The Woman He Betrayed

Chapter 4

The next morning, I went back to the hospital.

I didn't want to. Every part of me wanted to crawl into bed and disappear. My mother's grave was still fresh. The flowers I left there yesterday were probably lying on the wet soil, and I couldn't stop seeing them. I couldn't stop hearing her either.

"Please don't let me die without seeing you."

I gripped my bag so hard my fingers hurt. Then I pushed through the hospital doors. One step. Then another. I told myself it was because someone was waiting for me upstairs. Maybe that was true. Maybe I just didn't know where else to go.

In the elevator, my heart beat faster with every floor. Outside Adrian's door, I froze. My hand hovered over the handle, shaking.

I was scared. Not of what I might find, but of what I might not. I was scared of those empty eyes. I was scared of looking at the man I loved and finding nobody there.

I took a breath and pushed the door open.

He was awake. Sunlight poured in from the window behind him, and for one second my heart betrayed me. I saw the old Adrian. The boy who waited outside my classes. The one who stole food from my plate and laughed when I slapped his hand. The one who gave me his blood because he couldn't stand the thought of losing me.

Then he turned his head, and it all fell apart.

His eyes were polite and blank. He looked at me the way you look at a stranger on a bus.

"Hello."

I swallowed. "Hi."

"I saw you yesterday." He studied my face. "You were crying."

His words felt like tiny knives. Yesterday. As if that was the only day we had ever shared.

"I was," I said. My voice came out thin.

Then he asked the question I had been dreading all night. "Are we friends?"

I almost cried right there. Friends. We had planned a whole life together. We had dreamed, and loved, and suffered side by side. I sat down slowly, because my knees didn't feel strong enough to hold me.

"We're more than friends."

His brows pulled together. "Family?"

A broken laugh slipped out of me. "No."

Before he could ask more, the door opened and the doctor walked in. His timing was perfect, because I had no idea what to say. He checked the chart, asked Adrian a few questions, then looked at me.

"Can I speak with you outside?"

In the corridor, I asked what had been eating at me all night. "Will he remember me?"

He sighed. "I don't know. Some patients get their memories back in days." He paused. "Some take years."

Years. The word hit me like a brick. I wasn't sure I could survive one more week, and he was talking about years.

"Try not to pressure him," the doctor said. "Photos, familiar places, shared moments. Sometimes those help."

"He doesn't even know I exist," I whispered.

"I know." He said it so gently that my eyes burned. I looked down at the floor until the feeling passed.

But something small woke up inside me. A tiny, fragile hope, like a candle in a dark room. I was afraid to breathe on it. Still, it was there.

When I went back in, Adrian was staring out the window. He turned at the sound of the door.

"You came back."

Four simple words, and something in my chest warmed. "I did."

He hesitated, then pointed at the chair. "You can sit."

I almost smiled. The old Adrian would have pulled me onto his lap and ignored my protests. This one offered me a chair. Progress, I thought, and the bitterness of it stuck in my throat.

We sat in silence. I picked at the strap of my bag. Then his eyes dropped to my left hand, to my engagement ring, and stayed there.

"You're engaged?"

My heart jumped. Maybe he remembered. Maybe...

"Yes."

"To who?"

The hope died so fast it left me dizzy. He didn't even know. I looked down at the ring he had slipped onto my finger under the old university tree, the ring that once made me cry happy tears. My thumb rubbed against it.

"To you," I said.

The room went still. Adrian blinked, then blinked again. "What?"

"We were going to get married."

His eyes went to the ring, then to me, then back to the ring. He looked like someone holding a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I wish I remembered."

That broke me all over again, because he meant it. He wasn't being cruel, and he wasn't pushing me away. He simply didn't know, and somehow that hurt more than anything.

A nurse came in with his medicine, and the moment passed. But I noticed something. For the first time, Adrian looked uncomfortable, and not because of me. Because of himself. Somewhere deep down, he could see my pain, and he hated being the reason for it.

The nurse smiled as she handed him a cup of water. "You're lucky, you know."

"Why?" he asked.

She nodded toward me. "She never left. Three days. She barely slept. We had to force her to eat."

Heat rushed to my face. I stared at my hands.

When the nurse left, I felt his eyes on me. It wasn't recognition. It was softer than that, and slower, like he was trying to understand something he had no words for.

"Why would you do that for me?"

My heart clenched, because I had a thousand answers. Because I loved you. Because you saved me. Because I chose you. Because my mother died while I was trying to save you.

I couldn't say any of it. Not yet. So I smiled through the tears building in my eyes.

"Because you were worth saving."

Adrian looked away first. His jaw tightened, as if my words had touched something buried deep inside him, something his memory had lost but his heart hadn't. Slowly, he lifted his hand and pressed it against his chest. A strange look crossed his face. It was almost pain. Almost recognition. His breathing changed.

"I don't know why," he whispered.

He turned and looked straight into my eyes.

"But when I see you, my heart hurts."

I stopped breathing.

Maybe he hadn't forgotten everything. Maybe, somewhere under all those broken pieces, a part of him still knew me.

And for the first time since I buried my mother, I found myself praying for a miracle.