Three years of marriage, and I thought Cliff was just cold by nature.

Then the one he never got over came back, and we were both in a car accident.

He chose her without a second's hesitation and left me in a car about to explode.

I dragged myself out on a broken leg and heard him tell the paramedic：“Save her first. She's afraid of pain.”

Later, when I asked for a divorce, he desperately begged me to forgive him……

……

When the airbag deployed, I heard my ribs crack.

Pain tore out from my chest into every limb, and blood ran from my forehead and blurred my left eye shut.

I was pinned in the driver's seat. The steering wheel dug into my abdomen, the pressure so tight I nearly threw up.

My phone had flown off its mount and landed on the passenger-side floor mat. The screen was still lit, the call display reading “Cliff Fox”, the timer frozen at four minutes and seventeen seconds.

Four minutes and seventeen seconds ago, I'd asked him if he was coming home for dinner.

He said：“Busy today.”

Then hung up.

I hadn't even gotten the chance to tell him I was pregnant.

Six weeks. The ultrasound report was still tucked in the glove compartment. I'd planned to surprise him with it in person today.

Now I was pinned inside twisted metal, without the strength to even look down at that ultrasound report.

The crash came out of nowhere. I was driving normally on the service road when a truck ran the red light and T-boned me. My car crumpled like a soda can.

Through the shattered window, I could see a black Mercedes stopped in the opposite lane.

Cliff's car.

His front end had hit the guardrail, and the passenger door was dented inward. He was already climbing out of the driver's side, moving fast, not even bothering to close his door behind him.

He ran toward the passenger side.

Someone was sitting there. I saw a pair of slender legs extend from the open door, feet in off-white heels.

Cliff bent down and lifted her out.

The woman had her arms around his neck, face pressed into his shoulder, long chestnut curls hanging down.

I saw her face.

Phyllis Henson.

She was back. I hadn't known. Cliff never told me.

But I wasn't the least bit surprised.

He carried Phyllis to the curb and set her down, then crouched to check her shin. His hands were so careful, like he was handling something that might shatter. She said something to him with her head lowered, and he reached up and smoothed her hair.

Seven years of knowing Cliff. Three years of being his wife. I had never once seen him that gentle.

I lay slumped against the steering wheel, blood dripping onto my knees, and almost laughed.

That was when smoke started pouring from my car.

A sharp, acrid burning smell rolled out from under the hood, and through the gaps I could see the orange glow of open flame.

People around me were yelling “Get out”“The car's on fire”, someone tried to wrench my door open, but the frame was too warped. It wouldn't budge.

I turned to look toward Cliff.

His back was to me.

Phyllis was leaning against his chest, and he seemed to be on the phone, one hand holding the cell to his ear, the other never leaving her shoulder.

The smoke inside the car was getting thicker.

I kicked the door with everything I had. Nothing. The broken ribs turned every breath into a knife between my lungs. I clenched my teeth and threw my shoulder into the door. Once. Twice. Three times.

On the third hit, it gave.

The instant I fell out of the car, a dull boom erupted behind me. The windows blew apart and flames shot out from under the hood.

I lay facedown on the pavement and looked back.

The seat where I'd been sitting was already swallowed by fire.

Someone ran over and hauled me up, dragged me to the side of the road. I heard shouting“Call an ambulance”—someone asking if anyone else was in the car. I said no.

I lay on the ground, staring up at the washed-out gray sky, and realized I couldn't feel the pain anymore.

Just the cold.

I turned my head and saw Cliff still crouched beside Phyllis. He'd taken off his jacket and draped it over her. The jacket I'd given him last month for his birthday.

I closed my eyes.

The ambulance came.

When the paramedics lifted me onto the stretcher, I heard quick footsteps approaching.

“There's another injured person here.”

Cliff's voice.

He stood beside the stretcher and glanced down at me. I opened my eyes and met his gaze. His eyes stayed on my face for one second, then moved away.

“Treat her first,” he said, pointing toward Phyllis. Not a crack in his voice. “Her injuries are worse.”

Phyllis had a scrape on her leg.

My leg was broken. Three ribs were broken. Something inside my abdomen was bleeding. The gash on my forehead was still pouring blood.

I looked at him. He wouldn't look back.

The paramedic said, “This woman is in critical condition. We need to get her in now——”

“She's my wife,” Cliff cut him off, his tone completely flat. “I said treat her first.”

The person he meant was Phyllis.

The whole scene suddenly felt absurd.

My husband was standing right in front of me, not a scratch on him. Twenty meters away, the one he never got over had a scrape on her shin—and he was demanding the paramedics treat her first. Leaving me——his wife, three broken ribs, bleeding internally, skull split open——on the asphalt.

He didn't even crouch down to ask if I was okay.

The paramedic ignored him and pushed my stretcher toward the ambulance. The moment they lifted me in, I heard Phyllis call out from somewhere behind us“Cliff”——thin, teary.

Cliff turned and walked away.

The ambulance doors closed.

I lay inside, staring at the white ceiling, and one detail surfaced.

From the moment of the crash to the moment he left, Cliff never once said my name.

Never even looked at me a second time.

The surgery took six hours.

They removed my spleen—it had ruptured. Three ribs fractured, one of them driven into my lung; they put in a chest tube to drain the cavity. My left tibia was broken, pinned together with a steel plate. Fourteen stitches across my forehead.

When I woke up, the room was quiet.

The window was dark. Only the heart monitor beeped its steady rhythm. I looked down at my stomach, wrapped in gauze, and felt a dull ache low in my abdomen.

When the nurse came in to change my dressing, I asked.

“The baby……is the baby still there?”

Her hands went still for a moment.

She looked at me with that kind of sympathy I knew too well.

“You didn't know?”

“No.”

“During surgery, they found a uterine rupture. The bleeding was severe, and we……” She took a breath. “We performed a hysterectomy. The baby didn't survive either.”

I stared at the ceiling.

“Okay.”

The nurse glanced back at me several times on her way out. She probably thought I was too calm. I wasn't calm. I just hadn't caught up yet. My brain was shielding itself, queuing everything for later so I wouldn't have to feel it all at once.

It caught up the next morning.

The nurse came to change the drainage bottle and pulled back the blanket. I saw the scar running down my belly—long, from my pubic bone all the way to my navel, closed with neat even stitches, but so long.

I reached down and touched it.

The skin beneath the gauze was numb. Nothing there at all.

I kept thinking about yesterday morning—standing in front of the bathroom mirror, holding that ultrasound report. A tiny dot on the printout. The doctor had said it was a gestational sac, about six weeks along.

I'd smiled at my reflection, thinking I would tell Cliff that evening.

How would he react?

I spent a long time trying to picture it and still couldn't decide whether he'd smile or just go blank. Three years of marriage, and he had never shown me a single strong emotion. I'd told myself that was simply who he was. Reserved. Restrained. Not the type for pretty words.

I'd told myself that what we had might lack passion, but at least it had feeling.

I was wrong.

He wasn't without feeling. He'd just saved all of it for someone else.

On the third day in the hospital, Cliff came.

He pushed open the door wearing a black overcoat, a fruit basket in one hand. His color was bad, dark shadows bruising the skin beneath his eyes, like he hadn't slept properly in days.

He set the basket on the nightstand, pulled a chair to the bedside, and sat down.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“The doctor said the surgery went well.”

“Mm.”

Silence.

He looked out the window. I looked at the ceiling.

“That day……” He trailed off before he really started.

I waited for him to go on.

“Phyllis had just flown back. I was giving her a ride from the airport. I didn't expect anything to happen.”

“Mm.”

“The truck driver was fully at fault. Insurance will cover it.”

“Mm.”

Another stretch of silence.

“Your leg. The doctor says if it heals well, it won't affect your walking.”

“Mm.”

He finally turned to look at me, a crease forming between his brows.

“Can you say something other than 'mm'?”

I turned my head toward him.

“What do you want me to say?”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

I looked at him and felt suddenly exhausted. Not a body kind of tired—the kind that leaks out from somewhere deep in your bones, the kind no amount of rest will ever fix.

“Cliff,” I said. “Why didn't you save me first that day?”

His expression shifted. Briefly, but I caught it.

“It was chaotic. I——”

“She had a scrape.”

“I didn't know that at the time.”

“You didn't know? You crouched in front of her for five minutes. And you didn't know it was just a scrape?”

He went quiet.

“Or maybe,” I said slowly, “you didn't care how badly I was hurt? You just instinctively chose to save her first?”

“No.”

“Then tell me why.”

He was silent for a long time.

Long enough that I thought he wasn't going to answer.

“She's afraid of pain,” he said.

I stared at him.

“She's been that way since we were kids. A single shot could make her cry for half the day. When I saw the blood on her leg, my first reaction was——”

“Your first reaction was to save her. Because she's afraid of pain.”

I finished the sentence for him.

He didn't deny it.

I laughed.

Laughed until the tears slid from the corners of my eyes and soaked into the pillow.

“I'm not afraid of pain, right?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“What I meant was……” He pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Everything was happening at once. I couldn't—I admit my first reaction was to go to her. But that wasn't because……”

“Because what? Because you love her?”

“Christine.”

“Because you never got over her?”

“Enough.”

“Because you only married me because she left the country, and you couldn't find anyone better?”