Sweet Romance11 min read
The Watch, The Rain, and the Last Call
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I got the call at two a.m. The rain hit the window like a drum. My phone lit up with his name: Edwin Cain.
"Claudia, my stomach hurts. Can you come?"
"Now?" I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I was tired, but when he sounded small, I left without thinking.
The hospital smelled like antiseptic and rain. I stepped into the night shift room and knocked. The door opened. Light. A bed. Two people.
"Edwin?" I said.
He looked up, startled. His face was wet with sleep or pain; I couldn't tell. He saw me and froze, fingers tightening on the sheet.
"Claudia, you came?" he whispered.
Behind him, a woman in a nurse uniform sat up and smoothed her hair. She blinked, surprised. "Claudia, hi," she said. "I—"
"Hi?" I echoed. The rain was still loud outside. I dropped my wet umbrella and it made a small sound.
"Why are you here at two a.m.?" Edwin asked, standing. He tried to cover the other person with the blanket, an awkward, bad move.
"You called me," I said. "You said your stomach hurt."
"I did. I only meant... I only said it like that." He pressed his fingers to his brow. "I didn't think you'd actually come."
"So why are you sharing a bed with a nurse?"
"We weren't—" He cut himself off. "Claudia, stop. Don't make a scene."
"I am making a scene because you called me and now I'm here and you're here with her," I said, and my voice rose. The word "here" felt sharp.
The nurse's name tag said Natalia Andrade. She said, "Claudia, we were on shift. The nurse room was cold. The window was broken. I was scared."
Edwin's voice dropped to tired pity. "It was storming. She was alone. I let her rest."
"And me?" I asked. The rain was like a drumbeat on my chest. "I came in the rain. Was that not scary enough?"
Edwin sighed and rubbed his eyes. "This was nothing. I didn't think you'd come."
"Nothing?" I laughed. "You call me and say you have a pain and I come in the middle of the night. Was I supposed to be part of the set decoration?"
Natalia's mouth formed a small, angry line. "Claudia, you should trust us. We were just resting. You always make it worse."
"Is that so?" I said. "You think I make it worse because I expect honesty?"
Edwin had always been practical. He was a doctor, quiet, careful. He was the reason I trusted him for years. I remembered the night he saved me—years ago when I burned with fever and he carried me to the hospital like I was fragile. He said then, "You're safe," and I believed him.
Now the safe place felt cracked.
Later, when the storm cleared and I sat on his kitchen floor packing to leave for a work trip, Edwin came in and said, "Claudia, listen—"
"Say it," I said.
"I didn't mean to hurt you. I only helped. She was scared."
"What about the watch? The five-thousand-dollar watch?"
His face went pale like someone pulled a curtain. "It's complicated."
"You kept her gift," I said. "You didn't return it."
He bowed his head. "It felt wrong to return it in front of her. I planned to give it back."
"You planned after I found out?" I closed the suitcase.
"Claudia—"
I stopped him. "We will take a break. I need distance."
He tried to argue. "This is all your doing," he said once, voice tight. "You're so busy with work. You don't make time for normal things. She listens. She's sweet. You push too hard."
"Excuse me?" I laughed bitterly. "I'm thirty. I work hard so we can have the life together we planned. I save and plan. I do the practical things. And you call me selfish because I want security?"
He looked wounded, then angry, then broken. He tried to grab my arm. I moved away.
"Fine," I said. "We will separate. For now."
He said, "Claudia, you don't get it. I didn't mean to—"
"You didn't mean to?" I echoed. "You accepted a gift and had secret late-night calls. Don't make me into the villain for defending my future."
He looked at me and whispered, "Please don't leave."
I walked out without looking back.
The first weeks were a storm inside me. I worked. I flew. I met clients. I sold myself on the promise of a better future. I told myself, "Work is a home I can build without him."
Then Natalia called.
She sent me a message: Meet me. I agreed. At the café she wore a fashion I didn't recognize—hair done, a designer bag, a smile like she'd won something.
"Why?" I asked.
"To be honest," she said. "I like him."
"Interesting."
She pushed a small velvet box across the table. It was an expensive watch, the one I had seen on Edwin's birthday. "He returned it," she said. "But he still talks about you."
"Why do you want me to break up with him?" I asked.
She looked small and grand at once. "He complains that you're cold. He says you pinch pennies. If you let us have him—"
"Let you have him?" I said. "Woman, you don't get to ask that of me."
"I can help you," she pleaded. "Let him go. Let him be happy."
I left before I said any more.
Two days later I came home and played the recording she had left on my phone. Edwin, drunk and loud, saying words that pierced like shards.
"He always says you're cheap. He says you don't understand family. He said he wishes I'd make him feel young again."
My hands went cold. When he returned from a shift, I sat him down and pressed play.
He listened, face blanching, then tried to explain, then tried to apologize. I told him, "I will not be the reason you talk about me like that."
He begged. "I was drunk. I didn't mean it."
"I don't need your 'didn't mean.'" I said. "I need truth."
We argued. It was ugly. I took my things and left. I gave him the house money—what belonged to him—and he wanted me to stay. He cried on the doorstep. He called me "wife" like it was a key. I threw the word away.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked the day he fainted on my building's sidewalk, sweat-fogged.
"I will be fine," I said. "I always am."
He woke in the hospital. His mother came and scolded me for "not caring." I surprised her by answering her anger back. "Your son slept in a stranger's bed and then fainted on my doorstep," I said. "If you want to know who's to blame, look closer."
After he recovered, he tried many things. He begged, he left notes, he sent messages. One afternoon, in a clear break of all patience I still had left, he collared me by the elevator door.
"Please," he said. "Work with me."
I handed him his account balance via a bank transfer and said, "We are done."
Months passed—no, I won't say that in one line, I refuse the lazy summary. I will tell you details: the nights I worked until the office lights blinked, the early morning runs to clear my head, the small lunches on my desk, the hours I called Teresa Christensen and asked for advice. I told Teresa, "He treated me like a backup plan." She said, "So don't be the plan."
Time helped. I got promoted. My salary jumped. I could breathe.
Then came the hospital meeting.
It was a public staff meeting one Tuesday afternoon. The whole staff was there: nurses, doctors, administrators, families of patients were allowed in. A file lay on the table. The director cleared his throat.
"Everyone, we must address a serious failure," he said.
I was there because I had been invited. I had debated not going. Teresa had said, "You should go. Let them see what he did."
Edwin sat stiff in the front row. Natalia sat beside him, small, chin high. The director played the case: a patient received the wrong medication during a night shift. There were records of both their names and timestamps, showing negligence. The daughter's voice was recorded, the alarm logs pulled. People leaned in.
"During that shift, a tragic error occurred," the director said. "It was negligence born of distraction. We will not allow this."
Someone in the back whispered, "They were on duty together."
"Where were they during the emergency call?" a nurse asked.
Edwin's face went white. Natalia's jaw clenched.
"This is not just about clinical error," the director said. "It is about trust. We trust our staff with lives. If personal choices break that trust, consequences follow."
The files showed messages. One message was a casual, late-night exchange. Another was a photo of a watch, a gift. A few people knew the context; whispers rose like a tide.
"Why bring that up?" Natalia shouted suddenly, voice slicing the air. "That is private. This is about a human life."
The director's face was steady. "Private matters become public when they cost a life," he said. "We must be fair. We will ask the review board to investigate."
A woman in the crowd—the patient's mother—stood. She looked at Edwin. "You were supposed to save my child," she said. Her voice cracked. "You failed her that night."
Everyone turned. The room filled with sharp air. Edwin opened his mouth; nothing came. Natalia tried to touch his arm and he recoiled.
"She came in scared," Natalia said. "We were tired. We never meant to—"
"That is not good enough," the patient’s sister said. "You left a room unattended. You left a syringe out."
Eyes were on them. Phones came out, quietly shooting. People whispered and recorded. I looked at Edwin's face. He had gone from pale to pale as stone to trembly apology.
"Do you accept responsibility?" the director asked.
Edwin shook his head like a child. "I... I wanted to help," he stammered.
"You wanted to help, and a patient was harmed," the director said. He looked at Natalia. "And you?"
Natalia's face turned red, then ashen. "I—I—" she began. "I was scared. We were lonely."
A nurse near us said softly, "Scared people can still do right."
"Because this is a hospital," someone said, "we expect better."
The board announced immediate suspension pending investigation. The director's tone left no room for motion. The staff erupted—some clapped at the decision like justice; some murmured sympathy for a loved one; others simply gaped.
Then, the cruel pass of consequence: the family's lawyer stood up and said, "We will pursue legal action."
Phones recorded every word. They filmed the exits. They live-streamed the faces. Natalia's hand trembled, and a young intern voiced what everyone thought: "You used your time for romance, and a patient paid."
Natalia's face went through a storm. First she looked like she might rage, then pale, then deny.
"I didn't do it on purpose," she said. "I didn't mean anything."
"No one claims you did this on purpose," the patient's relative replied coldly. "But the results are real."
She turned to Edwin, voice shaking. "You promised."
Edwin buried his face in his hands. "I promised," he whispered. "I am so sorry."
The room reacted in waves: some people whispered, "How could he?" A few nurses crossed their arms. One older doctor, who had known Edwin since med school, looked at him with disappointment that tasted like grief.
"You're fired," someone in the board declared for emphasis, though others called it suspension first. The hospital's reputation meant they had to act.
A crowd gathered at the entrance as they escorted them out. The security guard said, "No cameras allowed in private areas," but out in the lobby it was public. People gathered like birds.
A patient’s relative, a woman I had seen before, stepped forward and said, loud and clear, "You treated people like you treated your feelings. You lost both."
She pulled out a small recorder and played the hospital's night log aloud into the crowd. The timestamped messages, the breaks, the unanswered nurse calls—everything spilled.
Natalia first looked defiant. She tried to talk over the noise. "You don't know—"
A teenager in a white coat yelled, "We do know. We know enough!"
Then, the real fall began. Someone in the crowd had posted their exit on social media with a caption that named them. The video spread. People who had been their fans at the hospital commented. "How could they?" "Shame." A small group took out their phones and filmed, broadcasting the shame across the city.
Natalia's face crumpled. The stage of shame moved: from defiance to shock to denial.
"I didn't mean—" she began.
"Shut up," one voice from the crowd said. "You made a choice."
She sank to a bench outside the hospital. People stared. Some took photos. Some put thumbs down. Someone whispered, "She got what she deserved." A few looked away, uncomfortable.
Edwin's reaction changed more slowly. At first he held his head high, as if some dignity might remain. Then the full weight of the words hit him. He began to breathe fast. He tried to explain, "We never—"
The crowd did not want explanation. The crowd wanted a sign that the hospital belonged to the patients. One nurse reached into her bag, pulled out a badge, and threw it down. "We can't be with people who don't care enough," she said.
Edwin's shoulders shook. He covered his face with his hands and knelt, not in a plea but in a moment of collapse. He had been proud. Now pride cracked.
Natalia grabbed his hand and then stopped, as if the touch might make her sink. She stood, hair disheveled, and the cameras caught the moment when she looked like a child who had been scolded in front of schoolmates. Her mouth opened, then closed; she tried to say, "I'm sorry," but the word seemed small.
A crowd of nurses gathered; some soothed the patient's family; others turned away. The public punishment was not a sentence from a judge, but it was real. Their names would follow them. The video played for hours online. Colleagues who had once smiled now walked past. Parents who had trusted them with their children now looked at them like strangers.
When the board finished, the hospital announced their termination. They were escorted out, and the sight of them being led away, each step watched by dozens of eyes, was the kind of punishment that leaves a mark: people will remember that image for years.
Edwin held his chest and said nothing. Natalia's knees buckled in a doorway, and someone in the crowd took a blanket and offered it. She refused, then accepted, then refused again. She tried to speak to the director. He would not meet her eyes.
"What do you feel?" I whispered to the air near me. I didn't expect an answer. Anger pressed down like a heavy coat.
"You did this," the patient's husband shouted at Edwin as they went. "You chose her before his life."
People began to clap—not in kindness, but in release. They clapped because they saw a system correct itself. It was a small celebration for the ones harmed.
When the humiliation ended, the night was older. The rain had stopped. The world moved on. But the image of them walking out would not. I saw them again that day months later, at a bank, thin and tired. Life had not forgiven them.
After the meeting, Edwin tried to find me. He sent messages, but I had learned that answers come in quiet decisions, not hot words. He asked for forgiveness. I refused to give it when it was cheap.
Work carried me forward. Teresa said, "You deserve peace." I said, "I deserve respect."
The last time I saw them together, they argued loudly in a bank line. He looked smaller. She looked harsher. She said, "You should have chosen me." He said, "I thought I could have both."
"That is the truth people remember," I told Teresa later. "You can't have both."
Time folded. I paid down my mortgage. I took the promotion. I bought myself small things I liked, better coffee, a new coat. The city felt wider. People I loved called. I dated lightly and then stopped. I learned how to be alone and not lonely.
One evening, some months later, Edwin found me at a rooftop bar where Teresa and I celebrated my latest win. He approached quietly.
"Claudia," he began. "I—"
"Don't," I said.
He looked at me. "Do you still have the watch?"
I tilted my chin. "Which watch, the one that was never mine?"
He swallowed. He bent low and said, "I am sorry. I am sorry in ways I cannot fully say. I was small."
"I accepted someone small for a moment," I said. "But I can't keep a life that lets me be small back."
He nodded, finally seeing me whole. "I understood too late."
We did not reconcile. He learned his lessons in smaller ways—public shame, loss of trust, a life that required rebuilding. Natalia learned hers in harsher ones; she tried to open a clinic with Edwin, and the world did not warm to them. They lost clients and then money. The small clinic had an empty waiting room and a sign that read "Closed" one morning. A neighbor said years later, "They had good hands, but bad choices."
"If you ask me," Teresa said, "you were always brave."
I looked at the city lights and felt the rain memory like a scar that had become a line of light. I kept the bank transfer in my phone. I kept a picture of the watch in my head—a symbol of a fragment of a life I had dismantled and rebuilt.
On the night I paid the last of my mortgage, I sat on my sofa and held a simple wristwatch of my own, a small gift to celebrate. I wound it and the second hand moved. It ticked steadily, small and honest.
"Tick," I said out loud. "Tick."
And I meant it.
The End
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