Chapter 3 - An Unforgivable Sacrifice
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” she whispered, her voice cracking as she tried to pull the sheet higher over her chest, as if she could hide the truth behind hospital cotton.
“Why, Maya?” I choked out, getting to my feet and stepping toward her bed. “Why would you do this? How could you make a decision like this by yourself?”
“Because look at you!” she cried, tears spilling rapidly over her sunken cheeks. “Look at what happened when we lost the twins two years ago! You barely survived it, Arjun! You stopped sleeping, you spent nights sitting on the bathroom floor staring at nothing, you almost lost your business trying to pay for endless fertility treatments and hospital visits!”
“That was my choice! I was your husband!”
“And I couldn't bear to make you a widower at thirty-four!” she screamed back, her body trembling with an intensity that rattled the IV stand. “Do you know what the survival statistics for Stage III are? Do you have any idea what it’s like to sit in a room and have a doctor tell you that you might not see your thirty-sixth birthday? I looked at you coming home exhausted, working twelve-hour shifts so your father could have his heart surgery, and I knew… I knew that if I told you, you would throw away everything you had built. You would have sold your company shares. You would have traded your life for six more months of mine!”
“And I would have done it gladly!” I yelled, slamming my open palm onto the metal guardrail of her bed. “I would have sold everything! I would have slept in my car! I would have begged on the streets if it gave me one more day to hold your hand!”
The silence that followed was suffocating. Only the hum of the air conditioner and the steady beep of her vitals filled the void between us. Maya covered her face with both hands, her shoulders shaking with deep, silent sobs.
“You think you protected me?” I asked, my voice dropping to a raw, painful whisper as I sank onto the edge of the mattress. “You broke me, Maya. For sixty days, I woke up every morning wondering what was wrong with me. Wondering why I wasn't enough to make you happy. Wondering why you walked out after promising for better or for worse.”
She shook her head, unable to look at me. “I didn’t want you to hate me… but I needed you to let go. Grief from anger heals faster than grief from a slow death. I thought… I thought you would move on. I thought you would find someone whole. Someone who could give you children. Someone who didn't carry death in her body.”
“There is no someone else,” I said fiercely, taking both of her shaking hands and pulling them away from her tear-streaked face, forcing her to look into my eyes. “There never was, and there never will be. You thought you were writing the ending of our story all by yourself in secret. But you forgot one thing, Maya.”
She swallowed hard, her breath trembling against my fingertips. “What?”
“I took those vows too. And I didn't say 'until illness parts us.' I said until death. And you are not dying on my watch. Not alone in this hallway. Not while I still draw breath.”
May you like
A knock sounded at the door, cutting through the raw emotion. A tall, gray-haired oncologist stepped inside, holding a clipboard. He looked between the two of us, his gaze lingering on our locked hands.
“Maya,” the doctor said gently. “We need to discuss the latest scan results. The first chemotherapy regimen isn't reducing the tumor markers the way we hoped. We need to talk about an aggressive, high-risk surgical intervention.”
