The headmaster nodded, relieved. Ethan jumped up, brushing past me and walking into the hall without a backward glance. He didn’t say sorry. I didn’t say, “You’ll be sorry.” I paid a fortune in tuition for my son to receive the best education, not for me to apologize for his thuggish behavior.
The walk to the car passed in hostile silence. As I started the engine, he was the one who broke it.
“Dad wouldn’t have yelled at me like that. He understands me.”
“Your father isn’t here.”
I drove with my hands firm on the steering wheel.
“And understanding stupidity is not the same as condoning it.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
His childish fury surfaced suddenly.
“They’re liars, and you always take their side. You’re always—you’re such a—”
“Be very careful what word you choose, Ethan.”
I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. My dark, cold eyes met his. The rage in him hit a wall of pure ice. He huffed and crossed his arms, staring out the window.
A quick, unwelcome thought crossed my mind. He’s not mine. Not in the biological sense—he was—but in something deeper. There was no connection, not even the conflicted bond that sometimes arises from love. Just constant friction, a strangeness that had grown with the years. William said it was me, that I was too cold, that I didn’t know how to show affection. Maybe he had a point. But with Ethan, from the very beginning, every gesture of affection had gotten stuck in my throat.
“We’re going to the doctor,” I said, changing direction.
“Why? Nothing hurts,” he protested.
“Your lip is swollen, and you were in a fight. A quick checkup at the clinic. It’s protocol.”
And because, I added internally, I don’t trust your version of events or your apparent toughness. It was my responsibility, at least the legal one.
At the Mount Sinai emergency room, the wait was brief. The name Hayes still carried some weight. While a young, listless resident checked Ethan, I waited in the hallway, arms crossed, mentally reviewing tomorrow’s meeting with the Korean lawyers. The world—my world—couldn’t stop for an eight-year-old’s tantrums.
“Charlotte. Charlotte Hayes.”
The female voice, tinged with a hint of doubt, made me turn. A woman in her early fifties, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a practical bun, reading glasses hanging from the neck of her white coat, was looking at me with a smile of recognition.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” I asked, my mind filing through faces at high speed.
“I’m Dr. Evelyn Reed. I delivered your baby eight years ago right here in this hospital.”
Her smile widened.
“It was a complicated case. I don’t forget those. An emergency C-section, severe preeclampsia. You were in very bad shape.”
The memories, blurry and fragmented by medication and pain, came back in fits and starts. White lights. Muffled voices. A feeling of suffocation. And then nothing. And then William’s voice telling me something about our son. Small. Weak.
“Oh, yes.”
I nodded, forcing a polite smile.
“Of course. A lot of water under the bridge since then.”
“You can say that again.”
Her gaze, warm and professional, rested on me, then glanced toward the examination room where Ethan was, then back to me with an expression of genuine curiosity.
“And how is your daughter? I mean, is everything all right with her?”
The air in the sterile, cold hallway seemed to solidify around me. For a second, maybe two, my mind went blank. A low hum started in my ears.
“I’m sorry?”
The words were mine, but the voice sounded alien. Flat.
Dr. Reed frowned slightly, her kind smile freezing into polite confusion.
“Your daughter. The baby girl. You gave birth to a baby girl. A difficult delivery, but the little one, despite being premature, was a fighter. Don’t you remember?”
My lungs constricted. I looked at the doctor, at her sincere brown eyes, searching for a hint of a joke, of a mistake. There was none. Only the quiet certainty of a professional who remembered her job.
“Dr. Reed,” I began, my voice now holding a controlled edge, the same one I used in board meetings when someone presented incorrect figures, “there must be some confusion. I gave birth to a boy. To Ethan.”
I gestured with my head toward the exam room.
“He’s eight years old.”
The woman blinked, then shook her head, not defiantly, but with the firmness of someone certain of the facts.
“No. I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. I was the on-call OB-GYN. I attended you myself. I delivered the baby girl myself. It was a girl. I noted it on the chart. I signed it. She weighed maybe four and a half pounds, but she screamed with enviable force as soon as we gave her a little help.”
She paused, her expression clouding with concern.
“Did they tell you something different?”
“The chart. My husband.”
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