Chapter 2: A Signature, Not a Wife
Vivian’s rules were simple. I would live in the east wing. I would eat in the kitchen with the staff, not in the dining room. I would not speak to reporters, Ashford employees, or Elliot’s friends, if any of them called. I would sign whatever Vivian’s lawyer put in front of me, when he put it there.
“And the nursing?” I asked.
“Dr. Lyle handles Elliot’s care. The night nurse handles the rest.” She looked at my scrubs, which I’d changed into the morning after the wedding, out of habit. “You don’t need to do anything, Nora. That’s the beauty of it.”
I did it anyway. I couldn’t help it. Ten years of being a nursing aide does something to you. I turned him every two hours so he wouldn’t get bedsores. I cut his nails. I did range-of-motion exercises on his arms and legs, the way the physical therapists do in the hospital, bending each knee slowly toward his chest and back. I washed his hair in a basin with baby shampoo because the night nurse didn’t.
And I talked to him. That’s something they teach you, too: talk to coma patients like they’re in the room. Some of them are.
I found a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo in the library downstairs, with E.A. written inside the cover in a boy’s handwriting, and I started reading it to him at night. A chapter a night. A man locked away by people who wanted what he had. I didn’t pick it on purpose. It just felt right.
Meanwhile, Kelsey’s video got four million views. The caption said My sister married a vegetable for money followed by six crying-laughing emojis. People in the comments called me a gold digger, a predator, a disgrace to nurses. Someone found my old work email and sent me a picture of a coffin.
Gail called to tell me how proud Kelsey was.
On the third day, Vivian’s lawyer brought the first stack of papers. Insurance forms. A tax election. A consent for Elliot’s medical records. I read every page before I signed, which made him sigh and check his phone.
I read everything. My father lost our house signing a refinance he didn’t read. I was fourteen. I watched them change the locks.
On the ninth day, he brought a different document. It was forty pages long. On page thirty-one it said that I, as spouse of Elliot Ashford, assigned the voting power of his shares in Ashford Aerospace to support the sale of the company to Halvorsen Capital, a private equity firm I’d never heard of. On page thirty-eight it said that Vivian Ashford would receive a “transition consulting fee” of sixty million dollars.
I put the pen down.
“I’m not signing this one.”
Vivian was called. She came up in a gray dress and stood in the doorway of the east wing and looked at me like I was a stain.
“I think you’ve misunderstood your position,” she said. “You’re not a wife, Nora. You’re a signature.”
“He built that company.”
“And he isn’t using it.” She glanced at the bed. “One week. If you’re still confused next Friday, I’ll call your stepmother and we’ll discuss your brother’s living situation.”
She left. I sat down on the floor with my back against Elliot’s bed and shook.
That night, when the night nurse went downstairs for her break, I did something I’m not proud of. I read his chart. The whole thing. It was in a binder in the hall closet, and nobody had locked it, because nobody thought the girl in the scrubs could read.
Elliot had been hurt in a car crash. Bad head injury. But the last hospital notes, from six months ago, said his brain scans were improving. That he was responding to voices. That the neurologist, a Dr. Priya Patel, recommended stopping sedation and starting rehab.
He’d been discharged to home care two days later. Dr. Lyle, Vivian’s private doctor, had restarted the sedative drip the next morning. For agitation. And every few weeks since, he’d raised the dose.
I looked at the dates. Each increase came a day after Vivian visited.
I put the binder back. I went to his room and sat down in the chair with Monte Cristo open on my knees, and I couldn’t read a word. I just held his hand.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “I don’t know who to tell.”
And under my palm, slowly, his fingers closed around mine.
