…”brought you the purple flowers. Miss Kayla. From your work.”
Kayla. A nurse on my unit. Twenty-nine. She’d come to my fortieth birthday party in April with purple tulips and a bottle of wine. I’d been her preceptor when she started at the hospital. I’d trained her.
I asked my daughter, Lily, as gently as I could, how she knew Miss Kayla slept at our house.
“She makes pancakes,” Lily said. “On the mornings you’re at work. And she says not to tell you because it’s a surprise. She has a pink toothbrush in your bathroom. Daddy says it’s for guests.”
I went into my bathroom. In the back of the drawer, behind my husband’s razor, was a pink toothbrush.
I didn’t confront my husband, Jeff, that night. I went back to work the next evening as usual, for my twelve-hour night shift. And at 2 a.m., on my break, I pulled up the unit’s staffing calendar.
For six months, every single time I worked a night shift, Kayla had requested the night off. Every single time. She’d traded shifts with four different nurses to make it work. There were twenty-three nights. The staffing coordinator had even written a note about it. “Kayla flexible, always requests opposite of Megan.”
Megan is my name.
I finished my shift. I drove home at 7:15 in the morning. And I didn’t go inside. I sat in my car across the street and waited.
At 7:40, Kayla walked out my front door, in my bathrobe, to get the newspaper.
I took a photo. Then I got out of the car. She saw me and froze on the porch, holding my newspaper, in my bathrobe.
I walked up the steps. I didn’t yell. I said, “You can keep the robe. Leave the toothbrush.”
Jeff appeared in the doorway behind her. He started to say something. I held up my hand. “Lily already told her teacher,” I said. “The school called me. Our eight-year-old drew a picture of you and your girlfriend for art class, Jeff. She labeled it ‘Daddy’s new wife.'”
I watched all the color drain out of his face.
I filed for divorce that week. I asked for, and got, primary custody of Lily. I reported Kayla to our nurse manager, not for the affair, which isn’t the hospital’s business, but for months of manipulating the staffing schedule. She transferred to another hospital a month later.
The part I’ll never forget is Lily’s teacher, Mrs. Hernandez. She called me the day after, just to check on me. She said she’d almost not called. She said she’d worried it wasn’t her place.
“I’m so glad you did,” I told her. “My daughter was trying to tell me something. You heard it.”
Lily and I are doing okay. She sees her dad every other weekend. She’s in therapy, and she’s slowly learning that grown-ups shouldn’t ask kids to keep secrets.
Last month, she drew a new picture in art class. Our little apartment. Her. Me. Our cat. Above it, she wrote, “My family.” There’s nobody extra in it. Just us.
