My Husband Asked For A Hall Pass On My Delivery Date Chapter 01
The Hall Pass
The night I went into labor, my husband’s childhood best friend showed up at the hospital and handed him a hall pass.
[Applicant: Ethan Hale.]
[Duration: 8 PM, 8th April to 8 PM, 10th April]
[Reason: Accompany Sienna Cole on a 48-hour blackout trip.]
Then she called him.
“You promised me, back in high school. Whenever I handed you one of these, no matter what you were doing, you’d walk away from your life for me.”
The doctor was yelling for a family member to sign the C-section consent form.
I was mid-contraction, barely able to string a sentence together. I grabbed Ethan’s sleeve and held on with everything I had.
He stared at that slip of paper.
He didn’t sign.
Sienna had three of those hall passes. Three in total.
She used the first one the night of our engagement party.
She said she’d just been dumped and needed Ethan to take a leave of absence from being the ‘fiancé.’
So he left a room full of guests and sat with her at a bar until sunrise.
She used the second one while my father was in surgery for a brain cancer.
She pulled out her hall pass and said her depression had relapsed.
Ethan took a leave of absence from being a ‘son-in-law.’
I signed my father’s critical condition notice alone. I buried him alone.
Every time, Ethan would hold me afterward and swear the same thing.
“It’s a promise we made when we graduated high school. Don’t worry. Once all three hall passes are used up, I’ll never drop everything for her again.”
Now we were on the last one.
Forty-eight hours. That’s all I had to survive. Then I’d finally have a husband who would never leave.
Sienna was already standing by the door, two old flip phones in her hand, waiting for him.
Ethan left. He took a leave of absence from being a husband and a father.
I watched his silhouette disappear down the hallway, and a single thought landed in my head, cold and clear.
This time, he didn’t need to come back.
…
I stared at the last sliver of his coat vanishing around the corner until there was nothing left to see.
“This is insane! Her vitals are dropping. What kind of husband just walks out?” The doctor slammed the consent form onto the cabinet beside my bed. “We can’t wait any longer. She needs to go into surgery now.”
“Any family member? Is there anyone else who can sign?” the nurse asked.
A phone number came out of my mouth before I could think.
My mother’s.
I’d had it memorized since I was six.
But the second the nurse reached for her phone, I stopped her. “Never mind. Don’t call.”
Mom had a serious heart condition. I couldn’t let her get a call like this in the middle of the night.
And I couldn’t let her find out that Ethan had walked out on me while I was in labor to follow another woman.
The next wave of pain hit like a wall of water and swallowed me whole.
I clenched my teeth against the pain, forced my body upright, and told the doctor, “I’ll sign it myself.”
The pen touched the paper. I pressed down as hard as I could, trying to write my name.
But the pain came too fast, too sharp.
Darkness closed in from the edges. I got halfway through my signature before the pen slipped out of my fingers.
“Fetal heart rate is dropping again!”
“Go! Prep for surgery, now!”
Everything blurred into shouting and fluorescent lights as they rushed me into the operating room.
The anesthesia slid into my spine, cold as ice water. My body went numb from the waist down, but my mind wouldn’t stop.
Two memories pushed through, uninvited.
The engagement party. Ethan walking out on a room full of guests to comfort a freshly dumped Sienna at some bar downtown. I stood there alone, fielding every pitying look, every whispered comment. A joke.
My father’s funeral. Kneeling on the frozen ground in front of his tombstone. No one beside me. Ethan was with Sienna that day too, watching the sunrise by the beach while her depression ‘relapsed.’
I’d always been alone. Just like now.
The baby came out silent.
The delivery room went quiet in a way that made my skin crawl. I heard the doctor drop his voice low. “Grade three meconium contamination. Severe asphyxia. Get him to the NICU.”
The anesthesia had killed every nerve below my ribs, but it couldn’t touch the thing crushing my chest.
I couldn’t see his face. Just a small shape, wrapped tight, carried away by a nurse who moved too fast.
I tried to lift my head.
I needed one more look.
“Don’t move! The incision isn’t closed!”
The doctor pressed my shoulders flat against the table.
“My baby.” My voice cracked. “Is he okay?”
No one answered.