"Do I really have to say it?"
Doreen's tone turned earnest, almost maternal in its false concern. "Mr. Sanchez, I understand you love your wife. But you can't indulge her like this. Today she wastes public medical resources for fun. Tomorrow she'll be undermining the company's interests."
"Better to teach her a lesson now. Let her truly understand how wrong she is. Nip this in the bud."
"Fine. I understand." My husband closed his eyes for a moment. When he turned to face me, guilt flickered across his features.
I already knew what he was going to say. A cold numbness spread through my chest.
Five years. We'd been married for five years.
My mother was dying, and he was about to commit perjury for an outsider.
"I can confirm it," he told the paramedics. "I heard them with my own ears. The two of them conspired to fake an illness and deceive you."
The moment those words left his mouth, triumph bloomed across Doreen's face.
"Mrs. Sanchez, why don't you be a good girl and accept your reprimand?"
The paramedic who had been reaching for the phone dialed 911, face stony.
"I need to report an incident. Someone here has been deliberately abusing emergency medical resources. We need officers to take her in for a formal warning."
I stared at Doreen, my eyes burning red, every fiber of my being screaming to lunge at her and tear her apart.
When my husband saw the paramedics were actually going to have me taken away, he frowned.
"There's no need to blow this out of proportion. She was just having a bit of fun."
The paramedic's expression was granite. "Fun? Medical resources are not her playground. Deliberately abusing public emergency services without a shred of remorse, doing it over and over again, is a criminal offense."
"If a real patient needed emergency care during this time and we couldn't get there because of her, and that patient died, who takes responsibility for that?"
"But—"
My husband opened his mouth to argue, and something inside me snapped.
"Shut up! You're the one who told them my mother and I faked the whole thing. And now you want to play the good guy?"
"Arnold Sanchez, I'm telling you right now: if anything happens to my mother today, I will never forgive you. Not for the rest of my life."
Arnold seemed to realize he'd done something catastrophically stupid. He scrambled to backpedal.