My Boyfriend’s Mistress Called Me “Pig” in the ER

The work dinner was at a steakhouse downtown, the kind with low lighting and leather booths and menus without prices. My team had reserved a long table near the back. Someone had ordered a bottle of champagne before I arrived.

"Happy birthday, Indie!" Three voices said it at once, overlapping and warm, and I smiled because it was easy to smile at people who remembered.

I sat between Nora and our project manager, Kevin, who launched into a toast about my "inhuman ability to make spreadsheets interesting." Everyone laughed. I laughed too. The champagne was cold and sharp, and I took one small sip before setting it aside. My stomach had been uneasy all day — a low, persistent ache that I'd been ignoring since morning.

Nora leaned close. "You okay?"

"Fine," I said. "Just the usual."

She gave me a look but didn't push. That was one of the things I loved about Nora. She always knew when to press and when to wait.

The food came. I'd ordered the plainest thing on the menu — grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, no sauce. Even looking at Kevin's rare steak made my insides clench. I ate slowly, cutting everything into small pieces, chewing carefully, the way I'd trained myself to do over the years. Around me, my colleagues talked about deadlines and weekend plans and someone's new puppy. Normal things. Easy things.

I was reaching for my water glass when it hit.

The pain came without warning — a white-hot blade dragging across the inside of my abdomen. I gasped and doubled over, my elbow catching the water glass and sending it off the edge of the table. It shattered on the floor. The sound cut through the conversation like a gunshot.

"Indie?" Nora's hand was on my back instantly. "Indie, what's wrong?"

I couldn't answer. The pain was so sharp it stole my breath. I pressed both hands against my stomach and felt sweat break across my forehead. The room tilted. Voices blurred together.

"Call 911," someone said. Kevin, maybe.

"No," I managed. "No, just — hospital. Drive me."

Nora was already grabbing her coat.

The ER at Swedish Medical was bright and loud and smelled like antiseptic. They put me on a gurney and wheeled me through double doors while Nora gave my information to the intake nurse. A doctor pressed on my abdomen and I nearly came off the table.

"Near-perforation," he said to the nurse beside him, his voice calm in the way doctors are calm when things are not calm at all. "Let's get an IV started and run a CT. She's not going anywhere tonight."

They hooked me up to a drip. The pain medication took the edge off, turning the blade into a dull, heavy pressure. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling tiles, counting the tiny holes in each square. Sixty-four. Sixty-four. Sixty-four.

The doctor came back with a clipboard. "Ms. Lawson, your gastric lining is severely compromised. We're looking at years of accumulated damage here. Have you had a history of —"

"Crash dieting," I said quietly. "A long time ago. And chronic ulcers since."

He nodded like he'd expected that answer. "We need to monitor you overnight. If the inflammation doesn't stabilize, we may be looking at surgery."

I nodded. He left. The curtain swayed behind him.

I lay there and thought about the forty pounds. About the way Reid had said it — not even to me, really, but to the room, to the air, his words slurred with whiskey at a party seven years ago. "She could stand to lose some weight." He'd laughed after. Like it was nothing. Like words didn't have weight of their own.

I stopped eating the next day. For months, I lived on black coffee and rice cakes and the sick, dizzy pride of watching the number on the scale drop. By the time I'd lost the weight, my stomach lining was destroyed. But Reid had smiled at me differently. He'd put his arm around my waist and said, "You look great." And I had thought: worth it.

Lying on that gurney, I understood for the first time that I was still paying for those two words.

Sometime after ten, the pain medication made everything soft and distant. I turned my head toward the glass partition that separated my bay from the corridor. The hallway was bright, fluorescent, busy with nurses and orderlies.

That's when I saw him.

Reid was standing at the pharmacy window, leaning one elbow on the counter while the pharmacist retrieved something from the back. He was wearing the navy jacket I'd bought him last fall. His hair was slightly messy, the way it got when he ran his hand through it too many times.

My heart did something complicated. Not the old flutter. Something heavier. I almost called out.

Then I saw Skye.

She was standing a few feet behind Reid, her back against the wall, examining her nails with the bored patience of someone who had done this before. Her hair was loose over her shoulders. She was wearing a red coat.

The prescription wasn't for me. He didn't know I was here. He was picking up medication for her.

On my birthday.

I watched them through the glass like watching a scene in a movie — something happening to someone else, in a world I could see but not touch. Reid took the white pharmacy bag and turned to Skye, saying something I couldn't hear. She smiled up at him.

Then her eyes drifted past his shoulder. Through the glass. Directly to me.

Our gazes locked. I saw the recognition move across her face — the slight widening of her eyes, the quick inventory of the IV in my arm, the hospital gown, the gurney. She understood exactly what she was looking at.

Her lips moved. Slowly. Deliberately. Shaping a single word.

Pig.

She held my gaze the entire time. Then she smiled — small, satisfied, private — and looked away, back to her nails, as if nothing had happened.

Reid never turned around. He put his hand on the small of Skye's back and guided her toward the elevator. They disappeared around the corner.

I turned my face to the wall. The ceiling tiles blurred. I blinked until they were sharp again. Sixty-four holes. Sixty-four holes. Sixty-four holes.

I didn't cry.

Later, when the ward was quiet and the lights had been dimmed, I picked up my phone and typed a message to Reid.

I'm in the ER, stomach again, I'm okay.

I pressed send and set the phone on my chest. The screen went dark. I stared at it for a long time.

Forty minutes later, it buzzed.

Feel better, I'll check in tomorrow.

Five words. No question marks. No "which hospital." No "I'm coming."

I read the message twice, then set the phone on the side table, screen down. The IV drip made a soft, rhythmic sound beside me. Somewhere down the hall, a machine beeped steadily. I folded my hands over my stomach, very carefully, and lay still.

Nora was in the waiting room all night. I found that out the next morning when a nurse mentioned it casually while removing my IV. "Your friend refused to leave," she said with a small smile. "Slept in one of the chairs. We offered her a blanket."

Nora drove me home. The Seattle skyline was gray and sharp against a pale sky, the Space Needle half-hidden in low clouds. Rain dotted the windshield in a slow, uneven rhythm.

Neither of us mentioned Reid.

At a red light on Mercer Street, Nora reached over and took my hand. Her grip was firm and warm. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

I looked out the window and kept my face very still. The city moved past in streaks of gray and silver. Somewhere in it, Reid was waking up in his apartment, maybe checking his phone, maybe not. Maybe already forgetting the text he'd sent.

The light turned green. Nora let go of my hand and drove.