

A complete stranger to me. He'd never once mentioned her.

I placed the baby in his arms and offered my congratulations.

"Mother and daughter are both safe. The surgery went well."

The tension drained from Maxwell's face in an instant. He looked at me with a gratitude reserved for strangers.

"Thank you, Doctor. What's your name?"

Behind the surgical cap and mask, Maxwell hadn't recognized me.

I stared into his eyes, searching for even a trace of guilt.

"Simmons. You can call me Dr. Simmons."

Maxwell's brow furrowed. He opened his mouth to say something more, but Olivia's bed was wheeled out from behind me at that exact moment.

"Maxwell..."

She lay on the bed, utterly drained, barely able to lift her voice.

Maxwell shoved past me without a second thought and hurried to her side. He held the baby in one arm and gathered Olivia's hand into his free palm, speaking to her in a tone so tender I had never once heard him use it before.

"Shh, don't talk. You need to rest."

"I already cleared my schedule. I'm not leaving your side."

A happy little family of three, warm and cozy. The sight burned behind my eyes like acid.

I clenched my fists so hard my fingernails turned my fingertips white. It was the only thing keeping me sane.

Olivia had just come out of surgery, and I'd only just transferred to this hospital. This wasn't the time or the place to rip the curtain away.

I walked back to the on-call room. The phone in my pocket buzzed.

I swiped to answer. Maxwell's voice poured through the speaker.

"Sapphire, something urgent came up at the office. I probably won't make it home for a while."

My chest was a furnace of rage and a thousand unasked questions.

But when the words rose to my lips, the devastation crushing my body and soul snuffed out every last desire to speak.

My silence gave Maxwell the wrong idea. He must have thought I was sulking, because he kept talking, his tone coaxing and sweet.

"Be good, okay? Once things settle down here, I promise I'll carve out time for our honeymoon trip..."

"Maxwell..."

Before he could finish, Olivia's voice drifted through the phone, calling his name. Then came the thin, sharp wail of a newborn.

"Gotta go!"

He hung up in a fumbling panic.

Too much had happened in a single day.

The sheer absurdity of it all churned in my stomach. I barely made it to the bathroom before I was doubled over the toilet, retching until the world went dark at the edges.

Half-conscious, I dialed a number.

"Mail me the marriage certificate from the study cabinet."

"And tell Dad that Maxwell's been cheating. I want every cent of funding pulled. Starting now."

According to the rotation schedule, the next set of rounds was mine.

I forced myself upright and picked up the patient chart.

Standing at the doorway, I looked through the glass. Maxwell and Olivia were squeezed together on a narrow hospital bed. He had his arm around her, one hand patting her back in slow, gentle circles. The bruise-dark shadows under his eyes told me he'd been up all night.

Even though every last shred of feeling had already died, the bitterness still seeped through, unstoppable.

My knock made Maxwell's eyes snap open.

I pulled my surgical mask into place and pushed through the door.

It was a hospital room, but someone had made it feel like a home. The table was piled high with supplies for a new mother and baby, everything from the biggest items down to the smallest. Every single one of them had been chosen based on my personal recommendations.

The night before he left on his "business trip," Maxwell had shaken me awake in the middle of the night.

"Sapphire, you're an OB-GYN. Can you tell me what someone needs to prepare for having a baby?"

I'd squinted at him, half-asleep and confused.

"Why are you suddenly asking about that?"

He'd stammered through some excuse about a coworker whose wife was about to deliver, begging him to ask me for advice.

I'd just finished a thirty-six-hour shift. I was so exhausted I could barely form a coherent thought.

Then Maxwell sat up, flipped on every light in the apartment, and dragged me out of bed.

"Sapphire, write it all down. Quick."

He shoved a pen into my hand. Then he pinched the soft, tender skin on the inside of my arm and twisted, hard.

The searing pain jolted me awake instantly.

I worked on that list until dawn broke through the windows.

Before he left, he tucked it carefully into the inner pocket of his jacket, handling it like something precious. He walked out the door without so much as a thank you.

I buried every emotion behind my eyes and stepped up to the bed for the routine check-in.

"How are you feeling today?"

Olivia clung to Maxwell's hand, her voice feather-soft.

"I'm feeling much better now. Yesterday was so touch-and-go, I really owe it all to you, Dr. Simmons. I haven't even had the chance to thank you properly."

"The moment I woke up, I had a banner made to show my gratitude. I hope you won't think it's too much."

I smiled, but my gaze drifted to their interlocked hands.

On Maxwell's finger, which had always been bare, sat a ring identical to Olivia's. An unusual, distinctive design.

Noticing where I was looking, Olivia twisted the ring on her finger, her voice brimming with pride.

"My husband designed these himself. They're one of a kind. The only pair in the world."

"A little ugly, maybe, but I love them."

I dropped my gaze quickly, swallowing the storm rising behind my eyes.

The day after our wedding, Maxwell had taken off the ring I'd had specially commissioned by a master jeweler. I watched him seal it in its box and shove it into the back of a drawer, never to see the light of day again.

"Why won't you wear it?"

He'd frowned and shaken his head.

"It's too expensive. If I lost it, that would be a shame."

I hadn't said another word. I just quietly slipped off my own ring and tossed it onto the nightstand.

At home, Maxwell's ring finger had always been empty.

Now it wore a band that wasn't going anywhere.

So in front of me, he couldn't even be bothered to pretend.

The baby slept peacefully in a bassinet nearby. Even at this age, the resemblance to Maxwell was unmistakable in the curve of her brows and the set of her tiny features.

As she shifted in her sleep, a jade pendant slipped free from beneath her collar. The stone was luminous, its quality obvious at a glance.

It was the gemstone cut from the rough stone at our wedding, the one that had been unveiled as a lucky charm for the occasion. Now it had been carved into an ordinary pendant and hung around the neck of Maxwell's daughter.

Something hollow opened up inside my chest. Whatever had once been there, I'd already carved it out myself.

Olivia's sugary voice floated up from behind me.

"Babe, I'm a little hungry. Could you go grab me some breakfast?"

Maxwell hesitated, rooted to the spot.

"I don't feel right leaving you here alone."

Olivia waved him off and glanced my way.

"Relax. Dr. Simmons is right here. Nothing's going to happen."

Only after I nodded did Maxwell finally turn and leave.

The door opened and closed. The room fell quiet.

I couldn't help the bitter curl at the corner of my mouth.

"You and Mr. Delgado certainly have a wonderful relationship."

Olivia pulled Maxwell's jacket tighter around her shoulders and propped herself up in bed.

"Maxwell and I both came from a small town. When you're two people out in the world on your own, you learn to lean on each other."

"Luckily, he's ambitious. He worked hard and built his own company from the ground up."

"If it weren't for that impossible investor breathing down his neck, he'd already be one of the top names in the industry by now."

I raised an eyebrow. A slow heat kindled in my chest.

Maxwell's company, from its initial registration to every round of funding, had been built step by step under my father's guidance. And the biggest investor? Also my father.

Back then, Maxwell had refused a position at Simmons Group, insisting he'd provide me a comfortable life with his own two hands.

But his business instincts were painfully mediocre. The company had been hemorrhaging money for two years straight, and it was my father who'd been quietly covering the losses behind the scenes, all for my sake.

Yet in Maxwell's version of the story, my father was the difficult investor making his life miserable.

An ungrateful snake. That's what he was.

A knock came at the door. Someone stepped in carrying a red banner.

At some point, Olivia had already gotten out of bed and settled into a wheelchair that had been waiting beside it.

A smile lingered at the corners of her mouth. "Dr. Simmons, catch."

The banner was thrust toward me. The man holding it gave it a shake, and the fabric unfurled.

The moment I read the words, my expression went dark.

BRAZEN AND SHAMELESS. HOMEWRECKER.

Eight bold characters hit me like invisible slaps across the face, burning my cheeks crimson.

My whole body trembled. When I spoke, my voice came out cold as ice.

"What exactly is this supposed to mean, Ms. Walker?"

And just like that, Olivia's demeanor shifted completely. Her gaze raked over me from head to toe.

"Maxwell's not here. You can drop the act."

"The second you came out of that operating room yesterday, I noticed. Your eyes were practically glued to him."

"We're both women. Don't think for a second I can't see those pathetic little thoughts running through your head."

She pressed a hand to her mouth in an exaggerated gag, staring at me with undisguised revulsion.

"Some angel in white you are. Spending your days scheming to seduce a patient's husband. Disgusting."

I slammed the banner to the ground, the words of rebuttal already rising in my throat.

But then I thought of those two marriage certificates, and I couldn't tell which one was real. The words lodged in my throat and refused to come out.

Seeing me struck silent, Olivia's arrogance swelled.

"Hit a nerve, didn't I?"

"You picked OB-GYN on purpose. Figured you'd prey on families when they're at their most vulnerable."

She jerked her chin at the man who'd delivered the banner.

"You. Drag her out into the hallway."

I backed away, eyes locked on him, and snapped, "Don't touch me!"

But the next second, a cup smashed against my skull.

A warm trickle of blood ran down from my temple.

By the time I came back to my senses, the hallway was packed with onlookers.

Olivia wheeled herself out of the room, shouting at the top of her lungs.

"Everyone, come look! This OB-GYN doctor preys on women right after they give birth, seducing their husbands while they're still weak!"

"From the very first second she laid eyes on my husband yesterday, she hasn't looked away once!"

She ordered the man pinning me down to rip off my surgical mask, then grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my face up for the entire crowd to see.

The instant she got a clear look at my features, a flash of jealousy cut through Olivia's eyes.

"Just as I thought. A face built for seduction. Born to lure men away from their families."

She stepped in front of me and swung her palm across my face.

A searing sting exploded across my cheek.

Then Olivia deliberately twisted the ring on her finger so the jagged setting faced her palm and dragged it hard across my skin, carving an open wound down my face.

A nurse who had rushed over at the commotion went pale. She stamped her foot and sprinted toward the director's office.

I fought to wrench free of the hands holding me down, but the blood streaming from my wounds was draining my strength faster than I could summon it.

Maxwell came back carrying breakfast. The moment he saw the crowd, panic seized him.

"Excuse me, let me through!"

He shoved his way through the wall of bodies and went straight to Olivia, checking her over from head to toe with painstaking care.

"Livvy, are you okay? What's going on? Why is everyone crowded around out here?"

Olivia grabbed his hand, her face glowing with self-satisfaction.

"You're back just in time. I just exposed Dr. Simmons's true colors in front of everyone!"

"She's been parading around in front of you on purpose, trying to sink her claws into you!"

Maxwell gave her nose an indulgent little tap.

"You and your jealousy. You know there's no room in my heart for anyone but you."

"But let me get a look at this Dr. Simmons and see what kind of face she's got, thinking she could make a play for my woman."

Olivia's finger pointed straight past him, aimed at something behind his back.

Maxwell turned to follow her gaze and locked eyes with me.

Clatter.

Everything in his hands crashed to the floor.

His pupils contracted sharply, the color draining from his face.

"Sapphire, what are you doing here?"