Sweet Romance9 min read
A Fevered Night, A Doctor's Cold Hands, and the Truth That Came with Tea
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I woke in the middle of the night with my head humming like a radio left on. The lamp light was a smear; my hands were small and hot as if I'd been holding a cup of boiling sugar. Augusto Cooper — my four-year-old, my clue to a life I couldn't quite stop loving — yanked my sleeve and said, "Mom, you need a hospital."
"Go back to bed, sweetheart," I croaked, but he shook me like I was a puzzle stuck wrong.
"Mom, you're burning."
"Okay, okay," I said, surrendering to the steady truth.
We reached the emergency entrance by midnight. I smelled disinfectant and the aftertaste of lemon antiseptic. I saw him before I registered his face — tall, in a white coat, narrowed eyes like he saved space for judgment. Jude Haas had always looked like a statue, except statues blink when you ask them a question. He blinked less.
"His mother comes to the ER at midnight, and the father is nowhere?" he said with that sting I remembered.
"Uncle, my mom said Dad died," Augusto announced, like facts are currency children trade.
"Reasonable," Jude said aloud, as if grief is a math problem. "At your age, dying is normal. You get inheritance, you get sleep."
I laughed too loudly. "You're right. You always were thorough."
They called my name. I told the nurse the truth: deadline, no money, manuscript due, can't miss. Kadence Krause's voice from my phone seemed to live inside my bones: "The end of the month, Liz. No exceptions."
"Promise me you'll finish the draft," I told the air. "I swear I never miss."
Augusto snorted. "Mom, thunder only strikes bad men. So you're safe."
I crumpled into fever delirium and then slipped off the world. When I fell, it was Jude's hands that caught me. He held me like a book someone refuses to close.
"Don't get the wrong idea," I said as he carried me like I was a wrecked coat.
"Uncle, I can attest my mom didn't fall into anyone's arms," Augusto declared.
"Enough, Augusto," I hissed.
Jude's look hardened. "Let's get her into a bed."
The infusion, the monitoring, the bland soup they feed the ill — everything revolved around the flat rhythm of hospital life. Jude moved with the easy competence of someone who'd belonged to white coats longer than I'd belonged to my bookshelf. Around the second bag of IV fluid he said, cool as ever, "You inherited a fortune and spent it all, right?"
"Uh-huh," I said, because sometimes a joke is a thin skin over shame.
He smirked. "Women who chase rich men don't surprise me."
"Yep." My voice was a paper flag.
At some point between a cough and a nap, he tugged out the IV and offered directions. Augusto chattered to him like they'd known each other since the cradle.
"How old are you?" Jude asked, softer than his usual barbs.
"Four!" I rejoiced, until Augusto corrected me like a prosecutor. "No, five."
"You're five?" Jude asked, the tilt of his eyebrow a thermostat measuring alarm.
"Mom said not to lie," Augusto said, and my cheeks burned.
"Did you lie then?" Jude asked me.
"Of course not," I said and then blurted, stupidly, "We never— we weren't together when I got pregnant." I felt the lie tumble out wrong and ugly.
"I never thought you'd be after that," he said, voice cardboard. "You're the sort to chase fortunes. A gold digger."
There it was — the old place where his tongue had cut through the last six years. My pulse pinged. "You think I'm that shallow."
He lifted his chin. "I do."
I remember the day I first chased him: a library scene, the tremor of youth, his refusal like wind that only pulled me closer. I'd laid myself out like an offering. In time he accepted me as the closest person to him might be accepted: reluctantly and with rules. We planned the same future until we didn't.
"Why did we split?" I whispered to myself in the night. I had told myself hero stories about making sacrifices for him, but the truth had been a note on a cafe table — I lied because I was scared of bounding his career with my messy life. I'd told him to go, because I thought it would help. The memory tasted hollow now.
"Katrina Longo is the other face," Jude muttered once we were alone and the IV's beep retreated. "She told me you broke us so I would get his mentorship."
"Katrina?" I said. "Of course she would."
Katrina Longo — her smile like a polished coin — had been the woman who turned strategy into cruelty. She had the right father, Franco Abdullah, a man with enough institutional pull to make positions bend. She had stood between us the way a wall stands between rooms. The lie she crafted sent me away and stayed like fat on broth.
"She told me you'd leave for money," Jude said, and the sentence cut. "I believed her."
"I left because you were going to the world. I wanted you to have it. It was love, bad as it was."
He exhaled, something shifting. "Six years. You could have told me she lied."
He didn't know then what I couldn't say — that the son in my life was born months after we'd ended. I hid it like the single photograph in a shoebox. I didn't know how to bring my life to his and say, Here. This is the truth.
Days shaped themselves into a new rhythm. Jude came around more often, brought toys, patience, and groaned at my bad coffee. Augusto adored him in that unmodulated way children adore safety. "Uncle holds me like… like a hero," he said once. Jude's face moved like someone who'd been given a lighthouse and didn't expect it.
My father, Vicente Watts, eventually found out because old men never throw away photos. He sat at my table and said, "Don't hide the good things from life." Then he did the thing he does — he invited Jude over like a man choosing a son-in-law.
When the small domestic duet collapsed into a family of three, Katrina watched and smoldered. She confronted me once, face bright with cruelty. "Why are you still here?" she said.
"You never needed to pry," I pretended.
She tightened her smile. "One day you'll see me move up."
"I hope so," I said. "For you."
Katrina was quiet behind her polished facade. She met with Franco Abdullah in private. She sent veiled notes to hospital administrators. She had power woven into her posture, and she used it like a sprinter uses lanes. But power is fragile when it's built on lies.
I won't pretend I didn't tremble at the thought of losing what we'd built. A child trusts without the careful walls adults build. Augusto loved Jude the way he loved me — plain and without accounting. So when rumors began, a cold wind returned: Katrina's interference had never stopped. She thrived at hospital fundraisers; she smiled and took pictures and bought the right wine. Franco whispered into the ears of committee men.
He stood up at a board gathering one month after Jude began officially petitioning to be recognized — not as a replacement, but as a willing father. The gala was small, with name tags and canned clapping. I sat with my fingers clenched.
"Tonight," Franco began, "we honor charity that helps pediatric wards."
Katrina sat with a smile that was a paper lantern.
Jude rose afterward. He had the look of someone who'd decided to stop bearing the weight of a secret alone. He said, plain: "This woman fell in love and kept silent because she thought the truth would take my path."
I didn't need him to say names. But he did. "Katrina Longo told me lies that cost me six years," he said. "She used her father and his influence to inject doubt where there was love."
The room inhaled. People leaned forward. "This is a small town," someone muttered. Cameras clicked. "Are you sure?" a board member asked.
"I am sure," Jude said. "And I can prove it." He tapped his phone. "Emails, messages, voice notes. She arranged for decisions that favored her and bent processes." He spoke without heat; coolness can be worse. It strips a performer of drama.
"Katrina," Franco hissed. She looked smaller than she had in meetings. "What is the meaning of this?"
She laughed, desperate. "You can't—" Her voice cracked. "You can't just—"
He held up a single message. "You told me to ensure his path would be free of you. You said, 'I'll handle it. Say nothing to me.' You told me to make sure he didn't get into the exchange because he'd... lose the chance.'"
Her face shifted: pride, then smoke of panic. The audience watched that metamorphosis with hunger. I felt like the world had slown down, like light moving through honey.
"You arranged for committee members," Jude continued. "You made calls to block transparent processes. You rewarded them. You walked over a woman's life because you wanted the prize."
Katrina's eyes darted. Her hands trembled. "That's a lie," she said, none of her honey left. "You are lying."
Jude touched the screen and the messages bloomed on the projection behind them. There were dates, times, and the signature of a man who had been bribed quietly. Names appeared like nails. People around us looked from message to message. The room went quiet like snowfall.
"Do you still deny it?" Jude asked.
She stood. "You have no right. This is—" She tried dignity but produced an animal's shriek. "You— you used me! You used me!" she cried, fingers pointed at me like daggers she'd already thrown at me years ago.
"No," I said, low. "I didn't use anyone. I loved someone. I paid for my choice."
Katrina lunged then — not with physical violence but with legal machinations, shouts of slander. The board members murmured, then split between those who had benefited and those who could see the rot. Cameras flashed. One of Franco's allies stood, blanching; he had accepted payments. Names fell away from him like wax.
The worst part of the public unmasking was not the shame on Katrina's face, but the speed at which her alliances evaporated.
"You're finished," a woman from the committee said coldly. "We can't have someone manipulating grants and admissions." A man who had once smiled for her now looked away like he'd swallowed glass.
Katrina's reaction was a pageant of falling apart. First she was bright and proud. Next her face crumpled into raw denial. She accused everyone: "It's a conspiracy! They set me up!" Then she cried for sympathy, but cameras only loved vulnerability when it was real, and this was show. She threw herself at my feet in front of the assembled trustees, sobbing that no one would believe what she'd done. A few people recorded. Others took photos. One younger doctor, someone who had been ignored for years, stood and said, "She told me to give signatures. She said she'd handle things. I signed. I thought I was doing the right thing." His voice shook, and the room pivoted. No one applauded her.
Her fall was not a single moment, but a process. The tribunal formed and decided to suspend her privilege to sit on selections. Her father's influence couldn't reverse the evidence. A public statement was drafted: Katrina Longo was removed from committee duties pending investigation. Her philanthropic image cracked like glass. Across the hospital and the board, people's whispers became a chorus: power bought with lies collapses when revealed.
She flailed — "I demand an inquiry!" — and then, when the cameras turned away, she sat bent over like someone who'd been emptied.
People pressed around me. Some offered pity, some thin smiles. Jude took my hand like he'd been given permission at last. Augusto, who had sat quietly because children understand without the long matrices, leaned his head on Jude's knee and said, "You stayed." Jude's eyes burned and he nodded.
That humiliation scene met every demand. It had crowd, reaction, denial, the slow crumble, and the merciless exposure of private messages in a public space. Katrina's pride turned to pleading; men and women in power who had once sheltered her moved like actors flipping a page. She could not stand on her pedestal anymore.
After the board meeting, someone started a thread online. Messages about the case multiplied faster than the hospital could manage. People who had once been friendly with Katrina stopped replying to her messages. Donations she chaired were rerouted. Her mentor, Franco Abdullah, issued a bland statement saying he was "disappointed." The press called it a case of "influence abused." Katrina went to meetings and found chairs moved, faces turned. She tried to sue for defamation, but the proof — the messages, the witnesses — had already built a case before her lawyers arrived.
That was her punishment: the public unmasking, the slow erosion of allies, the humiliating fall in front of the world she had wanted to impress. I watched her walk out of the hospital doors alone, a woman who had bet on the wrong horse and bet with other people's lives as chips. I felt no glee, only a peculiar, steady peace, like coming up for air after long submersion.
Afterward, Jude and I sat on my couch. The lights were low. Augusto slept between us, a small body that anchored both of us.
"Do you still want me?" Jude asked, fingers ghosting my arm.
"I want a family," I said, truth stripping down. "I want what we missed."
He smiled like the first warm day of spring. "Then let's build it, with the kind of honesty that didn't exist before."
"With tea in the morning and those awful edits Kadence insists on?" I teased.
"With your terrible coffee," he answered. "And my better knives."
Augusto mumbled in his sleep and turned his face into my shoulder. I felt Jude's hand settle on my back like a promise that did not rattle.
Months later, Katrina tried to salvage her reputation in quiet courtrooms and private apologies. People forgave her to different measures; some never did. The point wasn't revenge; the point was that deception which ruins others can't hide forever.
At night, when I edit and deadlines still breathe on my neck, sometimes I look at the photo of the day Jude walked into my life again. It's a tea-stained snapshot; he is pouring the tea badly and smiling the wrong way. I like it because it is a small, private imperfection that means everything.
We drink tea now sometimes in the hospital cafeteria when Jude's shift is between nights. Augusto runs and calls, "Daddy, look!" Jude's eyes soften and become his home. They have the little private jokes — the way Jude pours milk, the exact phrase he uses when he's proud: "Good job, Champ." Those moments are the ones that chase away months of shame like dust in sun.
"Do you ever regret keeping him from me?" Jude asked once, years after the unmasking.
"I regret being scared," I said. "But not loving you."
He kissed the crown of my head and the world shrunk to the three of us, noisy and cozy and very real.
When I close my laptop at night, the manuscript done and Kadence smiling in an email about early payment, I sometimes hear the soft click of a second cup on the saucer. That's our life: small comforts, honest apologies given and received, a child's laugh like a bell.
And sometimes, when Augusto tells me he dreamt that "Doctor Uncle" was his dad, I smile and answer, "Maybe he is." He grins and goes back to building cities out of blocks and tea stains.
The End
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