The Grave He Didn't Deserve

Ella's POV: "Don't cry. You can't shed tears right now. The crash wasn't your fault." I heard those words the moment I pushed open the hospital room door. My husband, the renowned chief of cardiac surgery, was gently comforting the woman in the bed. At the other end of the hallway, my 5-year-old son had just taken his last breath. At the sound of the door, Lucas let go of Vivian's hand as though he'd been shocked. "Ella..." He scrambled to his feet, still wearing blood-spattered surgical scrubs. A bruise covered his forehead. Then he pulled me into his arms. "I'm sorry. Leo had already lost too much blood by the time he arrived. "I did everything I could. I'm his father. How could I stand by and let you lose Leo?" He buried his face against my chest, his tears soaking into my clothes. I didn't claw at his shirt or slap him and demand to know why he hadn't protected our son. Lucas was the best cardiac surgeon there was. For 5 years, he'd pulled Leo back from the brink of death again and again. I simply raised my calloused hand and wiped a spot of blood from his forehead. "I know you did everything you could." My voice was so calm that Lucas froze for a moment. He thought I was still in shock over our son's death. "Ella, we're still young. We can have another child..." 'No. I only want Leo.' "Ella..." Vivian sat up in bed. Gauze was wrapped around her eyes, and she felt blindly for my hand. "It's all my fault. I insisted on taking Leo to his early learning class, and then we crashed... I'll spend every day making it up to you." She sounded so sincere, yet her body leaned naturally toward Lucas. When a cold draft swept through the doorway, my husband instinctively shielded Vivian from it. Our son lay alone in the morgue, his body growing cold. His father was busy keeping a draft off the woman who had killed him. I took half a step back, avoiding Vivian's hand. I took out a disinfectant wipe and scrubbed the hand that had touched Lucas's forehead, slipping the wedding ring off my finger as I did. I balled up the dirty wipe around the ring and tossed them both into the trash. "Ella, your ring..." Lucas went white and tried to stop me. I ignored him and walked past. "Lucas, Leo took after you. He couldn't stand anything filthy." Outside the room, I answered the phone that had been vibrating for some time. It was Hans, the artistic director of the Veyna National Opera. "Ella, my dear," the older man said with a sigh, "the committee can hold the lead pianist position on the Euravian tour for you for just 3 more days. About Leo... We've all heard. Come back. Return to the stage where you belong." I opened my hands. My palms were dry and covered in hard calluses. Leo had been born prematurely 5 years earlier, with a congenital heart defect. Specialists had said he was unlikely to live past 10. Then Lucas had proposed to me. He promised to pour every resource he had, and every ounce of effort, into keeping our son alive. So I never touched a piano key again. For 5 years, I'd been his unpaid caretaker, on call whenever he needed me. That 10-year deadline had hung over me like a blade. I thought that if I settled for an ordinary life and worked without complaint, I could give my son his health and a family that stayed together. Yet these hands hadn't even held him one last time before he died. "Hans, I accept." Lucas followed me out and heard my answer. "Ella, who's calling?" I put my phone away without turning around. "Someone selling cemetery plots."