I walked fast down from the platform. Karen didn't come after me.
Behind me, her voice carried, impatient.
"Don't stop him. Let him cool off on his own."
"Spoiled rotten by his family. Can't take the smallest slight."
My steps caught for half a beat, then kept going.
So in her eyes, being held down in front of everyone and having my arm broken, then being told to call a vet to set the bone, only counted as a small slight.
Only when the lounge door shut behind me did I let go of the strength I'd been forcing.
The pain rolled in, and my forehead went cold with sweat.
My mother came in right after me.
She crouched beside me, hands hovering, wanting to touch me and not daring to, tears falling before she could speak.
"Nelson, does it hurt?"
My father stood in the doorway, pacing back and forth, furious.
"Who does Karen Gilbert think she is?"
"Nelson, you still want to marry a woman like that?"
"Just say no, and I'll have every Gilbert project frozen right now!"
I said nothing.
The hotel doctor had already come up with a few pieces of stiff cardboard and rigged the most basic temporary splint on my arm.
My father saw my silence and grew angrier.
"It's come to this, and you're still hesitating over what?"
The question kept me quiet for a long time.
Ever since Karen confessed to me at our graduation ceremony, she and I had been together seven years.
Back then she was driven, hungry to build something of her own.
Chasing clients by day, ghostwriting project proposals for others by night. In the worst stretch, she'd split a single cup of instant ramen in half and save the rest for the next day.
I couldn't stand to watch her suffer, so I went to my father in secret and asked him to help her.
He agreed.
His one condition was that she couldn't be told who I really was until after we were married.
After that, every time Karen's company reached a critical turning point, the right benefactor happened to appear, right on time.
She always believed it was her own talent that earned all of it.
Later, as the company kept expanding, I'd ask when she was going to marry me, and she'd always tell me to wait, just wait until her career climbed one more rung.
That wait stretched into seven years.
Until three months ago, when she told me, smiling, that she'd hired a new assistant named Brendan Fox.
Young, clumsy, and very endearing.
"His first day, he spilled coffee all over my dress and just froze, completely at a loss."
"Young people these days, they wear everything on their faces."
I'd even teased her about it then, that she used to hate employees making rookie mistakes, and now she'd turned so forgiving.
After that, Brendan's mistakes only piled up.
Booking the wrong flights, sending the wrong contracts, getting a client's dietary restrictions backwards.
Karen never once disciplined him.
She said he was young and needed to be taught slowly.
She said he came from a hard home and deserved a little extra care.
It wasn't that I'd never suspected anything.
But every time I brought it up, she'd wrap her arms around me and tell me I was overthinking it.
Until, the last time I asked, she suddenly proposed to me.
"How can you men be this suspicious too?"
"Looks like marriage is the only thing that'll shut you up for good."
In that moment, I actually felt ashamed of my own doubts.
Looking back now, the truly laughable one had been me all along.
My mother looked at my hand.
"Nelson, just say the wedding's off, and your father and I will handle the rest for you."
I was about to answer when a knock came at the door.
Karen was here.
Exactly fifteen minutes. Not a second more.
She pushed the door open, saw my arm strapped up in that crude cardboard splint, and her brow knotted at once.
"How is this still not taken care of?"
"The guests are all waiting out there. Can't you think about the bigger picture for once?"
