Chapter 4 - The Proxy He Never Knew About
I told the NICU not to let either of them near my son.
The nurse didn’t hesitate.
“Understood, Dr. Grant.”
Five minutes later Cameron stormed into my room as if the hospital still belonged to him.
He was still wearing yesterday’s suit, wrinkled now, tie missing, jaw dark with unshaven stubble. To anyone who didn’t know him, he might have looked devastated. To me, he looked inconvenienced.
Sophie hovered in the hallway but didn’t enter. For once, she didn’t have the courage to stand beside him while he lied.
“You barred me from seeing my own child?” Cameron snapped.
Maya looked up from the chair by my bed.
“No,” she said evenly. “The NICU followed the instructions of the child’s mother and the hospital’s interim legal directive pending review.”
Cameron’s eyes cut toward her.
“This is a family matter.”
“No,” I said, my voice thinner than I wanted but steady. “It became a hospital matter when you turned my labor into a punishment.”
His face shifted.
Not remorse.
Calculation.
“Amelia, you were under extreme distress. You’re not remembering things clearly.”
I almost smiled.
Gaslighting had always been his reflex. He used it with such ease that it probably felt to him like a form of professionalism.
“I remember asking for a C-section,” I said.
“You were frightened.”
“I remember Dr. Morales recommending surgery.”
“She wasn’t the attending.”
“I remember you ordering my epidural shut off.”
His mouth tightened.
“You were not cooperating.”
The room went still.
Lila rose from the corner like a drawn blade.
“Say that again.”
Cameron turned to her, irritated.
“She was fighting every instruction, undermining me in front of staff, accusing Sophie—”
“Because Sophie was lying,” I said.
That landed.
For one brief second, Cameron’s certainty cracked. He had expected pain, rage, maybe tears. He had not expected clarity.
I looked directly at him.
“How long have you been sleeping with her?”
He went perfectly still.
In the hallway, Sophie made a strangled sound.
Maya closed the door.
Cameron recovered fast, but not fast enough.
“That’s insane.”
“Then why was she using her badge to alter my epidural settings?”
His head snapped toward Maya.
“What exactly have you shown her?”
“Enough,” Maya said.
He looked back at me, then, and for the first time he seemed to understand he was not standing over a wife he could bully. He was standing in a room with a legally represented physician who had nearly died under his care.
His tone changed.
Lower. Smoother. More dangerous.
“You need to stop this before you destroy both our careers.”
That told me everything.
Not our marriage.
Not our son.
Our careers.
“My career was on that table bleeding out,” I said. “Yours walked away.”
He flinched, just slightly.
Then he tried one final route.
“You’re emotional because you’re postpartum and traumatized—”
Maya stood.
“Careful.”
Cameron ignored her. “If you keep making reckless accusations, I will have no choice but to request a psychiatric evaluation before you’re allowed to make decisions for the baby.”
The silence after that was murderous.
He had actually said it.
To a chief physician.
To his wife.
After nearly killing her.
Maya stepped toward him with a folded document in hand.
“You will do no such thing,” she said. “Because six weeks ago Amelia executed an updated directive naming me as medical proxy, and yesterday morning she authorized separate neonatal decision-making as Noah’s sole custodial parent pending investigation.”
Cameron blinked.
“What?”
Maya handed him the copy.
“Also,” she added, “Amelia has instructed me to inform you that she will be filing for divorce.”
For the first time, genuine panic flashed across his face.
That was the moment I knew he had never actually imagined losing me.
Hurting me?
Yes.
Controlling me?
Always.
But losing the life attached to me—the respect, the stability, the image, the access—that possibility had never become real to him until now.
“You can’t do this from a hospital bed,” he said.
I met his eyes.
“Watch me.”
He stepped closer, furious now.
“Everything you have—”
“Is mine,” I cut in. “My degree. My name. My salary. My reputation. The only thing you ever brought into my life was the ability to disappoint me at close range.”
Even Lila looked impressed.
Cameron’s composure shattered.
“You think anyone’s going to believe I deliberately hurt my own wife?”
Maya answered before I could.
“I think the board will be very interested in why your personal phone records place sixty-eight calls to Sophie Lowell in the last ten days, including nineteen after midnight.”
He turned slowly.
“Phone records?”
Maya’s smile was ice.
“Your hospital stipend plan wasn’t your only line. You forgot the family phone account Amelia has been paying for since residency.”
The color drained from his face.
Sophie pushed the door open then, white and shaking.
“Cam,” she whispered.
He spun toward her.
Not with love.
With blame.
That alone almost made me laugh.
“What?” he barked.
Sophie looked at me, then at Maya, then at him.
“There are people in Medical Records,” she said. “And Compliance just sealed the labor files.”
Maya folded her arms.
“As of twenty minutes ago, every delivery chart you and Ms. Lowell touched in the last two years is under preservation order.”
Cameron went silent.
In that silence, Sophie finally looked at him the way I had been looking at him for months.
Like a man who could not save the women who trusted him.
She took one step backward.
May you like
Then another.
And before Cameron could stop her, she turned and ran.
