My Mother-in-law Tried To Poison My Chowder. I’m A Pharmacist, So I Knew Exactly What She Added. I Sent The “gift” To My Cheating Husband Instead.

The Waiting Game

I went back up to our apartment.

I didn’t turn on all the lights.

I just switched on the kitchen light, poured the glass of wine I had intended to drink, and stared at it for a long time.

Finally, I poured it straight down the sink.

The red liquid spiraled down the drain like something being severed.

Betty was asleep in her room, or pretending to be.

I didn’t open her door.

I didn’t wake her.

I just went to my own room, changed my clothes, and lay down.

My heart beat with a strange regularity.

It wasn’t because I was numb, but because there are moments when you hurt so much that your emotions shut down just to keep you alive.

I closed my eyes and waited for a call I knew would surely come.

And as the clock neared 3:00 a.m., my phone vibrated, its shrill ring cutting through the dark room like a premonition.

I had just drifted out of a fitful dream when the phone buzzed insistently on the nightstand.

The screen cast a blue glow in the dark room, displaying an unknown number.

I let it ring a few more times, just long enough to compose a properly panicked expression, before I answered.

My voice was like someone jolted from a deep sleep.

“Hello, who is this?”

The voice on the other end was a man’s, urgent, accompanied by the muffled sound of other people talking and the unmistakable beeping of machines, the signature sounds of an emergency room.

“Is this Laura? This is Metropolitan General Hospital emergency department. Nathan is in our care. His condition is critical. A family member needs to come immediately,”.

I heard the words, “Condition is critical,” and my heart seized for a beat.

Even though I had expected it, the physical reaction still hit me like a punch to the chest.

But I couldn’t afford to collapse.

I had to play the part of the unknowing wife, both devastated and confused, so that everything would follow the path they themselves had laid.

“Emergency? What do you mean, emergency? He said he was at work. Doctor, what’s wrong with him?”

“Severe food poisoning complicated by a reaction with alcohol. Please come right away and bring his identification,”.

The line went dead, giving me no chance to ask more.

I sat bolt upright, the back of my shirt cold with sweat.

For a few seconds, I stared into the darkness ahead as if looking at a door that had been opened for me with no way to turn back.

Immediately, the phone rang again.

This time, it was my mother-in-law’s number.

I answered.

And before I could speak, Betty’s voice screamed through the phone, shattered like a bowl dropped on a tile floor.

“Laura, where are you? Get to the hospital now! Nathan… he… he’s not going to make it!”

Oh God, Betty called me her daughter for the first time in that tone.

Before, her words were always laced with an undercurrent of contempt.

But now, that word wasn’t a term of endearment.

It was the cry of someone being pushed to the edge of a cliff by her own hands.

I forced my voice to sound frantic.

“Mom, what are you saying? Why the hospital? I… I’m coming right now,”.