Part 4 — The Name Anna Said at the End
Anna had been seven months pregnant when her husband left her.
Apparently, there had been no real warning.
One day they were married.
Then he was gone.
He moved away and made it clear he didn’t want to rebuild the relationship.
Anna’s mother had died the previous year.
Her father had been absent most of her life.
She had no siblings nearby.
No close family waiting to catch her when everything collapsed.
Then, early that Tuesday morning, she went into labor.
She tried driving herself to the hospital.
The contractions became too strong.
She pulled into a gas station and called an ambulance.
Hours later, she delivered a baby girl.
The baby was healthy.
Anna was not.
Something went wrong after delivery.
Severe bleeding.
Doctors worked to stop it.
Then came complications James couldn’t explain properly because he had only heard the medical terms once.
“She got worse very quickly,” he said.
I stared at him.
“But how did anyone know to call you?”
James opened his mouth.
Before he could answer, a nurse stepped into the hallway.
She had a clipboard pressed against her chest.
Her eyes moved from James to me.
“Are you his wife?”
“Yes.”
Her expression softened.
“I think I can explain that part.”
I turned toward her.
“When Anna’s condition deteriorated, the staff asked whether there was anyone we could contact.”
The nurse paused.
“She wasn’t fully conscious anymore. But she kept repeating a name.”
I already knew.
Still, hearing it hurt in a strange way.
“James,” the nurse said.
My husband stared at the floor.
“Over and over.”
For one brief second, I expected jealousy to come.
It didn’t.
Instead, I imagined Anna.
A frightened woman dying in a hospital.
Her marriage gone.
Her mother dead.
Her baby only a few rooms away.
And somewhere inside the haze of pain, fear, medication, and fading consciousness, one name from eleven years earlier had remained.
Not because she was trying to reclaim an old romance.
There was no romance left to reclaim.
She was dying.
She needed someone she once trusted.
“How did you find him?” I asked.
The nurse explained that Anna had managed enough of his surname for hospital staff and social workers to search old records and belongings.
Buried inside older paperwork was an emergency contact containing James’s full name.
“They called me about an hour before I called you,” James said.
“You came immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her?”
He slowly shook his head.
“She was already gone.”
That sentence ended something inside the corridor.
Whatever fear I had carried about Anna disappeared.
A newborn whimpered softly behind the glass.
The three of us looked toward the room.
The nurse smiled sadly.
“She’s doing very well.”
I looked at James again.
And suddenly I understood the expression on his face.
He wasn’t afraid I would discover an affair.
He was afraid of what he was about to ask me.
