PART 1
Marcus and I had been married for eleven years. I had spent every one of them sharing him with that hospital.
He was a gifted surgeon, and I was proud that my husband saved so many lives. But over the past year, I had started wrapping up his dinner before I even sat down to eat mine.
He missed Thanksgiving, our anniversary, and our daughter’s eighth birthday.
Sometimes he didn’t come home at all.
“We’re short-staffed, honey. Please don’t wait up.”
Whenever he finally crawled into bed, he looked so exhausted that I swallowed every complaint. Once, I woke to find him sitting on the edge of the mattress, his shoulders shaking.
“Marcus?”
He wiped his face before turning around.
“Rough night. Go back to sleep.”
So that Tuesday, after watching him leave with his hospital badge clipped to his pocket, I decided to surprise him.
I packed his favorite lunch, added a slice of apple pie, and tucked a note under the fork:
You don’t have to take care of everyone. Let me have a turn.
I drove to the hospital, imagining how happy Marcus would be to see me.
But the moment I arrived, something felt wrong.
At the nurses’ station, a woman I had known for years stopped smiling the moment she saw me.
“Is Marcus around?” I asked. “And please don’t warn him. He’ll tell me I shouldn’t have bothered.”
She glanced at the nurse beside her.
My smile faded.
“Did something happen to him? Where’s Marcus?”
Neither of them answered.
I was starting to get angry at how strangely they were behaving when I spotted Marcus’s colleague, David, approaching me.
His face was as white as a sheet.
He stopped in front of me.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” I said brightly. “Can you tell me where Marcus is?”
David searched my face.
Then, without warning, his eyes filled with tears.
“He hasn’t told you anything, has he?”
Part 2
My blood ran cold. The lunchbox in my hand suddenly felt heavy, pulling at my shoulder as I stared at David’s trembling lips.
“Told me what?” my voice rose, sharp and breathless. “David, what is going on? Is Marcus hurt? Did he collapse?”
David placed a firm, trembling hand on my arm and guided me away from the busy corridor into a private consultation room. He closed the door behind us, shutting out the rhythmic hum of hospital monitors and hurrying footsteps.
“Clara… Marcus isn’t working today,” David said softly, his voice thick with uncontained emotion. “He hasn’t been performing surgeries for six months.”
I stared at him, letting out a hollow, incredulous laugh. “That’s impossible. He leaves every morning with his scrubs. He stays overnight for emergency calls. He was crying on the edge of our bed last week because of a bad shift!”
“He was crying because he couldn’t bring himself to break your heart,” David whispered, pulling a thick medical file from a drawer on the side desk and sliding it toward me. “Six months ago, during a routine tremor assessment, Marcus was diagnosed with early-onset ALS. His fine motor skills in his hands began degrading rapidly.”
