My Doctor Husband Made Me Book Appointments, So I Booked Our Divorce Chapter 01

After we married, Evan became so obsessed with keeping work and family separate that I practically had to book time through his office just to speak to my own husband.

On Thanksgiving, I booked an appointment with him to ask him to come home for our family dinner.

On my way there, I got a call telling me my dad had been in a car accident.

The hospital was packed. Dad was covered in blood, and they couldn’t even find him an overflow bed, let alone an operating room.

I had no choice but to brace myself and call Evan.

On the ninth try, someone finally answered.

But it was his physician assistant, Brooke Lawson.

“Please get Evan. My dad was in a car accident. He needs surgery. Ask Evan to help us get a bed.”

“Claire, hasn’t Dr. Parker told you over and over? If you want to see him at the hospital, you have to make an appointment.”

“Even for your father, you can’t expect special treatment. You’d be taking resources away from other patients!”

“If word got out, what would people think of Dr. Parker? These two years could make or break his promotion to chief!”

I watched Dad beside me, still bleeding. I shook and clenched my teeth.

“I need Evan. Put him on the phone!”

“Stop making a scene. I’m busy.”

Evan’s voice came through the phone, cold and exhausted.

When the call ended, I knew our marriage was over.

***

In the noisy ER, my whole body felt too heavy to move.

“Claire, don’t fight with Evan over me.”

“It’s not easy for him, either. He’s doing it all for this family…”

Dad gasped for breath. He barely had the strength to speak.

“Don’t talk. Please, don’t talk.”

Through my tears, I helped Dad catch his breath, then rushed to the nurses’ station. “Something’s really wrong with my dad. He’s having trouble breathing…”

The nurse glanced at him, her expression shifting slightly.

A few seconds later, a doctor came out.

The doctor examined Dad, his face grave. “Your father may have ongoing bleeding in the space around his lung. We need to open his chest.”

“I’ll call cardiothoracic surgery, but I’m not sure he’ll make it until a surgeon gets here.”

Every grim word hit me in the chest, one after another.

I was too terrified to speak.

I knew nothing about complicated operations like this.

“I can try Dr. Parker. Could he do it?”

Even then, Evan was the only person I could think of.

“Dr. Parker? Evan Parker?”

The doctor sounded disbelieving. “He’s our chief of cardiothoracic surgery. You can really get him to come?”

Chief?

He was already chief?

I pushed my questions aside and nodded. “I’ll call him.”

I shook all over as I pulled out my phone, silently praying Evan would pick up.

I called again. And again. And again.

Every call was rejected.

“Pick up. Please, pick up…”

Sweat prickled over my skin, but I still couldn’t get through.

“We can’t wait. I’ll contact cardiothoracic surgery through the usual channels and see who’s available.”

With no time to wait, the doctor hurried around me and ran off.

In the huge waiting area, I crouched beside Dad, unable to stop crying.

“Don’t worry. Don’t… worry.”

“Your dad’s going to be all right…”

Dad had come into the city to help smooth things over between Evan and me.

Over the past few years, Evan had risen quickly at the hospital.

Meanwhile, things between us grew more strained.

Starting the year before, he’d grown even more determined to avoid any appearance of favoritism. Whatever I needed him for, he insisted I book an appointment to get any of his time.

The idea came from a younger woman from his college who’d returned from abroad. She called it keeping his personal and professional lives separate, so hospital leadership would appreciate his professionalism.

“Claire’s such a supportive wife. I’m sure she can handle it.”

“He’s doing this for his family, too. Why else would a man work himself into the ground?”

“Claire, you understand, don’t you?”

With both of them against me, I couldn’t win the argument.

Maybe their strategy worked. Evan kept moving up, from attending surgeon to senior attending, then deputy chief of the department.

Meanwhile, we barely had a chance to see each other, much less talk.

The love was gone.

I’d fought with him about it. More than once.

At first, when he saw me cry, he’d hold me and try to comfort me.

“Claire, just give me two more years. Once I’m chief, everything will get better.”

“Claire, I know you’ve been hurt. Just hang in there a little longer.”

Later, he met my tears with nothing but a cold, blank stare.

“Claire Bennett, I’m busy and exhausted. Do you have to start something every time I get home?”

“Claire, I don’t have time for your drama.”

Things between us hit rock bottom that Father’s Day, when I took our son home to visit my dad without Evan.

Dad didn’t say anything, but he figured it out.

That was why he’d planned to come for Thanksgiving and help us work things out.

In a cruel twist of fate, he ended up in a car accident instead.

“The surgeon’s here!”

Doctors and nurses came running from down the hall, pushing a gurney, and I went with Dad as they took him into surgery.

The light outside the OR came on. Only then did I breathe a little easier.

“Did you hear? Brooke Lawson got this year’s Employee of the Year award.”

“I figured she would. Dr. Parker must’ve pulled some strings for her. Those two are practically inseparable.”

“Isn’t Dr. Parker married? How does his wife put up with Brooke?”

“Who knows?”

Every word of the whispered gossip reached me.

I bowed my head and couldn’t help letting out a laugh.

So I was the only one he needed to keep his distance from.