The Ordinary Doctor’s Revenge

CHAPTER 5

Ethan walked straight back into the bar, the heavy door thudding shut behind him. The air was thick with the smell of stale alcohol and lemon cleaner.

Behind the counter stood the bar owner, wiping down a glass. She was blonde, with her hair pulled into a messy bun.

"I need to see your surveillance footage from Wednesday night," Ethan said, leaning over the counter. "Just the entrance and the parking lot."

The woman barely looked up as she continued polishing the glass with a rag. "Cameras are basically just for show, Doctor. Half of them don't work, and the ones that do overwrite every twelve hours. I can't help you."

Ethan stared at her, the headache from his hangover still throbbing behind his temples. As he looked at her hair, a wild, impulsive question slipped out before he could stop himself.

"Was it you? Were you the one who took me to the hotel last night?"

The moment the words left his mouth, Ethan felt a sting of embarrassment.

The bar owner paused, then let out a sharp laugh. "Me? No."

She set the glass down and looked him up and down with an amused smirk. "If I wanted to sleep with you, I could've done it right here in the staff lounge. Why would I bother dragging a grown man all the way to a hotel?"

She leaned across the bar, grinning teasingly. "Besides, I like eighteen-year-old pretty boys. Not worn-out, middle-aged men like you."

Ethan's face darkened. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked toward the exit, his pride wounded.

As he pushed past the velvet curtain near the door, he almost collided with a woman coming toward him.

Ethan's gaze lingered on her.

She was tall and slender, dressed in a simple silk blouse and dark trousers. Long golden hair fell loosely over her shoulders, framing her fair skin and delicate yet striking features—a high, straight nose, full lips, and light-colored eyes that gave her a cool, mysterious beauty.

There was something vaguely familiar about her, almost hauntingly so.

For a split second, Ethan opened his mouth, but after being mocked by the bar owner moments earlier, he stopped himself. He couldn't go around stopping every blonde woman in the city to ask if she was the one who had taken him away that night.

He lowered his head, stepped around her, and walked out.

Back inside his car, Ethan sank into the driver's seat, his mood heavy with frustration.

He pulled out his phone and opened his messaging thread with Chloe again, staring at the sent text.

‘I've been drinking... Come over. I want to relive the old days.’

Could he really have typed that and sent it to her without remembering a second of it?

He rubbed his face with both hands, feeling completely drained. He opened his contacts and sent a brief message to the head of the inpatient department at Westbridge University Hospital, requesting a week of emergency leave. In his current mental state, examining patients or performing procedures was too risky.

Sitting in the quiet car, Ethan felt a wave of bitterness and regret wash over him.

Eighteen years ago, he had graduated at the top of his medical school class with nearly perfect grades. Within two years of joining the hospital, he had earned full prescribing privileges, completed his master's degree, and qualified as an attending physician. His department head had urged him to apply for a prestigious doctoral fellowship in the capital—a path that could have led to a brilliant career in medical research.

But then he met Chloe.

For Chloe, Ethan had walked away from his academic ambitions. He gave up research, took on grueling clinical shifts, and used nearly every penny of his salary to pay their rent and support her through years of failed auditions and endless rejections.

And what had all that sacrifice bought him?

His wife had cheated on him.

The daughter he had spent fifteen years loving and raising wasn't even his.

More than a decade of devotion, sacrifice, and unwavering loyalty had all amounted to a cruel, humiliating joke.

His chest tightened with pain.

Humiliated and drained, he didn't want to see anyone he knew.

For the next three days, Ethan stayed holed up in the small hotel room.

Then, on the fourth evening, the electronic lock on his room door clicked. The handle turned, and the door swung open.

Chloe walked in.

She wore a trench coat and held a spare keycard she had obtained from the front desk.

"Ethan Reynolds, you're not coming home, and you're not going to work either," Chloe said, her voice sharp as she swept her eyes across the room. "What are you hiding here for?"

She glanced around, looking for any sign of another woman. The room was tidy except for a half-eaten takeout container on the coffee table, the faint scent of cold noodles still lingering in the air.

Ethan was lying on the bed, looking pale, hollow, and utterly exhausted. Seeing him in such a miserable state only made her more irritated.

Ethan sat up slowly, looking at her with cold eyes. "I'll live however I want. What does it have to do with you? I told you last time—we're getting divorced. We have nothing to do with each other anymore."

He swung his legs off the bed, walked over to his briefcase on the desk, and pulled out two printed copies of a formal divorce settlement.

He handed them to her. "Since you're here, sign them. Tomorrow we can go file everything and be done with it."

Chloe stared at the document, her breath catching. "You... you already prepared divorce papers? You're seriously determined to divorce me?"

She hadn't come here to end their marriage. She had come to pressure him, to bring him back home so they could return to the comfortable status quo.

"Didn't I already show you the lab report?" Ethan's voice was steady, laced with deep, quiet pain. "Sophia isn't my biological daughter. You had her with another man. You cheated on me and betrayed everything we had."

He pointed to the signature line. "So yes, we're getting divorced. Read the terms."

"Ethan, I am going to say this one last time," Chloe's face hardened into a cold, fierce mask. "I did not cheat on you, and I did not betray you! If you keep throwing false accusations around and damaging my reputation, I will sue you for defamation. Don't think being my husband gives you the right to say whatever you want!"

Seeing that her threats weren't moving him, Chloe immediately shifted her approach. Her posture softened, her eyes warming with a gentle, pleading look.

"Ethan, stop this," she coaxed softly, stepping closer. "Come home with me. I need you. Sophia needs you. Our family needs you."

If she hadn't mentioned Sophia, Ethan might have kept his temper under control. But hearing her use the child he had been deceived into raising as an emotional bargaining chip made his anger flare.

He heard voices in the hallway outside, so he deliberately lowered his voice to a harsh, icy whisper.

"Chloe, I gave you clear, undeniable evidence. Why do you keep choosing to lie to my face? Sophia is not my daughter."

Chloe's patience snapped completely.

"You are hopeless!" she sneered, her eyes flashing with anger. "I told you to come home and you refuse, so fine! Don't ever come back! Stay here and keep wasting away if that's what you want!"

She spun around, slammed the door behind her, and stormed down the corridor.

Ethan walked over to the window and pulled the sheer curtain aside slightly. Below, he could see Chloe's luxury car idling at the curb.

She stayed in the car for nearly thirty minutes—waiting, giving him one final chance to break, surrender, and come running down the stairs.

Ethan let the curtain fall shut.

He turned on the television to fill the empty silence of the room, lay back down on the bed, and eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep.

When Ethan woke up the next morning, sunlight was streaming through the window. One side of his pillow felt cold and damp against his cheek.

He reached up and touched the wet pillowcase. It was soaked with his own tears.

Damn it.

He closed his eyes, a surge of self-loathing tightening his chest. She only showed up once, and that was enough to break me in my sleep?

He had always thought of himself as resilient, a man who could handle whatever life threw at him. But while he was asleep, the grief and betrayal he had been suppressing had quietly bubbled to the surface.

Just then, his phone vibrated against the nightstand, ringing loudly.

Assuming it was Chloe calling to check if he had softened overnight, Ethan reached over and answered without checking the caller ID.

"I told you, Chloe, my decision hasn't—"

"Ethan Reynolds," a deep, unfamiliar voice came through the phone, a man's voice. "We need to talk about Chloe Reynolds cheating on you. Let's set a time and place to meet.”