After Seven Years, I Destroyed My Cheating Ex and His Mistress

I kept vigil at her bedside, gripping her wrinkled hand, tears falling silently onto the sheets.

Grandma, you have to pull through. You're all I have left.

I prayed in silence.

If she would just wake up, I'd give up everything else. Phil, the money he'd swindled, the love I'd wasted on him. None of it mattered.

By eight that evening, her condition had stabilized slightly.

I got up and headed to the hospital cafeteria to buy some soft food, something she could eat when she woke. But when I hurried back with the thermos container, I saw Clarissa slipping into the room while I was gone.

She stood at Grandma's bedside, leaning down, her lips pressed close to Grandma's ear, whispering something I couldn't hear.

The next second, Grandma's body seized violently. The monitors beside her bed screamed to life, red warning lights flashing in a frenzy.

I charged across the room and shoved Clarissa away.

"What are you doing?!"

Clarissa stumbled back, eyes wide with feigned panic.

"I was just telling Grandma some good news."

Her voice turned sweet. Sickly sweet.

"I told her I'm carrying Phil's baby."

"I have no idea why she reacted like this!"

I whipped around toward the bed.

Tears streamed from the corners of Grandma's eyes. Her throat rattled, a horrible gurgling sound, as if she were trying to speak but couldn't force out a single word.

On the monitor, her heart rate plummeted. Blood pressure crashed into the danger zone.

I screamed, slamming the call button over and over.

"Doctor! Nurse!"

"Somebody help! Please, somebody save my grandma!"

Grandma's pupils were going glassy, unfocused. Something in me snapped. I lunged at Clarissa, both hands locking around her throat.

"I'll kill you!"

Clarissa's eyes rolled back. Her hands clawed weakly at my arms.

"Let... let go..."

That was when Phil appeared in the doorway, a fruit basket in his hand.

"Serena, are you insane?!"

He roared, rushed in, and wrenched me off her. He caught Clarissa as she crumpled to the floor, pulling her into his arms.

"Are you okay? Is the baby hurt?"

Clarissa clutched her stomach, moaning.

"Phil, my stomach hurts so bad..."

"What if something happened to our baby..."

The color drained from his face. He scooped her up and bolted out of the room.

"Doctor!"

"Save my wife and baby!"

I turned back to the bed.

Grandma's chest had gone still.

The monitor flatlined. A single, unbroken tone filled the room.

Doctors and nurses rushed in, shouldering me aside. They began emergency resuscitation. The defibrillator fired once, twice, again, jolting Grandma's frail body. But nothing brought her back.

Half an hour later.

The doctor set down the paddles. Slowly, he pulled the white sheet up over Grandma's face.

"The patient shows no vital signs."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

I stared at him.

Sorry for my loss? How was I supposed to bear this loss?

She was the only family I had left.

I walked to her bedside, one step at a time, and sank to my knees.

The grief was so total, so absolute, that I couldn't cry. Not a single tear would come.

I knelt there for three hours.

Only when my legs had gone completely numb did I grip the edge of the bed and pull myself up.

I called the funeral home and arranged the cremation that same night.

The moment the furnace door closed, I thought I saw Grandma smiling at me. She was telling me to live well, to stop wasting tears on people who didn't deserve them.

It was four in the morning when I walked out of the funeral home, cradling the urn in my arms.

I pulled out my phone. The screen was clean. Empty.

No missed calls from Phil. No messages. Nothing.

He was probably at Clarissa's bedside right now, hovering over her, protecting their baby with every ounce of care he'd never given my grandmother.

I put the phone away and took a cab back to the place that used to be called home.

The door swung open to a house full of us. Every surface held some trace of the life Phil and I had built together. The wedding portrait on the wall. The matching slippers by the entryway. The pair of custom mugs sitting side by side on the coffee table.

How ironic.

I packed a few things quickly, then set my grandmother's death certificate on the table.

Before I left, I took one last look around. Then I shut the door without mercy.

The airport terminal hummed with the steady flow of travelers.

I watched planes lift off through the window, and felt something I hadn't expected: calm. A strange, hollow calm, settled deep in my chest.

The boarding announcement crackled over the speakers.

I stood, tightened my arms around the urn, and walked toward the gate without looking back.

Goodbye, city that took everything from me.

Goodbye, Phil.