The day my husband's diagnosis report came out, we ran into each other at the hospital. He was there to buy medicine for a female coworker suffering from menstrual cramps, holding several boxes of tampons in his hand. He asked me, "Is it really okay for unmarried girls to use tampons?" Worried she might develop a dependency on painkillers, he insisted I use my connections to get her an appointment with a top specialist. In the span of an hour, he mentioned his coworker's name hundreds of times. Chloe Evans. She gets terrible cramps. She's so innocent and inexperienced. It makes you want to protect her. I suddenly remembered my doctor frowning just moments ago, asking me if I wanted to try surgery. I had been so certain: "I need the treatment. I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone." But really, what's so bad about being alone? 1 A colleague at the hospital hesitated before telling me that Arthur's test results were back. I had already guessed the outcome wouldn't be optimistic. "If the blood clot continues to expand, it may compress the optic nerve." I had seen similar surgeries. Even my mentor, the esteemed Dr. Miller, found them incredibly challenging. I stuffed the report into my bag and walked out, my heart heavy with worry. My mind was a chaotic mess. I ran through countless ways to break the news, but I still didn't know how to tell Arthur. He had been swamped at work lately. The report had been ready for over two weeks, but he hadn't had the time to pick it up. Amidst my worry, I felt a glimmer of relief. It wasn't too late yet. Breathing a slight sigh of relief, I looked up and saw Arthur standing in the crowded registration line. He saw me too, a hint of joy appearing in his eyes. "Honey!" He strode toward me with long steps. "It's great that you're here. Can you help me book an appointment with a gynecology specialist?" My gaze moved downwards, resting on the several boxes of tampons he was holding. He didn't look embarrassed at all. "These are for Chloe. The poor girl is having terrible cramps again." The gynecology appointment was for her too, Arthur explained incessantly. "She asked me to get her some painkillers. I figured I should ask a professional if taking them like that is bad for her body." As if remembering something, he leaned in and lowered his voice. "Do you think it's appropriate for an unmarried girl to use these things?" He gestured with the tampons in his hand. "Especially since she hasn't even, you know, done that yet. Taking random pills and using these insertable things..." Seeing my face darken, he stopped talking, seeming to sense something was wrong. This wasn't the first time he had bought things for her. Recently, when a popular brand of sanitary pads had a scandal, he asked me a million questions about it. That time, he scratched his head and smiled sheepishly: "Well, I'm the only married guy in the department. It's not as awkward for me to buy this stuff." But my displeasure stemmed from more than just his flimsy excuses. A few months ago, his department went on a team-building trip and got into a car accident. He was the most severely injured person in the car. Everyone else walked away without a scratch. The new girl, Chloe, was also in that car. When I rushed to the emergency room, the young, delicate girl was crying so hysterically she looked more like his wife than I did. She clung to the nurse's hand, fainting several times. I was the one who had to pinch her philtrum to wake her up. Lately, he had been mentioning her so frequently that I could no longer ignore it. But looking into his eyes right now, I swallowed my questions. "Does your head hurt today?" He was looking down, replying to a message: "It hurt for a little bit, but Chloe massaged it for me, and it feels much better." A sharp pain pierced my chest. From the corner of my eye, I glanced at his screen. An avatar of a little deer was pinned to the top of his chat list. In the past, that spot was reserved exclusively for me. 2 After getting a definitive answer from the specialist, Arthur visibly relaxed. I stared at him fixedly. Even now, he hadn't asked me why I was at the hospital. Ever since I injured my wrist, I had been on medical leave for months. It seemed that during this same period, he had been coming home later and later. Now, he took the medication boxes from my hand. "I'm heading back to the office. Did you drive?" His casual question made my heart sink even further. The smell of medicinal patches radiating from me was so strong that even the specialist he just consulted had asked out of concern: "Still hasn't healed? Do you want to try getting a new prescription from orthopedics?" But Arthur seemed to have completely forgotten. He looked impatient, eager to rush back without wasting a single second. I revealed my stiff, uncooperative wrist, and he finally froze for a moment. A look of guilt crossed his face. "Let me take you home first." I nodded and walked straight out. Normally, I would have been understanding and told him to go back to work, saying I could just take a cab. But my chest felt tight, and that little deer avatar lingered in my mind. Arthur hesitated for a moment before following me. He opened the passenger door before I could, then leaned in, hastily tossing some things into the back seat. But I still saw it, and I smelled it. A cloying, sweet peach scent filled the air, and the passenger seat was reclined very far back. What he threw into the back seat was a pink bunny lumbar pillow. "A coworker's. She forgot to take it back again." I didn't say anything. When Arthur lied, he always kept his head down and lowered his voice. Just like he used to do back in med school when he'd wait on the main path to "accidentally" bump into me. "Sarah, what a coincidence. What are you doing here?" Everyone said my calm, quiet personality was a terrible match for such a dense, wooden man. Even my senior colleague, Dr. Carter, couldn't help but joke: "If you two ever fight, you'll just stare at each other like two blocks of wood." Halfway home, Arthur pressed his Bluetooth earpiece and took several calls. Even though he only answered with "Mhm" and "Okay," his responses were flawless. However, to prevent him from getting an ear infection, the earpiece I bought him didn't fully seal the ear canal. The noise isolation was actually quite poor. I clearly heard a sweet female voice from the earpiece. I could even picture the coy, pouty look on her face. "Arthur, we're all waiting for you! If you're ten minutes late, you'll have to take the penalty shots for me." Arthur's brow immediately furrowed: "Don't drink alcohol." While stopped at a red light, he stayed silent for a long time before suddenly looking at me. "My department is having a team lunch this afternoon." The underlying meaning was probably that he hoped I would get out at the next intersection and take a cab the rest of the way. I avoided his gaze, pulling out my lipstick and a small mirror from my purse for a touch-up. "That's perfect. I haven't seen your coworkers in a long time either." His medical report was visible in my open bag. I casually handed it to him. I had prepared countless arguments to convince him to get surgery, but before they reached my lips, I swallowed them all. He barely glanced at it before tossing it into the back seat. "It's not a big deal anyway. You're the one who insisted I get a full checkup." I suddenly remembered how he looked when he woke up in the hospital after the crash. Looking around with dazed eyes, he muttered to himself: "Honey, I was so scared I'd never be able to see you again." Back then, we still had a future. 3 The car parked outside the restaurant, and Chloe came running down the steps. The sheer joy on her face froze the moment I pushed open the car door. "Oh... Sarah... you're here too." She looked at Arthur questioningly: "Why didn't you tell me beforehand?" I offered a faint smile and walked straight inside. Behind me, Arthur's unhurried voice drifted over. "Your medication. Thanks to your sister-in-law waiting in line for the specialist, you can take these without worrying." But as Chloe brushed past me, that cloying peach scent lingered in the air. Distracted, I didn't catch what she said in reply. Once we were inside the private dining room, Chloe eagerly pulled up a chair for me. We sat on either side of Arthur. His coworkers' eyes darted between the three of us, but no one said a word. I didn't know how Arthur and she usually interacted. But sitting next to me now, he seemed much more reserved. The only exception was when someone offered her a drink, and he quickly blocked it. "Don't let Chloe drink. It's her time of the month." That casual remark made sitting there feel like sitting on a bed of nails. Someone inevitably pointed it out: "Arthur is married, he really knows how to take care of people." The private room's door was tightly shut, and the smell of alcohol was making me dizzy. I made an excuse to step out for some air, but the heaviness in my chest only sank deeper, like a boulder. Faint, mocking laughter echoed from the stairwell. It sounded familiar. "Being married is like Arthur's get-out-of-jail-free card. He doesn't even hold back when his wife is right there." "Do you think his wife knows? About the time he and Chloe snuck out and got into that car crash?" "Shh! If she knew, there'd be hell to pay. Her own husband takes a young girl out to practice driving, the car flips, and he throws his body over hers to protect her... Tsk tsk..." The laughter faded, but the words echoed deafeningly in my heart. After that accident, he developed a chronic headache. Yet whenever I suggested filing for workers' compensation, he always dodged the question with vague excuses. So there was a hidden truth. I remembered what my colleague at the hospital had said. "The blood clot might be causing his headaches, but the part pressing against his retina will likely cause blindness." Someone patted my shoulder. I turned around to face Chloe's smiling face. "Is Sarah eavesdropping?" She leaned in, that sickly sweet scent growing even stronger. "Arthur is drunk. He just asked me to drive you guys home." She suddenly reached out and squeezed my wrist, right where the medicinal patch was. "A doctor injuring their hand is a major deal." A piercing, agonizing pain shot up my veins, crashing into my heart. My wrist was injured on the exact day they got into that car crash. A patient, growing desperate waiting for his sweetheart who never arrived, suddenly lunged at me with a knife. "Even if I can see, she'll never come back to me! What use do I have for these eyes?!" It was my colleagues who risked their lives to protect my hand. Afterward, when Dr. Carter performed the surgery, he was still shaken: "Half a centimeter more, and this hand would have been completely useless." Arthur didn't know the full story. Over the past few months, he had casually mentioned it a few times. "I thought after the car crash, you'd drop everything and rush to see me." "In the end, I'm still not as important as your patients." Every time he brought it up, he'd had a bit to drink, just like now, sitting in the car. Using the alcohol as an excuse to speak his true feelings as a joke. 4 Chloe's driving was mediocre. After a few jarring stops and starts, I was feeling nauseous. I knew she was constantly watching me through the rearview mirror. Arthur was completely wasted, leaning against my shoulder like a sack of mud. It felt like years since we had interlocked our fingers like this. Every time he mumbled, his hot, alcohol-laced breath brushed against my cheek. "Everyone says I married a great wife, but Sarah, do you think you're that great?" He swayed, pointing at Chloe in the front seat: "My company needs me, my colleagues need me, everyone needs me." He slumped back against the seat: "It seems like you're the only one who doesn't. You have your patients, your surgeries, and that's enough for you." Wind slipped through the crack in the window, the chill slowly seeping into my skin. I remembered how, when we first got married, he would enthusiastically bring a lunchbox and wait for me in the doctor's lounge. "Saving lives is the most important thing in the world. I'm happy to be the man behind the angel." The man everyone called dense had said those words so earnestly when he lifted my veil at our wedding. Only three years, and everything had changed. The car stopped, and Arthur stumbled out, swaying dangerously. Chloe jumped out and expertly draped his arm over her shoulder. Half-hugging, half-supporting him, she let him lean his entire weight on her. I just stared at how intimate and seamless their movements were. My feet felt as heavy as lead. When we reached the entrance to the apartment building, Arthur suddenly stopped and looked up. Then he turned around: "I said I'm not going home. Chloe, I still want to stay at your place tonight." I watched the color drain completely from the young girl's face. Arthur was completely sloshed: "Don't worry, I'll just sleep on the couch." "I'm a married man, I know where the boundaries are." Chloe's voice went hoarse. When she looked up at me, she looked more than a little guilty. "Arthur is drunk..." A drunk mind speaks a sober heart. I fought down the churning in my stomach: "He can go wherever he wants." I started walking upstairs, my fingers trembling as I punched in the door code. The sound of the car door closing and the engine roaring away was exceptionally clear behind me. I slowly turned my head. It felt like I was looking at the desolate ruins of a marriage that had withered and died. In the early hours of the morning, a message arrived from Arthur's number. A delicate hand completely enveloped by a larger, prominent hand. [The person you don't cherish will always be someone else's treasure.] I rubbed my thumb over the screen, staring at it for a long time, until my heart was frozen solid, and hit delete. I scrolled up to a message Dr. Carter had sent that afternoon. [Sarah, I'm telling you one last time in all seriousness: risking this surgery is completely irresponsible! Your hands are your livelihood; you can't throw them away like this.] Now, I knew exactly how to reply to him. 5 Once Arthur's blood clot progressed to the point of compressing his retina, there was only one person capable of successfully performing the surgery. But that person's hand was injured. Unless she underwent an invasive procedure to seal the torn ligaments right now. But the success rate of that procedure had yet to be definitively proven. She originally intended to take that desperate risk. Now, she didn't want to anymore. The night Arthur slept at Chloe's house. She used her slightly clumsy hand to draft a divorce agreement. 6 That morning, feeling emotionally stable, I grabbed an unhealthy breakfast downstairs. Eating fried dough sticks and soy milk, I realized I had grease on my fingers and no tissues. The old lady running the stall pulled a piece of paper towel from her apron and handed it to me. "How come your husband isn't buying breakfast today?" I froze, then quickly recovered, couldn't help but lower my head and laugh softly. For the past few months, he had been leaving early and coming home late. I suppose the breakfasts he bought were meant for someone else. But just like at his company, as long as the "loving husband" persona remained intact, he could cross any line he wanted. Having a wife was just another tool for him to wield. I quickly wiped my hands and hailed a cab to the hospital. The seminar was a closed-door session all morning. When I walked out of the conference room, I immediately spotted Arthur standing at the end of the hallway. Sunlight streamed through the window behind him, obscuring his expression, but the massive bouquet of flowers in his arms was blindingly obvious. As he walked toward me, his anxiety and guilt became increasingly apparent. "Honey, I drank too much yesterday." "Chloe said I mumbled a lot of nonsense. Be the bigger person and don't hold it against me, okay?" He delivered this speech incredibly smoothly. He had clearly rehearsed it many times on the way over. "Was the couch comfortable?" His face darkened: "I was drunk, nothing happened... Honey, I'm quitting drinking." Quitting drinking, letting me know when he worked late... these were all things he had sworn to do before we even got married, but he had never actually followed through. The colleagues from the seminar had mostly dispersed. Only Dr. Carter walked toward us after finishing a conversation. His gaze moved from the flowers to Arthur's face. "We'll look into your surgery further, don't worry too much." Arthur looked confused: "What surgery?" Dr. Carter glanced at me, didn't elaborate, and just patted my shoulder reassuringly. "Start preparing early. You need to fly out this week at the latest." Once Dr. Carter walked away, the confusion on Arthur's face only grew. "Wait, honey, where are you flying to? Isn't your medical leave still active?" Looking at the corner of the paper peeking out of his suit jacket pocket, I slowly took a step back. "Arthur, you went home, didn't you? You saw the signed divorce agreement." His face grew even darker, his lips trembling slightly. "You didn't want to come home, and it just so happens I don't want to go back either. Just like when we decided to get married, we're still completely in sync." "I've accepted a month-long research exchange program in the US." "I hope that by the time I get back, we'll both have found our true freedom." I turned to leave, but he hurriedly stepped forward and grabbed my sleeve. "Sarah, are you sure this is what you really want?" My chest felt like a million ants were frantically crawling over it, leaving dense, agonizing trails. As I slowly pulled my sleeve free, I heard my own voice, sounding as flat as if I were discussing something completely trivial. "The day you got into that car crash while teaching Chloe how to drive, a patient nearly hacked my wrist off." "Seeing you lying unconscious in that hospital room, my only thought was..." "Thank God you didn't have to see me covered in blood."
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