The Bachelor's Beverly Ortega has broken her silence.
The season 29 hopeful appeared on a recent episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast to explain her sudden departure from the series just hours before what would have been her first one-on-one date with season star Grant Ellis. Confessing to "so many emotions," Ortega shared that the whole ordeal started with a nap she took the day of the date — "I wake up, my stomach's hurting."
A common stomach ache turned into "throwing up," and then into "excruciating pain. I'm continuing to throw up. It's like a mess. This goes on for 12 hours," she recalled. It took a trip to the emergency room to discover how serious the problem really was.
Ortega was chosen alongside contestant Carolina Quixano for one-on-one dates with Ellis at the beginning of the recent third episode. Ellis made his way through his group date with Natalie, Bailey, Alexe, Alli Jo, Chloie, Sarafiena, Dina, Parisa, Rose, Zoe, Litia, and Juliana, then his solo date with Carolina, but when it came time for Beverly, she was nowhere to be found. Parisa informed the cast that, "Yesterday morning she was very sick, and today we found out that she will not be coming back to the house." The 30-year-old insurance agent was never seen again.
Ortega remembered being "so excited" the morning after she was chosen for a one-on-one, not just because she was, "So sad, missing home, missing my mom, my dad, so getting the one-on-one solidified, like, 'Okay, I'm here, and it's for a good reason,'" but because the group date meant "we're going to have the whole day to ourselves. I'm going to get to eat, sleep, just relax, no drama."
But after the stomach ache, vomiting, and 12 hours of pain, Ortega recalled, "I knew something was not right. I was like, 'I know my body. I'm listening to my body. Something is not okay'... They end up taking me to the hospital because I was not okay. They gave me IV. I was there for three hours. They gave me morphine. The pain finally went away. But I was like, 'What is wrong with me?' After three hours of being in the E.R., the doctor came in and he's like, 'You have appendicitis and you're going to need emergency surgery.'"
Matt Sayles/Disney
Ortega explained that the diagnosis put her in a state of fear and confusion. "At that point, I still was not really processing... I already in 2018 got my gallbladder removed. Now my appendix is being removed. I'm losing organs left and right. I'm like, 'What is going on?'"
The episode moved right along without Ortega, her one-on-one being quickly converted into a mini-group date with Sarafiena, Dina, and Litia that culminated in a solo dinner with Litia.
But Ortega wasn't able to move on as quickly. "Honestly, it took me a month and a half to recover emotionally," she explained. "Physically, obviously, I was okay. But emotionally, I was not. I left with the 'what if,' and obviously, we were building a connection." Ortega revealed that production "didn't show a lot of our moments, but we did have a lot of cute little moments. They never showed us kissing." Which according to Ortega, they did, just "not the first night."
The end of the episode saw the departure of Alli Jo, Bailey, and Chloie, leaving 10 contestants vying for Grant's heart.
Though Ortega said she feels that "everything happens for a reason," she does hope that Ellis "didn't think that I left just because." She also said she's "1,000 percent" interested in starring on the spinoff series Bachelor in Paradise, which brings previously eliminated Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants together to compete to find love.
