Dr. Weiss, Archer, excused himself to continue his rounds, leaving Averie with a quiet sense of warmth she hadn't felt in years.
"Okay, spill," Eleanor said the moment he was gone, her eyes wide. "Hottest, kindest doctor in New York is your childhood friend? How did you not mention this?"
Averie managed a weak smile. "He was the boy next door. His family moved away when we were in middle school. I hadn't seen him since."
The small, sterile room began to feel suffocating. "I need to see my dad," Averie said, swinging her legs off the gurney.
Eleanor helped her up, and together they walked out into the main hospital corridor, heading toward the surgical ICU. To get there, they had to pass through a long, glass-enclosed walkway that connected two of the hospital's main buildings. Outside the walkway was a small, private garden, dimly lit for the night.
The New York air had a chill to it, and Averie pulled the thin cardigan Eleanor had brought her tighter around her shoulders.
Halfway across the walkway, a movement in the garden below caught her eye. She stopped dead.
Her breath caught in her throat.
On a stone bench, illuminated by a soft garden light, sat two figures. Jarett Sharp and Candida Peck.
Candida was wearing a flimsy hospital gown, and she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. She looked pale, fragile, and exquisitely pitiful.
As Averie watched, frozen in place, Jarett shrugged off his own expensive cashmere coat. He draped it carefully, tenderly, over Candida's shoulders. Then, he reached up and gently tucked a stray strand of her dark hair behind her ear.
It was a gesture of such casual, unconscious intimacy. A gesture of care and affection that Averie had craved, and been denied, for three entire years.
Candida leaned her head against his shoulder. Jarett didn't pull away. Instead, he rested a hand on her back, patting her gently in a soothing rhythm.
Through the cold, silent glass, Averie watched it all. She couldn't hear their words, but the picture was perfectly clear. It was a thousand times more painful than the photo on her phone. That had been a digital taunt. This was real. This was a living, breathing portrait of her husband's love for another woman.
She felt a hand squeezing her heart, a physical, crushing pressure. It squeezed and squeezed until she was sure it had been pulverized into dust.
There were no tears. No screams. She just watched, her eyes wide and empty, as the last flicker of light inside her was extinguished. All that remained was cold, gray ash.
Eleanor saw them too. She gasped, her body trembling with rage. "That son of a bitch." She started to move toward the exit to the garden, but Averie's hand shot out and grabbed her arm.
"Don't," Averie said. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. "Let's go."
She turned away from the window, unable to look at them for another second. Every moment was a fresh slice of a knife against her soul.
"Averie, are you okay?" Eleanor whispered, her face a canvas of worry.
Averie looked at her friend and gave her a smile that was more painful than any scream. "I'm fine, Ellie," she said. "I just... I see things clearly now."
She leaned against the wall for support, then pushed herself forward, walking back the way they came. Each step was agony, but she held her back ramrod straight.
In that moment, watching her husband give his coat and his comfort to another woman, any lingering trace of love or hope she had for Jarett Sharp died. It was a quiet, brutal death. And in its place, something new and hard began to form.
