During her seven years of marriage, Sophie Winslow had secretly given birth to a child. The child was now five years old, but her husband knew nothing about it. She had never given Julian Sterling the chance to be a father.
During her break on the night shift, Sophie listened to a voice message from her daughter, who was secretly being raised in the neighboring city. The little girl’s voice was sweet and innocent: "Mommy, why haven’t I ever met Daddy? Is he dead?"
Sophie actually thought about it quite seriously. He wasn’t dead, but he might as well be.
Little Lydia Hawthorne was recently developing her own thoughts, and a new dilemma had begun to trouble her little head. For instance, the little girl had never met her biological father, and her curiosity was growing day by day. So much so that Sophie was carefully considering whether she should try confessing to Julian that they actually had a five-year-old child. He could skip the excruciating early parenting phase and become a father pain-free.
Exiting the chat with little Lydia, Sophie calculated the time. It seemed that she and Julian only had three months left...
After weighing her words, Sophie typed a line of text into the WhatsApp chat with her husband, Julian, which had very few previous messages: [If we had a child, would you...]
Before she could hit send, the door was suddenly pushed open.
A young nurse called out to her, speaking in a rush, "Sophie, we have an emergency patient! It’s suspected that intense intercourse during early pregnancy might have caused a ruptured corpus luteum!"
Sophie instantly locked her screen. She quickly stood up and followed the young nurse out, her brows furrowed. "Isn’t this just reckless? You can’t have intercourse during early pregnancy! Could they really not hold back..."
As the young nurse pulled back the curtain around the hospital bed and Sophie saw the familiar woman lying there, her voice of disapproval instantly died in her throat. After a two-second hesitation, she called out the woman’s name in surprise, "Stella Sutton?"
It was actually her husband’s... cousin’s fiancée?
When Stella saw Sophie, she also paused imperceptibly and did not respond.
Sophie instinctively observed her condition. Stella was the fiancée of her husband’s cousin. However, that cousin had been sent to prison five months ago due to company accounting issues, sentenced to a year and a half. Stella’s abdomen was still flat, showing no signs of pregnancy. If she were pregnant, she wouldn’t be very far along. So where did this child, whose timeline didn’t add up, come from?
But Sophie was not the type to pry into other people’s privacy. She swiftly grabbed a pair of medical gloves. "Lie down first. I’ll do a basic examination for you."
Stella, however, suddenly sat up. She seemed displeased by Sophie’s presence. "There’s no need. I want to transfer to another hospital."
The young nurse immediately looked at Sophie helplessly.
Sophie advised against it, saying, "If you don’t want any health complications, lie down. I can do a basic examination for you first."
Stella frowned, disliking Sophie’s aloof and high-and-mighty posture.
Sophie didn’t waste time with nonsense. As a doctor, she couldn’t delay a patient’s treatment. She bent over to lift the hem of Stella’s shirt, but Stella’s lips curled into a cold sneer as she raised her hand and swatted Sophie away.
SLAP.
It was a crisp sound, and the strike carried a lot of force. It hurt quite a bit.
Sophie looked down; the back of her hand was already red. Before she could react, she heard Stella suddenly soften her tone and call out to someone behind her, "Julian..."
At the familiar name, Sophie ignored the pain on the back of her hand and turned her head to look. The man’s footsteps were steady and brisk, an overcoat draped over his arm. His tall, slender figure exuded an undeniable sense of nobility. As he strode over, his gaze shifted slightly and collided with Sophie’s.
It was only for a fleeting second. Without breaking his stride, he coldly averted his eyes and walked past Sophie like a stranger, heading to the other side of the hospital bed.
His deep, cold voice was tinged with a hint of concern. "How are you?"
Sophie truly hadn’t expected this. The family member who showed up to support Stella... was actually the husband she had been secretly married to for seven years!
Watching Julian, whose entire attention was focused on Stella, she even found herself wondering if he had seen Stella strike her so heavily just a moment ago.
The moment Julian showed his concern, Stella shot a subtle glance at the stiffened Sophie. Looking up at the man who cared for her, her tone took on a soft, coquettish quality that usually only existed between lovers. "You know it too. I only came to the hospital because my stomach hurts."
This sentence instantly made the surrounding medical staff understand. Wasn’t she practically announcing that the male lead of this ’intense intercourse’ was the man standing right in front of them? Julian offered no denial or explanation to the onlookers.
Sophie watched the scene unfold, almost forgetting how to react. She watched helplessly as her husband showed such indulgent concern for... his cousin’s fiancée.
Even though Julian usually kept his emotions hidden, a woman’s intuition was naturally sensitive. How could she not sense the delicate nature of this situation? Especially since the reason Stella came into the ER was so shameful, and her husband was actually in on the secret! At this moment, a chill washed over her entire body.
In the past, she had always thought Julian’s coldness toward her was just his nature, not that he didn’t know how to love. Now she understood. He simply had someone else in his heart.
But their current situation and identities were so absurd that she wanted to laugh. Anyone with eyes could tell who the so-called ’intense intercourse’ was with tonight.
Seeing her stand still for so long, Julian’s gaze finally landed on her slowly. It felt like a venomous sting, snapping Sophie back to reality for a moment.
Her gloved hand, which had originally been reaching out to examine the patient, trembled imperceptibly. It was as if the venom from Stella’s slap had a delayed onset, depriving her brain of oxygen for a brief second. Everything was so obvious. Did she really need to bring more humiliation upon herself by verifying it?
Noticing Julian treating Sophie like a stranger, Stella curled her lips into a subtle smile and proactively suggested, "Julian, I want to transfer. Take me to a more prestigious hospital."
"Alright." Julian did not hesitate, as if he would satisfy any request Stella made.
There was an obvious intimacy between the two of them that no outsider could intrude upon. From the perspective of a wife who had deeply loved the man in front of her for years, how could Sophie not feel it? It was a blindingly painful sight that tore at her heart, little by little.
Stella’s remark about ’going to a more prestigious hospital’ was nothing more than a blatant jab, mocking Sophie as being unqualified to treat her. Julian methodically made the arrangements. He never spoke another word to Sophie, nor did he show the slightest bit of... shame!
Long after the two had left the consultation room, Sophie still couldn’t pull herself out of this awful situation. Meanwhile, her colleagues who had witnessed everything instantly broke into heated gossip.
"My god! Young people nowadays really play hard."
The young nurse’s eyes were filled with envy. "But that guy was so handsome it made my legs go weak. He certainly looks like he’s great in bed too!"
Sophie lowered her head, a bit absentminded. She quietly peeled off her medical gloves, bit by bit. "Is that so?"
The young nurse didn’t catch the underlying tone. Instead, thinking of something else, she leaned in and whispered, "By the way, Sophie, haven’t you been married for years too? How come I’ve never heard you mention having kids?"
Sophie tossed her gloves into the trash can. "My husband suffers from erectile dysfunction. He’s still getting treatment."