Forged In Fire, Found Love

The sterile hospital air still carried the scent of my mother's final moments, a phantom pain throbbing in my abdomen, mirroring the hollow ache in my heart from the raw memory of yesterday's phone call.

My mother was gone, taken by a ruptured appendix dismissed as a stomach bug, and the man who delivered the clinical post-mortem of her death was my husband, David Chen.

He stood there, emotionless, a brilliant forensic doctor who couldn't see the pain in front of him, obsessed with his career and his intern, Emily White.