I Called My Husband 19 Times Before I Died

Chapter 1

I died at 11:52 p.m. on the cold tiles of my bathroom floor. It was our fifth wedding anniversary. I called my husband nineteen times. He answered once. "Stop faking, Wren. Sienna might not make it through the night." Then he hung up. And I bled to death holding a positive pregnancy test. The pain stopped the second I left my body. The tearing low in my belly, the ice in my hands, the gray fog closing in. All of it, gone. I rose up through the ceiling, light as steam, and something pulled me through the snowstorm like a thread tied to my ribs. It pulled me straight to him. St. Mary's Hospital. Fourth floor. The private suite. The room was full of white peonies. I knew those peonies. I had ordered them three weeks ago, for our anniversary dinner, and paid extra for delivery. The florist must have called Julian to confirm. He'd brought them here instead. Sienna Vale lay in the bed in a cream silk robe, her blonde hair fanned across the pillow like a magazine ad. My husband sat beside her, holding her hand in both of his. Dr. Julian Hale. Cardiothoracic surgeon. The best hands in the state, everyone said. Those hands had never held mine like that. "Julian," Sienna murmured, glancing at his phone on the tray table. "Shouldn't you call Wren back? She sounded really upset. Like, really bad." Julian's thumb kept stroking her knuckles. "She's faking." His voice went flat and tired. "She always gets sick when I'm with you. Last month it was a migraine. Before that, a panic attack. Tonight it's the anniversary. You know how she is." Faking. I stood three feet away from him, already dead, and I still wanted to cry. Here's what you need to know about my marriage. Sienna was Julian's first love. High school sweethearts. She broke his heart at twenty-two and moved to LA. He met me at twenty-nine. We were happy. Really, stupidly happy. Then, two years ago, Sienna came back. With a diagnosis. A rare heart condition. A year to live. Maybe less. And in a marriage with a dying ex-girlfriend in it, everything belongs to the dying girl. Christmas. Birthdays. Date nights. His phone at 2 a.m. His patience. His softness. I was jealous. God, I was jealous. And I hated myself for it, because what kind of woman is jealous of someone who's dying? Sienna squeezed his hand. "I just don't want to be the reason you two fight." "You're not the reason," Julian said. "She is." I reached out to touch his face. To scream. Julian, I'm on the bathroom floor. Julian, there's a baby. Julian, look at me. My fingers went straight through his cheek. The thread in my ribs yanked me backward, across the snow, through the walls of our house, down the hall, into the bathroom. There I was. Curled on my side against the tub. Face white as the tile. My pale blue anniversary dress soaked dark from the waist down. Bloody handprints smeared along the cabinet where I'd tried to pull myself up. In my right hand, still clenched, the little plastic stick. Two pink lines. I'd been waiting three weeks to tell him. The thread pulled me back to the hospital. Julian stood up and stretched. "I'm going to grab a coffee. You want anything?" "Just you," Sienna said softly. "Come back fast." He smiled at her. The smile I used to get. Then he walked out, leaving his phone on the tray table. The door clicked shut. And Sienna's face changed. The sweetness drained off it like water off glass. She sat up, reached for his phone, and typed in the passcode without even looking. I knew those numbers. 0-6-1-4. Her birthday. Not mine. Not our anniversary. Hers. She tapped the voicemail icon. Pressed it to her ear. Even from where I floated, I could hear my own voice, thin and gasping. "Jules... please... I'm bleeding. I think it's the baby. I'm not faking, I swear, please come home—" Sienna listened to the whole thing. All three minutes. Then she smiled. And pressed delete. She set the phone back exactly where it had been, lay down on her pillow, folded her hands over the heart that was supposedly failing, and closed her eyes like a woman who'd never slept better in her life.

Chapter 2

When I met Julian, I was a pastry chef who smelled like burnt sugar, and he was a sleep-deprived resident who ate my lemon bars like they were medicine. "Marry me," he said, with his mouth full, on our third date. I laughed. He didn't. Eight months later, I did. I grew up in foster care. Seven homes in twelve years. I never had a birthday cake I didn't bake myself. So when Julian looked at me like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, I believed it with my whole starving heart. For three years, I was his person. Then Sienna called. I remember the exact night. We were on the couch watching a cooking show, my feet in his lap. His phone lit up with a name I'd only heard in stories. He went pale. He went outside. He came back forty minutes later with red eyes. "She's sick, Wren. It's her heart. They're saying a year." I hugged him. I said all the right things. I even baked her a cake and drove it over myself. She opened the door, looked at the cake, and said, "Oh. That's sweet. I can't have sugar, though. Julian knows that." Then she smiled at me like I was the help. That was the beginning. The year became two. Sienna had "episodes." Always at night. Always on weekends. Always on days that mattered to me. Our anniversary dinner, year three: an episode. Thanksgiving: an episode. My grandmother-in-law's eightieth birthday party: Julian left before the toast. And every time I said something, even something small, Julian looked at me with this exhausted disappointment. "She's dying, Wren. What is wrong with you?" What is wrong with you. The worst night was my thirtieth birthday. I baked my own cake. Vanilla bean with raspberry. Three layers. I lit the candles myself, because he was running late from the hospital. He finally walked in at nine, kissed my forehead, and his phone buzzed before I could make a wish. Sienna. Chest pains. He grabbed his keys. "Julian, please. Just ten minutes. Just let me blow out the candles." "Wren, she can't breathe." Something in me snapped. I picked up the cake and threw it at the kitchen wall. Raspberry everywhere, like a crime scene. And I screamed the ugliest thing I've ever said. "Sometimes I wish she'd just die already so I could have my husband back!" The silence after that was a living thing. Julian looked at me like he'd never seen me before. Then he walked out. The door shut softly. That was somehow worse than a slam. I scrubbed raspberry off the wall until three in the morning. The next day, I was coming down the stairs when I heard him in the kitchen, on the phone with his best friend. "I know she's hurting, man. But Sienna has months. Wren will still be here after." A pause. A sigh. "Wren will always be here." I sat down on the stairs and covered my mouth. That's the thing about being the one who'll always be there. Nobody ever hurries back to you. After that, I got smaller. I stopped asking. I stopped complaining. I told myself it was temporary. That one day Sienna would be gone, and God forgive me for thinking it, and Julian would turn around and see me again. Then, three weeks ago, two pink lines. I sat on the edge of the tub and sobbed. Not sad tears. The other kind. Somebody was going to need me. Somebody was going to be mine. I planned everything. I'd recreate our wedding cake. Lemon and elderflower, with sugar violets. I'd put the ultrasound photo in a little box with a tiny white onesie. I'd tell him at dinner, on our anniversary, and he'd cry, and we'd start over. Tonight was supposed to be our fresh start. Now I floated in the hospital hallway, watching Julian carry two coffees back toward Sienna's room. His phone buzzed in his pocket. The screen lit up: GRAN. Margaret Hale. Seventy-eight years old. The only person in his family who had ever called me "sweetheart" and meant it. Julian silenced it. It buzzed again. A text this time. Wren isn't picking up. I've called eleven times. Something's wrong. I'm driving over. Julian rolled his eyes and typed back with one thumb. She's fine, Gran. She's sulking. Don't drive in this weather. He put the phone away and pushed open Sienna's door. Behind me, through forty miles of snow, I felt something old and stubborn start its engine.

Chapter 3

Let me tell you how my last night actually went. At 8:00 p.m., the table was set. Candles. The good plates. Our wedding cake, recreated perfectly, sugar violets and all. The little white box sat next to Julian's plate with a silver ribbon. At 8:40, he texted. Sienna had a bad episode. At St. Mary's. Don't wait up. Sorry. Sorry. Lowercase energy. No heart. No happy anniversary. I blew out the candles and told myself not to cry. The baby didn't need a mother who cried on the first night it got introduced to its father. At 9:30, the cramp hit. Not a cramp. A knife. Low on my right side, twisting, then a sharp, strange pain up into my shoulder that made no sense. I stood up and felt something warm run down my leg. I looked down. Red on the kitchen floor. I knew. Somehow, I knew it was bad. I called Julian. Declined. I called again. Declined. Then a text: Wren. Don't do this tonight. Please. I called 911 with shaking hands. The dispatcher was kind. She told me the storm had iced the bridge on Route 9. The nearest ambulance was rerouting. Fifty minutes, maybe more. "Is there anyone who can drive you, ma'am?" Julian had taken the Range Rover. My car was in the shop. Our nearest neighbor was a mile away. And then the line crackled and went dead. The storm had taken the cell tower down to one flickering bar. So I called the only person who could get here faster than an ambulance. The man with a four-wheel drive and a surgeon's hands, forty minutes away. Call four. Declined. Call five. Six. Seven. By call nine, I was on the hallway floor. I couldn't stand anymore. I crawled toward the bathroom because I didn't want to die on the kitchen tile next to a cake nobody would eat. Call ten. I left a voicemail. The one Sienna would later delete. Call eleven, he finally answered. "Julian," I gasped. "Please. I'm bleeding. Please come—" "Stop faking, Wren." His voice was cold and very tired. "Sienna might not make it through the night. I can't do this with you right now." Click. I stared at the phone. Then I called again. And again. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Each time, voicemail. He'd turned it to silent. Call nineteen, I didn't even hear ring. My vision had gone gray at the edges. I lay against the tub with the pregnancy test in my hand, because I wanted to be holding the baby somehow, and I whispered to the little two lines, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Mommy tried." At 11:52, my heart stopped. Now, at 12:40 a.m., I floated above an old red pickup truck crawling through the snow at twenty miles an hour. Margaret Hale drove with both hands on the wheel and her jaw locked. She was wearing a nightgown under her winter coat. Her hair was still in rollers. She'd left so fast she hadn't even put on socks with her boots. "Hold on, sweetheart," she kept muttering. "Hold on. Gran's coming. Hold on." I was already gone. But nobody had ever driven through a blizzard for me before, and I couldn't stop watching her. She pulled into the driveway at 1:15 a.m. The porch light was off. She banged on the door. Nothing. She dug the spare key out from under the ceramic frog by the steps. The one I'd bought because it made her laugh. The house was dark and smelled like burned-out candles and lemon cake. "Wren?" She saw the table first. The cake. The little white box with its silver ribbon. Her mouth went tight. Then she saw the red smears on the kitchen floor. Then the handprints along the hallway wall. Low. Dragging. Small. She followed them, one hand on the wall, all the way to the bathroom, where a strip of light glowed under the door. And something dark had seeped out from under it, onto the hallway runner. Margaret Hale did not scream. She opened the door, looked, and sank slowly to her knees. She touched my cheek. She held her fingers to my throat for a long, long time. Then she sat back on her heels, took out her phone, and dialed. It rang four times. "Gran, I told you, she's fine, she's just trying to—" "Julian." One word. In a voice I'd never heard from her. "Come home," she said. "Come home right now. And drive fast, because you're going to need something to say to God, and you're running out of time to think of it."