My Husband Pretended to Forget Me for Seven Years

The world comes back in sharp, stinging fragments. The smell of antiseptic—sharper than the lemon cleaner I used on the penthouse floors. The rhythmic *beep-hiss* of a machine that isn't a heart monitor, but sounds suspiciously like a countdown.

I try to sit up, but my head feels like it’s been packed with wet concrete. A wave of nausea rolls through me, forcing me back against the pillows.

"Stay still, Aurelia."

The voice is calm, authoritative. Not a nurse.

I blink against the harsh fluorescent glare until a face swims into focus. A woman in a white coat, her eyes framed by severe glasses, stands at the foot of the bed. She doesn't have the pitying look people usually gave me when I told them about Carson. She looks like a mechanic assessing a totaled car.

"I'm Dr. Sarah Mitchell," she says. "You had a seizure at JFK. You're at New York-Presbyterian."

"Seizure?" The word feels thick on my tongue. "I need to leave. My flight..."

"You aren't flying anywhere." She steps closer, pulling a tablet from under her arm. She taps the screen and turns it toward me. A gray-scale image of a brain. My brain. There’s a white, cloudy mass blooming in the right temporal lobe, shaped like a nebula.

"It's a glioblastoma," Dr. Mitchell says. She doesn't sugarcoat it. I appreciate that. "It’s malignant, aggressive, and large. Judging by the size, it’s been growing for months, maybe longer. The pressure caused the seizure."

The silence in the room is heavy, suffocating.

"Am I going to die?" I ask. My voice sounds detached, like I’m asking about the weather.

"We need to operate immediately. A craniotomy to debulk the tumor. Then radiation, chemotherapy. But right now, survival is the only metric we're looking at."

A laugh bubbles up in my throat, dry and jagged. It hurts my chest.

"What's funny?" Dr. Mitchell asks, her brow furrowing.

"Seven years," I whisper, closing my eyes. "I spent seven years spoon-feeding a healthy man, wiping his mouth, mourning his mind while he laughed at me behind my back. I wasted my healthy years nursing a lie. And now..." Tears finally leak from the corners of my eyes, hot and stinging. "Now that I'm finally free, I'm the one who's dying."

The door bursts open before Dr. Mitchell can respond.

"Aurelia!"

My mother, Margaret, rushes in, her coat still buttoned wrong, her gray hair windblown. My brother, David, is right behind her, looking like he wants to punch a hole in the wall.

"Oh, my baby," Mom sobs, collapsing into the chair beside the bed and gripping my hand. Her palms are warm, grounding. "We came as soon as the hospital called. What happened?"

I look at David. He’s scanning the room, his jaw tight. "Where is he? Where’s Carson? Does he even know?"

The name acts like a summoning spell, pulling the bile up my throat.

"He's not coming," I say. The words are quiet, but they silence the room.

David steps forward, his hands balling into fists. "What do you mean? He’s your husband. I’m calling him."

"Don't." I struggle to push myself up, ignoring the spinning room. "David, listen to me. He isn't sick."

My brother freezes, phone halfway to his ear. "What?"

"He never was," I say, the truth spilling out like poison I can't hold anymore. "It was an act. For seven years. He was waiting for Veronica Lewis to come back from Paris. I walked in on them. He was drinking wine. Laughing. He called me a 'hired stranger.'"

The silence that follows is different from the medical silence. This is the silence of a bomb having just gone off.

David’s face turns a terrifying shade of red. "I’m going to kill him." He spins toward the door. "I am going to go to that penthouse and I am going to kill him with my bare hands."

"David, no!" Mom’s voice cracks like a whip. She stands up, blocking his path. She’s a foot shorter than him, but in this moment, she looks like a giant. "Look at your sister. Look at her!"

David stops, his chest heaving, his eyes wild with rage. He looks at me—pale, bald head wrapped in bandages I hadn’t noticed until now, hooked up to IVs.

"She has a brain tumor, David," Mom says, her voice trembling but steel-hard. "She needs surgery. She needs us. If you go to jail for murder tonight, who helps her?"

David deflates, the fight draining out of him as he slumps against the wall, burying his face in his hands.

"He doesn't get to know where I am," I tell them. "Promise me. He thinks I'm just... gone. Let him think that."

"He won't know a thing," David vows, his voice muffled by his hands.

My phone buzzes on the bedside table. The screen lights up with a text notification.

*Carson.*

I stare at the name. My thumb hovers over the screen, and I open the message.

**Where the hell is dinner? Stop being dramatic and come home. The apartment is a mess.**

No confusion. No "Who are you?" Just the arrogance of a man who thinks he owns me.

I can picture him perfectly. He’s probably pacing the living room, annoyed that his routine is disrupted. He’s dropped the shuffle, the vacant stare. He’s striding around with that confident gait I haven't seen since our wedding day. Veronica is likely there, lounging on the sofa, telling him to let me go, that I’m nothing.

He’s enjoying his freedom. He thinks he’s won.

But I know the penthouse. I know how the silence settles in the corners when the sun goes down. The silence I filled with music, with chatter, with life. Now, it will just be empty. He wanted the apartment to himself? He has it.

I hand the phone to David. "Block him."

David takes the phone, reads the message, and his jaw tightens again. But he nods. He taps the screen a few times, then slides the phone into his pocket.

"Done," David says.

I lean back against the pillows, the exhaustion pulling me under. The pain in my head is a constant throb, a reminder of the battle to come. I have to fight a tumor. I have to fight for my life. I don't have the energy to fight for a man who never existed.

"Okay," I whisper, closing my eyes as Dr. Mitchell steps back to the bedside to prep my IV. "Let's cut it out. All of it."