Emma lowered her eyes.
“I know.”
I wanted revenge.
God, I wanted it.
But looking at Emma lying there, pale and exhausted, I realized something.
Revenge would not save her.
Time was running out.
And suddenly every second mattered more than anger.
So instead of chasing vengeance, I stayed.
Every day.
Every hour.
I learned how to help her through nausea.
How to calm her shaking hands after chemotherapy.
How to make her laugh again, even for a few seconds.
At night, when pain kept her awake, I sat beside her bed and told her stories from when we first met.
Like the afternoon we got caught in the rain near Lake Michigan.
Emma laughed softly when she remembered.
“You looked so angry.”
“Because my shoes were ruined.”
“You cared more about your shoes than me.”
“I married you afterward, didn’t I?”
The smile she gave me then…
God.
I would have traded years of my life to keep seeing it.
One snowy evening, Emma whispered, “If I survive… will we try again?”
I looked at her carefully. “Try what?”
“Us.”
My chest tightened.
I leaned closer and kissed her forehead.
“There was never anyone else for me, Emma.”
She cried quietly when she heard that.
So did I.
But fate can be cruel the moment happiness begins to return.
Two weeks later, Emma collapsed.
One moment she was drinking tea by the hospital window.
The next, the cup slipped from her fingers.
And she fell.
Everything happened fast.
Doctors.
Nurses.
Machines.
Someone pulled me away while I shouted her name.
Then came hours of waiting.
Endless hours.
Near midnight, the gray-haired doctor approached me. His face was pale.
Before he spoke, I already knew something terrible had happened.
“She asked for you.”
My legs nearly gave out when I entered the room.
Emma looked impossibly fragile beneath the white blankets. Machines beeped softly around her. Her breathing was uneven.
But when she saw me, she smiled.
That beautiful, heartbreaking smile.
I sat beside her and gripped her hand.
“I’m here.”
Emma looked at me for a long time.
Then she whispered so softly I almost missed it.
“I was pregnant again.”
The world stopped.
“What?”
Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes.
“I found out shortly before the divorce.”
My heart almost split open.
“You never told me?”
“I wanted to,” she whispered. “But then I lost the baby too.”
I broke completely.
Everything made sense.
Her sadness.
Her silence.
Her hopelessness before the divorce.
All that time, she had been grieving another child alone.
And I had abandoned her anyway.
I buried my face against her hand, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Emma… please don’t leave me.”
Her weak fingers moved slowly through my hair, the way they used to years ago.
Then she whispered, “There’s one more thing you still don’t know.”
I looked up.
Her eyes filled with fear.
“The leukemia…”
Her breathing trembled.
“The doctors think it may not have happened naturally either.”
My blood turned to ice.
At that exact moment, the hospital door opened behind me.
And when I turned and saw who was standing there, I realized the nightmare was far from over.
A young doctor stepped into the room carrying another folder, his face tense.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But we need to discuss the toxicology results immediately.”
The fluorescent lights flickered above us.
I sat beside Emma in silence, still holding her cold hand.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Footsteps, rolling carts, and distant hospital announcements echoed outside, but inside that room, everything felt frozen.
Then Emma whispered, “Leukemia.”
The word hit me harder than any scream.
“How long?” I asked.
She lowered her eyes.
“Almost a year.”
“A year?” My voice cracked. “You’ve been sick for a year and never told me?”
Emma smiled weakly.
“It started after the second miscarriage.”
The mention of it reopened a wound I had tried to bury.
Our second child.
The tiny heartbeat we heard for only a few weeks before it vanished.
I remembered Emma crying silently in the bathroom afterward, both hands pressed to her stomach as though she could hold the broken pieces together.
And I remembered myself doing the worst thing possible.
I withdrew.
I told myself distance was easier than grief.
Emma continued softly.
“At first, I thought it was stress. But I kept getting weaker. Bruises appeared for no reason. I fainted twice while you were at work.”
“You should have told me.”
She shook her head.
“You were already unhappy.”
“That’s not true.”
“It was,” she said gently. “I saw it every day.”
I looked away because I couldn’t deny it.
“When the doctors confirmed it was leukemia, I panicked,” she whispered. “I kept thinking… why should you waste your life taking care of a dying woman?”
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“I already failed to give you children. Then I got sick too.”
“Emma…”
“I thought if you divorced me, you’d finally get a chance to start over.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Every cold morning.
Every lonely night.
Every moment I convinced myself the divorce was necessary.
All of it shattered.
She had never stopped loving me.
She had been protecting me.
And I had let her walk away alone.
Before I could speak, the doctor opened the folder.
“The chemotherapy has slowed the progression,” he said. “But her body remains unusually weak.”
“Unusually weak?” I asked.
He adjusted his glasses.
“There are abnormalities in her bloodwork that don’t fully match standard leukemia progression.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re still investigating,” he said carefully. “But some toxicology results are concerning.”
Emma frowned. “Toxicology?”
