7. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
The Next Day
I wake to the sound of my own name.
Not spoken aloud - Celia’s apartment is quiet, early morning light filtering through curtains I don’t recognize - but buzzing from my phone, notification after notification, a cascade of alerts that pulls me out of the thin sleep I’d finally managed.
I reach for the phone without thinking. Habit. The same motion I’ve made a thousand mornings, checking for emergencies from the hospital, messages from Kenneth, the small digital threads that connect me to my life.
The first headline hits me like a physical blow.
THE CROW’S NEST - Newport’s Society Insider SINCLAIR WIFE CHEATS - Lets Her Lover Into His Own House While He’s Abroad
I sit up so fast the blanket falls away. My hands are shaking as I scroll, as I watch my own face load on the screen - the photo from the doorway, me and Ralphie, cropped and captioned and presented as evidence of something that never happened.
The story is everywhere.
Not just The Crow’s Nest. Someone has picked it up, spread it, amplified it until my name is trending in Newport social circles, until every society gossip account and local news aggregator has their own version of the same lie.
Sources close to the family confirm that Kenneth Sinclair discovered the affair through security footage…
The other man, whose identity remains unconfirmed, was seen entering and leaving the Sinclair mansion multiple times…
Mrs. Sinclair, née Calloway, has been asked to leave the family home…
I’m still staring at the phone when Celia appears in the doorway.
“Bea.” Her voice is tight, controlled in a way that tells me she’s already seen it. “Don’t look at that.”
“Too late.”
She crosses the room, takes the phone from my hands. I let her. I don’t have the strength to fight for it.
“He leaked it.” Celia’s jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping. “Or his mother did. Either way.”
I should feel something. Rage, maybe. Betrayal on top of betrayal. But I’m hollow, scraped clean, nothing left inside me but a dull ache where my marriage used to be.
“I have to go to work.” My voice sounds far away, like it belongs to someone else. “I have a shift.”
“Bea, you can’t-”
“I have to.” I push myself off the couch, and my legs feel uncertain beneath me, but they hold. “I can’t just lie here. I have to do something.”
Celia watches me move toward the bathroom, toward the shower, toward some semblance of routine that might make this feel less like drowning.
“Bea.”
I stop. Don’t turn around.
“I’ll be here,” she says. “When you get back. I’ll be right here.”
I nod. Keep walking.
Saint Anne’s Hospital has never felt hostile before.
I’ve walked through these doors a thousand times. More. I know the exact number of steps from the parking lot to the ER entrance, know which automatic door sticks slightly in the cold, know the particular smell of industrial cleaner and stale coffee that means I’m home.
Today, everything is wrong.
Conversation dies as I pass the nurses’ station.
Three women I’ve worked with for years - Maria, who brought me soup when I had the flu last winter; Denise, who covered my shift when my grandmother died; Paula, who I mentored through her first code blue - all of them suddenly fascinated by their charts, their screens, anything that isn’t me.
I keep walking. Head high. Spine straight. Doctor hands, doctor posture, doctor mask.
A resident I trained last month sees me coming and turns abruptly down a different hallway.
Two orderlies near the supply closet stop talking when I approach. One of them - I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around - actually takes a step back, like whatever I have might be contagious.
“Dr. Sinclair.”
I stop. The charge nurse, Linda, is standing at the main desk. Her voice is stiff in a way I’ve never heard before, professional in the worst sense of the word.
“Dr. Patterson wants to see you.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Dr. Patterson’s office is at the end of the administrative corridor, past the break room where I’ve eaten a thousand sad cafeteria salads, past the conference room where I presented my first case as an attending.
He’s standing when I enter. Bad sign. He usually stays seated, comfortable behind his desk, the posture of a man who has nothing to prove.
“Beatrice.” He gestures to the chair across from him. “Have a seat.”
“I’d rather stand.”
He sighs. It’s the sigh of a man who didn’t want to have this conversation, who would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else. I’ve heard that sigh before, from doctors delivering bad news to patients. I’ve made that sigh myself.
“Beatrice, I need you to understand-”
“Just say it.” My voice comes out harder than I intended. “Whatever it is, just say it.”
He sighs again. Slides a piece of paper across the desk.
“The Martinez family has requested a different physician for their daughter’s case.”
The words don’t make sense at first. I stare at the paper - a formal request form, signatures at the bottom, the hospital’s logo stamped in the corner - and I try to connect it to something real.
Sofia Martinez. Seven years old. She came into my ER three months ago in the middle of a severe asthma attack, lips going blue, barely moving air, and I worked on her for hours until she was breathing easy again.
Her family has brought her back to see me at every follow-up since.
I’ve been managing her care, adjusting her medications, watching her get stronger week by week.
She calls me Dr. Bea and draws me pictures of purple horses.
“They saw the news.” It’s not a question.
“They have concerns.” Dr. Patterson still won’t meet my eyes. “About your… personal situation affecting your judgment.”
“My personal situation has nothing to do with my ability to treat their child.”
“I know that.”
“Sofia is doing beautifully. Her lungs are clear. She hasn’t had an attack in months. I’ve done everything right-”
“I know that, Beatrice.” He finally looks at me, and I see something in his face that might be sympathy. Or might be pity. I’m not sure there’s a difference anymore. “But the family-”
“The family is wrong.” My voice cracks, and I hate it, hate the weakness, hate that I’m standing in my boss’s office defending myself against something that never happened. “And that story is a lie. The photos are taken out of context. The messages are fabricated. I’ve never cheated on my husband.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. The clock on his wall ticks, loud in the silence.
“I believe you, Beatrice.” His voice is gentle now, the voice he uses with patients’ families. “I do. I’ve known you for six years. You’re one of the best doctors I’ve ever worked with.”
“Then don’t do this.”
“But we have to consider the hospital’s reputation.” He spreads his hands, a gesture of helplessness that I don’t believe. “The board is asking questions. The Martinez family isn’t the only one concerned. Until this dies down-”
“You’re suspending me?”
“Administrative leave.” He says it quickly, like ripping off a bandage. “With pay. Full benefits. Just until the media moves on.”
“It won’t move on.” I laugh, and it sounds like broken glass, sharp and dangerous and wrong. “This is Newport. Nothing ever moves on.”
“Beatrice-”
“You’re punishing me for something I didn’t do.” I’m shaking now, my whole body trembling with rage and grief and the exhaustion of being wronged from every direction. “You’re taking away my patients because my husband believed a lie and my mother-in-law sold it to the press.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s just protection.” He stands, comes around the desk, and I step back before he can touch me. “Go home. Rest. Take care of yourself. When this blows over-”
“And if it doesn’t blow over?”
He doesn’t answer.
That’s answer enough.
I make it to the stairwell before my legs stop working.
The door swings shut behind me, cutting off the sounds of the hospital - the beeping monitors, the overhead pages, the constant hum of a place that never sleeps.
The concrete steps are cold and gray and empty, and I sink down onto the third one because I can’t stand anymore, can’t pretend anymore, can’t hold the pieces of myself together for one more second.
My badge is still clipped to my coat. Dr. Beatrice Sinclair, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, the tiny photo showing a woman who looks like me but isn’t, a woman who still believed her life made sense.
I won’t be wearing this coat tomorrow.
My phone buzzes. I pull it out with numb fingers, expecting more headlines, more horror, more evidence of how thoroughly my life has been dismantled.
But it’s the group chat.
Priya: Bea I just saw it. I’m so sorry. This is absolute bullshit and everyone who knows you knows that.
Morgan: We were THERE. We were all there.
Tell us what you need. I can drive up tonight if you want.
Jenna: I have never wanted to hit a man so badly in my life.
I love you. Whatever you need, whenever, I don’t care what time it is.
I will bring Gerard the flamingo to his house and stage a protest. Priya: We’re not going anywhere. Just so you know. You’re stuck with us.
I read them twice. Three times. The words blur and swim through the tears I’m trying to hold back.
I should respond. Should tell them I’m okay, or at least that I will be. Should accept their offers of help, their fierce loyalty, their refusal to believe the worst.
But I can’t make my fingers move. Can’t find the words that would make any of this make sense.
Another message appears, underneath the rest. Not the group chat. Just me.
Mom: I know you’re at work. I know you went in anyway, because you always do. Hold your head up, sweetheart. I know exactly who my daughter is. So do you.
That’s the one that does it.
I put my forehead on my knees in a stairwell I have walked five thousand times, surrounded by the ghosts of every shift I’ve ever worked, every patient I’ve ever saved, every version of myself that felt competent and certain and whole. And I let myself cry.