He didn’t tell me not to be afraid. He didn’t use his usual polite phrases. He just sat there with me, through that difficult time.
That mattered more than it should have.
Around three in the morning, my phone lit up.
Evan.
I thought maybe he’d finally remembered he had a wife.
I opened the message.
I want a divorce. I don’t need a sick wife. I won’t pay for the surgery. You have your insurance. My lawyer is already preparing the paperwork. Don’t call me.
I stared at him until the words blurred.
The man in the other bed didn’t ask for my phone. I gave it to him anyway.
He read it. His jaw tightened. Then he handed it back to me.
“Can you postpone?” he asked.
“No. The growth rate is too high.”
He nodded once. “Then he’ll come in. He’ll wake up. And the garbage will go away on its own.”
Part III: The Joke That Wasn’t a Joke
In the morning they arrived with the stretcher.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying not to tremble. He was being prepped, too. A minor operation, they said. He seemed more stable than the walls.
I laughed once, bitter and exhausted.
“You’re so nice,” I said. “If I survive this, maybe we should get married.”
It was a joke. Half a joke. The kind of joke you make when terror has you down and you need the room to tilt differently.
He didn’t smile.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Okay.”
I blinked. “Really?”
“Okay,” he repeated.
The nurse began moving my bed. I didn’t have time to ask any more questions. The doors swallowed me up, and the last thing I saw was him nodding at me, as if we’d just made a serious agreement.
Then the lights brightened. The mask lowered. Someone told me to count backward.
I got to seven.
Part IV: Awakening
I woke up in pain.
A deep pain. A clean pain. The kind that tells you you’re alive, whether you like it or not.
The river-shaped crack in the ceiling was still there. The room was still there. And so was I.
Brenda, the nurse, leaned over me, smiling, as if she’d pulled me out herself.
“Everything came out clean,” she said. “And your reproductive organs are intact. You can still have children.”
These words hit me harder than the painkillers. I closed my eyes and let a sense of relief wash over me like warmth.
I turned my head. The man in the next bed had already returned.
“Alive?” he asked.
“Alive.”
“Good.”
Later, another nurse came in, one of those loud ones who always think gossiping is a professional advantage.
“Your husband called,” she said. “He said he’s picking up his last things and that you shouldn’t try to contact him.”
I simply nodded.
The man in the other bed put down his book. “Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
⏬️⏬️ Continued on the next page ⏬️⏬️
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