Back at the hotel, I couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat.
All I could see was Constance on her knees, and her signature on that consent form.
The suffocating weight in my chest had nowhere to go. There wasn't a single person in the world I could tell about this. I kept checking my phone, expecting some kind of explanation from her. The screen stayed dark.
It wasn't until the next morning that my phone finally rang. It was the hospital, asking if I could come in and give a case lecture based on her lover's condition.
In the hospital room, Constance was carefully spooning oatmeal into James's mouth. She chatted with him between bites, telling little stories to make him smile. When I walked in, she didn't so much as flinch.
Watching them, I couldn't help but think of last month, when I'd had a high fever. I'd asked her to bring me a glass of water. She hadn't even looked up. She'd said she was worried I'd get the kids sick and sent them to her mother's house early. I'd been so delirious with fever I was talking nonsense, and she'd been out in the living room eating snacks and binge-watching TV.
It wasn't that she didn't know how to take care of someone. She just never wanted to take care of me.
Midway through my lecture, Constance set the bowl down and pressed a soft kiss to James's forehead.
Something seized in my chest. Before all of this, she had never once kissed me on her own. And whenever I tried, she'd push me away, tell me I was annoying. Say that was the only thing I ever thought about.
"What a sweet couple."
"Right? Makes you jealous."
"Though the patient's going to have a rough time. With his wife clinging to him like that, a guy with his kind of injury is definitely looking at a longer recovery."
The doctors chatted and laughed as they filed out of the room.
I turned to the attending physician. "Have the patient's family member come to my office."
Constance walked in and fixed me with a cold, distant stare. "Here to lecture me?"
"Have you forgotten what happened back then?"
Every single time we fought, she pulled out that line. It was a sword dangling over my head, and she knew exactly how deep it could cut.
It never failed her.
"Nothing to say? Cat got your tongue?" She tilted her chin up. "I thought you'd be man enough to go after James. Turns out you're just a coward."
"If you don't have the guts, then sit down and play the fool like a good little husband."
"You owe me this."
She was relentless, each word sharper than the last.
"Constance. Let's get a divorce."
"Divorce?" She stood, her gaze cutting like a blade. "In your dreams."
"You file for divorce, and I go public with what happened. I will destroy your career and your reputation."
"James needs to recover. Do your job. Figure out what kind of nutrition plan will help him heal faster."
She stared me down. "And don't look at me like that. If you'd ever had any real backbone, things between us wouldn't be the way they are now."
She dropped that last line and walked out.
Backbone?
No. What I'd had was too much love. Too much I couldn't let go of.
But the person I loved had changed a long time ago.
I'd refused to give up because I believed that one day, the Constance I fell in love with would come back. That she'd be that woman again, the one who made me lose my mind. As long as nothing crossed a fundamental line, I was willing to wait. Even if she was a block of ice, I believed that someday I could warm her.
And the truth about "that incident" was in my hands. When the time was right, I would tell her everything. I believed that when she heard it, she would understand me.
But that day never came. The right moment never arrived.
She cheated. She crossed my line.
No matter how much love was left in my heart, I couldn't accept her anymore.
Handling this as calmly as possible was already the most restraint I had in me.
When I brought up divorce today, I wasn't asking for Constance's permission. I was telling her what I was going to do.
Over the next two days, I stayed on at the hospital for the charity consultation lectures.
