I Found an Unknown Woman Beside My Husband When I Came to the Hospital Pregnant, but Her Face Suddenly Went Pale at the Doctor’s Words

When the doctor pulled back the curtain, first I saw my husband’s swollen face, and then I heard a woman’s voice — “Gareth.” This voice was not unfamiliar to me.

It was November eleventh. I was thirty-one weeks pregnant and was eating half a sandwich between clients at a small skincare studio when a police officer called me.

“Mrs. Holloway? Your husband was in an accident. His condition is stable, but… there was another passenger in the car.”

“Who?”

He was silent for several seconds.

“A woman.”

I gripped the phone so tightly that my fingers turned white. I placed my other hand on my stomach. Our girl lightly touched me from inside, as if reminding me that I was still breathing.

Forty minutes later I was standing beneath the cold corridor of the seaside hospital. My feet hurt in my wet boots, and the smell of rain rose from my coat. The doctor, a young woman with a “Mary” name tag, looked at me carefully.

“What you are about to see may be shocking.”

“Doctor, just tell me whether he is alive.”

“He is alive. Physically, he will survive. But…”

She took hold of the curtain.

At that moment I looked at Gareth Holloway — he had a white bandage on his hand, a stitch on his forehead, and the machine showed the green line of his heartbeat. Then I heard a voice behind my back.

“Gareth.”

My knees buckled.

I had spent twenty-three years with Gareth. We lived three houses apart in Pelican Cove, had known each other since childhood, and married at twenty. We had a pale-yellow house, a mortgage, one joint account, and a seventeen-year-old gray cat, Remington, who lay by the kitchen heater as if the house belonged to him.

We had waited four years before becoming pregnant. After two losses, when I saw two lines on the pregnancy test, Gareth cried. That evening he kissed my stomach and told me:

“Our girl will be the happiest child.”

That was why I believed him when he blamed coming home late in October on work. I believed him when he showered as soon as he returned home and put his phone face down.

“Sasha is just a temporary employee, checking supplies,” he told me once.

I nodded. Believing Gareth had been the easiest thing in my life for twenty-three years.

When I came to, the doctor told me that the baby was fine and Gareth would return home in several days. The woman had already been discharged.

Sasha Drummond.

The same Sasha.

That evening I sat beside his bed. Gareth looked at me like a man who had long been afraid that some door would finally open.

“Natalie…”

“Don’t say anything yet.”

I did not shout. Silence proved stronger.

He admitted six weeks. Then eleven. Finally he said that everything “was not as I thought.”

“Then tell me how it was,” I asked.

He had no answer.

The next morning my sister, Diana, drove three hours from Raleigh to stay with me. Two days later I called a family-law attorney.

Gareth returned home on Friday. He entered the living room slowly, with a bruised face and a hospital bracelet on his hand. He probably expected the Natalie who always put his discomfort before her own pain.

I left a notebook on the table.

“Sit down, Gareth. This time I will ask you the questions.”

He moved his eyes to my stomach.

“You are pregnant, Natalie.”

“I know exactly how many weeks pregnant I am.”

That night he admitted that he went to Sasha’s apartment when he said he was staying at work. He admitted that he had brought her into our house once, when I was at a conference in Charlotte.

Then, in attorney Claire Sutton’s office, we opened the joint-account statement. Forty-two thousand dollars, money set aside for our child, seemed almost untouched.

But the list of transactions said something else: eight hundred dollars, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred. Every amount had been withdrawn from the ATM that stood near Sasha’s house.

Claire put the papers into a yellow folder.

“This is only the beginning, Natalie.”

Nine days later I went to Harborside Marina and met Troy, the employee who covered Gareth’s working hours.

“I gave a toast at your wedding,” I told him.

Troy looked at the floor.

Two days later Claire called me.

“Natalie, Harborside sent us something. Seven dates are marked.”

When I arrived at her office, the yellow folder was already spread open. Claire reached toward the first sheet and told me:

“Before you see this, you should know that Gareth’s bank statements are the least dangerous part…”

Claire’s fingers touched the first sheet, but she did not hand it to me immediately. The warm plastic smell of the old printer hung in the office, while raindrops struck one another on the window.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Descriptions of camera recordings and work logs. Troy finally told the truth.”

“Was Gareth meeting Sasha?”

“It is more than that.”

I felt dryness in my throat.

“Then why are you looking at me like that?”

Claire pushed the folder toward me.

“Because all seven dates match the period when you were going to doctors. But there is one entry here that is connected neither with your husband nor with Sasha.”

“With whom?”

She did not answer me. The phone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen.

“Don’t answer,” Claire told me.

But I had already picked it up.

“Natalie Holloway speaking.”

For several seconds I heard only heavy breathing.

Then a hoarse man’s voice sounded:

“If you are expecting the birth of the child, do not go into the clinic alone.”

“Who are you?”

The call ended.

Claire’s face lost its color.

“Did you write down the number?”

“Yes.”

This time I opened the folder myself. Inside lay a small black memory card, and written on it by hand was: “November 11, accident.”

“The recording is there,” Claire said. “But first you have to hear what Gareth says in the car…”

Claire put the memory card into the computer. Only the quiet hum of the machine could be heard in the office. I sat in the chair with both hands wrapped around my stomach and counted every movement of the baby.

The recording hissed at first. Then Gareth’s voice sounded.

“You should not have come, Sasha.”

The woman’s voice answered clearly:

“You promised me that today you would tell her everything.”

“Now is not the time.”

“You have lived with her for twenty-three years and still think I need one more week?”

Gareth, who was at the wheel, exhaled roughly.

“I cannot risk it before the baby is born.”

Sasha chuckled, but there was no warmth in the laughter.

“The baby is not yours, Gareth.”

The room seemed to become smaller all at once.

“Be quiet,” Gareth told her.

“She must also know why you paid for my silence. Or perhaps tell her yourself that you are her husband only on paper?”

Then came the screech of tires, the удар of metal, and the muffled sound of the recording.

I turned toward Claire.

“What does it mean, the baby is not his?”

Claire carefully folded her hands.

“This is only a conversation. We need confirmation.”

“Do you doubt the paternity of my child?”

“Not your child. Gareth’s statement.”

That same day Claire requested a genetic test from the court as an emergency measure. Gareth refused at first.

“Natalie, this is ridiculous,” he told me in the hospital conference room. “Sasha is angry and is trying to destroy our life.”

“Then why are you avoiding the test?”

His hand closed around the plastic cup lying on the table.

“Because stress will harm the baby now.”

“The truth will harm the baby less than a lie.”

Sasha came that same evening. Her face showed exhaustion, and she held a small leather bag.

“I did not know he was married,” she said.

“You knew for eleven weeks.”

“I knew he had a wife. I did not know she was pregnant too.”

Gareth lowered his head.

“Sasha, leave.”

“No. Today you must hear me to the end for the first time.”

She took a sealed medical envelope from the bag.

“I had this test done two months ago. The baby I am expecting is Gareth’s.”

My breath stopped.

Gareth pushed his chair back.

“That is impossible.”

“You yourself told me that Natalie’s pregnancy was the result of artificial insemination and that she would never find out if the blood groups did not match.”

Claire removed the seal from the envelope. Every sound in the room disappeared.

The test result showed a probability of paternity between Gareth and Sasha’s fetus of more than ninety-nine percent.

Gareth covered his face with his hands.

And I could think of only one thing: I had lived for twenty-three years with a man who had planned my entire future for his own lie.

Suddenly my phone lit up. The message was from the clinic’s number.

“Mrs. Holloway, please contact us urgently. An inconsistency has been found in your embryo records…”