She Was Never Just the Wife novel Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Laylah’s Little Game

Celia answered immediately, and her assistant’s panicked voice came through the line. “Dr. G, something’s wrong. Patient Three in the Phase III trial is having a severe immune reaction.

“His vitals are crashing. The expert panel is already on a remote consult, but the situation isn’t looking good.”

Celia’s face hardened at once. “Send me the data. Now.”

“But you’ve been up all night,” her assistant said.

“Send it,” Celia repeated, her tone flat and final.

Five minutes later, the full chart was on her laptop, including the patient’s medical history, test results, and live monitoring data.

Celia put on her glasses and opened Patient Three’s file. He was sixty-seven with advanced lung cancer. He had already been through three rounds of chemo, and by the time he entered the trial, he was barely hanging on.

He had responded well at first to Serenib-1, and the tumor had shrunk significantly. But that morning, his condition had suddenly crashed, sending him into acute respiratory failure.

Celia scanned the numbers line by line, already working through the possibilities. It was neither an allergic reaction nor a dosing issue. The problem had to be somewhere else.

“His oxygen saturation just dropped to seventy-five,” her assistant said, voice shaking.

“Prep for intubation,” Celia said. “Give ten milligrams of dexamethasone IV and forty of methylprednisolone IV. Get anesthesia on standby and be ready to resuscitate.”

“But the steroids could…” her assistant started.

“Do exactly what I said,” Celia snapped. “This is a cytokine storm, not a drug reaction. Move. Now.”

Her tone left no room for argument. A second later, she could already hear orders being passed along on the other end.

Celia kept her eyes fixed on the live numbers, one hand tightening against the desk. She had spent three years on this drug, and it had already cost her too much.

One severe adverse event could get the trial suspended and bring everything down with it.

More importantly, the patient could die, and she wasn’t going to let that happen.

Time crawled, and every second felt endless.

Ten minutes later, her assistant came on again, nearly shouting. “Dr. G, his oxygen saturation is back up to eighty-five. He’s stable.”

Only then did Celia let out the breath she had been holding. She sank back into her chair, cold sweat soaking her back.

“Keep monitoring him,” she said. “The second anything changes, call me.”

“Yes, Dr. G,” her assistant replied.

After the call ended, Celia took off her glasses and rubbed her aching eyes.

When she finally looked up at the mirror, the reflection caught her off guard. Her face was drained of color, her lips pale, and her eyes bloodshot from a sleepless night and the strain of the emergency.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Mrs. Lucero,” Cory called from outside. “Mr. Lucero wants to know if you’d like to come down for lunch.”

Celia stared at her reflection for a moment before answering softly, “No. I’m tired. I want to lie down for a while.”

“But…”

“Cory, tell him this. If he wants to talk about the divorce papers, he can come find me anytime. If not, I don’t have anything else to say to him.”

There was a brief silence outside. Then Cory gave a quiet sigh. “All right.”

By the time his footsteps faded down the hall, Celia was already walking toward the bed. She lay down and pulled the blanket over herself, but she couldn’t fall asleep.

Her eyes burned, and the same images kept circling through her mind: Beckham shielding Laylah in the airport livestream, feeding Ricardo at the breakfast table, and the patient gasping for air as he hovered at death’s door.

Some people were trapped by love. Some were weighed down by money. Some ran themselves ragged chasing status and profit.

She had thrown away three years to a marriage that had died before it ever had the chance to become real. None of it had been worth it.

*****

After leaving the dining room with Ricardo in her arms, Laylah did not go upstairs. Instead, she headed through the side door into the garden.

The moment she pushed open the glass door, a wash of cool air and the sweet scent of roses greeted them.

Ricardo lit up at once and started squirming in her arms. “Mommy, flowers. Pretty flowers.”

“Shh.” Laylah pressed a finger to her lips and lowered her voice. “Be good, Ricardo. Keep your voice down. Beckham’s working.”

Ricardo immediately clapped both hands over his mouth and looked up at her with wide, serious eyes.

Laylah caught his small hand and pressed it to her cheek, lingering over its warmth.

“I’m not crying,” she said. “As long as you’re here, I’m not afraid of anything.”

The garden fell quiet, with only the rustle of rosebushes in the breeze and the occasional birdsong in the distance.

Laylah held Ricardo in her arms, but her gaze lifted to the closed window on the second floor of the main house. That was Celia’s bedroom.

She remembered Celia’s swollen yet unnervingly calm eyes at breakfast and, even more clearly, that remark about a child Ricardo’s age needing someone to fill a father’s role.

It had sounded offhand, but it struck straight at the one place Laylah could not afford to expose.

For a split second, Laylah almost thought Celia knew something.

Her fingers tightened before she realized it, and Ricardo squirmed in her arms. “Mommy, that hurts.”

She let go at once and patted his back. “I’m sorry, baby. Mommy didn’t mean to.”

Laylah refused to believe Celia could know. She had covered that trail too carefully. Even Beckham had been kept in the dark, which meant Celia was either guessing or bluffing.

Laylah steadied herself and slowly put her usual soft, composed expression back on.

“Ricardo, there’s something else Mommy needs you to remember,” she said, lowering her eyes to him. Her voice stayed gentle, but firm. “If that lady wants to play with you or gives you anything to eat, ask Mommy first. Okay?”

“Why?” he asked.

Laylah paused for a moment before saying, “Because she doesn’t like Mommy. And if she doesn’t like Mommy, she may not be nice to you either.”

Ricardo’s eyes widened at once.

Laylah realized at once that she had scared him. She pulled him closer right away and soothed him softly. “It’s okay. I said she might. As long as you listen to Mommy and stay away from her, you’ll be all right. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Ricardo mumbled, tucking himself deeper into her arms.

Laylah held him and gently rocked him, soothing him back down.

Sunlight slipped through the leaves and dappled her face. The soft, gentle smile she wore so often was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a stillness so deep and quiet that it revealed nothing.