Chapter 4

When I woke up, I saw Ryan slumped beside my bed.

I wiggled my fingers, and he immediately startled awake.

"Lily..."

His voice was terribly hoarse, and his eyes instantly reddened.

"You're awake... I'm sorry, it's all my fault."

He reached to touch my face, but his hand hovered in mid-air before retracting, finally just pressing my hand against his cheek.

Warm liquid dripped onto the back of my hand.

"I'm sorry... once you recover, we can..."

I slowly processed his words.

"Are you saying..."

My hand rested on my flat lower abdomen.

A twisting pain seized my chest.

Here, without my knowledge, a child had briefly resided.

I clenched my hand tightly, my nails digging into my palm, trembling from the pain.

He knelt by the bedside, apologizing incoherently, saying we could find the best doctors, saying we could do surrogacy, saying we could adopt.

I just stared at him, as if he were a stranger.

"Why would I need a surrogate?"

He flinched, his gaze flickering, then he quickly explained.

"The OB-GYN said you're too thin, and pregnancy itself is hard. I don't want you to suffer that hardship."

I stared at him.

"Last physical, you said everything was normal, that I was perfectly fit for pregnancy. Ryan, what exactly are you hiding?"

I vaguely guessed the possibility.

His Adam's apple bobbed.

"I'm not... it's just that your current condition isn't suitable for carrying a pregnancy, and I only said that because I was afraid you'd be upset."

The air in the hospital room solidified.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

His phone rang then.

Chloe.

It kept ringing, again and again.

I saw him actually let out a sigh of relief.

"I'll go take care of it, I'll be right back."

The door closed.

I stared at the ceiling until the door was pushed open again.

"Lily, how are you feeling? It must hurt, right?"

I closed my eyes.

She chuckled softly.

"Well, of course, it hurts. You had half your uterus removed."

I snapped my eyes open.

"What?"

She feigned surprise.

"Didn't Dr. Miller tell you?"

She opened her phone and turned the screen towards me.

It was a photo of the surgical consent form.

Under the post-operative instructions, Ryan's name was written.

"Then he probably also didn't tell you that you were eight weeks pregnant."

She leaned in, her voice dropping even lower.

"What a shame, it was already a little formed thing, gone along with your uterus."

I clutched the bedsheet.

"Oh, and while you were unconscious these past three days..."

She sat on the edge of the bed, twirling a strand of her hair.

"I was right there with Dr. Miller when he was on night duty. Right there in the bathroom, he covered my mouth and told me not to make a sound..."

I was still reeling from the previous revelation, utterly numb to her words.

She clicked her tongue, pulled a copy of a medical record from her pocket, and tossed it onto the bed.

"No fun. Take a good look yourself."

I opened the medical record.

On the diagnosis page, it said 'threatened miscarriage'.

Other than that, there was no other diagnosis.

So why did they remove my uterus?

I clutched the medical record, tears streaming down my face.

Twenty-seven whole years.

A person who had occupied almost my entire life.

Never spoke a single truth to me.

On the way home from the hospital, I was in a daze the whole time.

I couldn't understand how it had come to this.

Even though I had decided to leave long ago.

Back home, I pulled the signed divorce papers from my bag.

I placed them on the table along with the medical record.

Then I found an iron box in the study.

Inside were twenty-seven years of our memories.

The building blocks I'd assembled for him in elementary school, the concert tickets he'd stayed up all night to buy in college, the vows he'd written on our wedding day, and all the love letters he'd written to me since childhood...

I took them out, one by one, and put them into the fire.

The flames devoured the vows where he promised to love me forever.

Devoured the wishes we'd made for the future in our youth.

Devoured all the lies about 'forever'.

I slipped off my wedding ring and placed it next to the stack of documents.

I put the organized USB drive into my bag and said softly,

"Ryan, I have a big gift for you too."