My wife, Charlene Everett, and I used to work in the same hospital. I was known for being a kind doctor as well as a passionate teacher, while she was known for being a smart, fiery, and protective professional.

All was well for the both of us until Charlene started caring about a clumsy trainee doctor called Zachary Wordsworth. I underestimated their relationship until the day he made a grave medical error, and she threw me to the wolves to protect him from his own mistakes.

Indeed, Zachary cut a patient's womb out of her body mistakenly. The patient committed suicide not long after finding out. To avoid him being disciplined by the hospital, Charlene had the nurse in charge modify the records to have me as the surgery’s lead doctor.

The patient’s family thought I was the one at fault and sued me.

Everyone cursed me for being an unqualified doctor.

Netizens made a huge ruckus online and started pressuring the hospital director to fire me.

Helpless and in pain, I confronted Charlene, but she casually said, “Zach can’t handle the responsibility of failing the surgery. You’re more experienced, so you’ll be able to weather this storm.”

When I later stumbled upon Charlene tangled up with Zachary, I could only let out a bitter laugh.

I thus decided it was time for me to stop being kind.

Charlene Everett wasted no time dismissing my hurt feelings.

“You really want a divorce, Isaac? We have a one-month cooling-off period before we can confirm it; you may change your mind after calming down a little bit. You’re just helping Zachary avoid the bad press he can’t afford to take, unlike you. Everyone in the hospital knows the actual truth. Why can’t that be enough for you?”

We were walking out of the courthouse after applying for a divorce, but she kept acting unbothered.

“You’re a department head at this hospital and a professor in your own right. How can you stand as one of the pillars of this hospital if you can’t handle a few rumors?”

She simply ignored the fatigue I was under after getting dragged into a medical malpractice lawsuit. Worse than that, she cared not for my broken heart.

“I won’t change my mind, don’t worry,” I said as I held onto the newly signed divorce papers. “We won’t be seeing each other again once this cooling-off period is over.”

Saying these words somehow made me feel more relaxed.

Charlene frowned. For a moment, she looked like she had more to say to me, but then, her phone suddenly rang.

It was, of course, none other than Zachary Wordsworth, and he was sounding very tense.

“Help me, Charlie! I think I gave my patient the wrong dose of medication. His family is here now. Will they do to me what they did to Isaac?”

Charlene immediately reassured him, “Don’t worry, Zach. Let me handle this. Just say that you put in the dose Isaac told you to.”

“Isaac already took the fall for me last time. Won’t he hate me if he has to do it again?”

Charlene looked over at me. Whatever softness her expression held vanished in a second.

“He’s older, so he should give newbies like you the space to make mistakes and learn from them. After what happened last time, he’s also gotten more experience on how to deal with such things.”

I grabbed Charlene’s hand and forced out with difficulty, “Charlene, you’re allowing Zachary to mishandle lives just so he can have a nicer-looking resume. Doctors are supposed to be benevolent and kind, but you seem to have lost all heart and sense!”

On the other end of the line, Zachary started crying piteously. His self-deprecating apologies proved to be gratingly annoying in my ears.

Charlene spoke to him in a very soft voice before turning back to me with a glare.

“That was just an accident! Zach needs opportunities to learn. You’ve been through all of this before. Can’t you be a bit more sympathetic?”

“I’m not sympathetic?”

That was quite the laughable idea. It had taken me more than a decade to go from a trainee resident to one of the top attending physicians in my department! It took time and sweat to build my reputation! The papers used to call me a medical genius. My name was sullied now, stuck to the huge mistake that another man had made during a minor surgery.

Ever since Zachary had started working at the hospital, he had been prescribing patients the wrong medication and other things like that. However, Charlene put my name as the doctor in charge and blamed me for not double-checking his work.

Whenever Zachary overslept and missed out on doing rounds, Charlene would tell the others that I had forced him to take my overnight shifts, causing him to oversleep in the first place.

No matter what Zachary did wrong, Charlene would defend him and push all the blame on me.

“I’ve taken the blame for him once and had to go through a medical malpractice suit for him. I won’t do it again.”

Charlene only scoffed before calling the nurse manning the nurses’ station.

“Yes, put my husband’s name in as the prescribing doctor. His reputation’s shot anyway. The hospital won’t think twice about getting rid of him.”

Charlene did not give me a chance to speak out and swiftly hung up.

“You’d better clean up your act, Isaac. No one else at the hospital will defend you but me. I know you’ll be crawling back to me in a month, so you’d better not wear away whatever patience I still have for you now.”

After leaving Charlene, I went and called a familiar number.

“I’ve gotten a divorce. You told me I could further my studies overseas. Is that offer still on the table?”

A pleased, feminine voice came through the line. “Of course! As long as you’re willing to travel, I can put in your application! You need to clear things up at the hospital first, though.”

I let out a soft sigh as I stared at the resignation letter in my hand.

Upon hearing about my decision, the director of the hospital shot me a pained look.

“Isaac, we all know that this mistake is not yours. I know very well who did that surgery. I’m only suspending your employment. You can come back once the heat is off.”

I shook my head and said firmly, “Sir, I know the hospital is facing difficulties because of this. It will be better for everyone if I resign.”

In the end, he finally agreed.

When I left the office, Charlene was bringing Zachary to see the hospital director. She frowned after seeing me.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you know that your reputation’s very bad right now?”

Just as she said this, a few members of the victim’s family appeared to surround me.

A man yelled, “You murderer! Give me back my wife!”

His fist was already raised, and he threw it toward me. I could not react in time to avoid the punch and ended up falling on the floor with a bloody mouth. I looked up and saw that Charlene had instinctively thrown her arms around Zachary to shield him in her embrace.

“Don’t be scared. I’m here. No one will hurt you!”

I suddenly recalled a scene from the past. It had happened not long after Charlene and I had started working at this hospital. A patient had driven to the hospital with mad thoughts because he had not been assigned to the specialist he thought he needed.

I happened to be a resident under that specialist, and after having wrecked the nurses’ station, that man had come at me with a knife. At that time, Charlene had also been quick to react. She had pulled me into a similar embrace and taken the three stabs that were meant for me. Thankfully, the knife had not hit anything vital, but it left her with some lingering pain, sometimes triggered by rainy days.

“Hubby, if this had happened to you, it would have hurt me more than these three stabs.”

That instinctive protectiveness was presently not directed at me.

The victim’s husband vented all of his anger on me. I wanted to defend myself, but I could not bear to do it when I saw the pain and despair on his face.

It was only after he got tired from hitting me and was pulled away by the rest of his sobbing family that I could try to get back up. Charlene looked at how bloodied and wounded I was, and a hint of guilt flashed in her eyes. She came forward to help me stand.

“I’ll disinfect and bandage your wounds. With how much of a mess things are online, you’d better stay away from the hospital. Let me handle whatever needs handling.”

“There’s no need. I can deal with it myself.”

Before I could finish speaking, Zachary called out to Charlene with a panicked voice.

“What will I do if you both leave, Charlie? I get so terrified every time I see a medical dispute! I’ll have to see my therapist after work again.”

Charlene immediately let go of me to run back to Zachary.

She said to me, “Alright, you should get a nurse to help you, Isaac. Zach’s not very brave, and he won’t be able to deal with this without seeing a therapist. I’ll take him there.”

My injuries hurt so much that I could barely stand up straight, but I laughed. Yes, I watched her lead Zachary away and could not help but laugh. I laughed at myself for still having any sort of faith in Charlene as well as for not pushing her away immediately when she came to help me.

I did not wait for the cooling-off period to end to move out of the home I shared with Charlene. However, some days after that, it occurred to me that I had left my passport there. When I went back for it, I could not get the door to open. The code had apparently been changed.

I tried our wedding date, my birthday, and more, but the door still would not open. I had no choice but to call Charlene.

She hemmed and hawed. “Zach came to stay over a few days ago. He kept forgetting the code, so I changed it to his birthday.”

I looked at the electronic door lock and was assaulted by the memory of us buying this flat. It had been meant for our married life. She had personally set our wedding date as the door code.

She had been a vision of pure love at that moment. In that instant, though, her smile shone like a mockery in my mind.

Charlene rushed over to open the door for me. Her gaze held some guilt as she said, “Sorry, hubby. Zach’s been in a poor mood lately. I’ve been so busy spending time with him that I’ve neglected you. He has a surgery planned, and I’m scared that he might make the same mistake as last time. Could you do the surgery for him? I swear that I’ll take some time off after the surgery so that we can go on a trip. Didn’t you say you wanted to go to Valdives?”

I had seen Zachary’s posts on social media. Charlene had brought him overseas these past two weeks to relax.

Ha.

This meant that Charlene had not even realized that I had moved out.

I picked up my passport before turning back to her. “We’re done, Charlene. Don’t you think I’ve done enough? I won’t do anything for him ever again.”

To get me to help Zachary, Charlene spent the next few days trying to butter me up. That surgery could help Zachary pass his residency program, so Charlene had to make sure that everything was settled.

For him, Charlene delayed the patient’s surgery several times.

I had been in charge of this patient ever since he was admitted. From what I had heard, his condition was getting worse. I could not help but feel pained because of this. Plus, the hospital director, Dr. Jeffrey Moore, kept begging me to help, so I caved in and went to the hospital.

However, I refused to be the lead surgeon. I would only act as a mentor, giving advice and guidance.

In the operating room, Zachary arrived all scrubbed up and stared at me in defiance.

“You used to be a renowned doctor, a professor! But now you don’t even have the credentials to do one measly surgery. I have to do it as a resident. Don’t you think it’s funny?”

I went through the patient’s chart meticulously before retorting, “I’m only here because this patient needs me. I’m not here for you.”

Zachary snickered. He took up a scalpel and started the surgery. Halfway through it, he paused his hands and looked at me.

“I think I’ll be able to ruin you completely this time, Isaac. Charlie will not want you back. I’ll make sure of it.”

I studied the patient’s status and said menacingly, “I don’t want to argue with you about this drivel. The patient is counting on us to survive. Continue the surgery now!”

What I did not expect was for Zachary to swipe the scalpel across the patient’s lungs a couple of times. The first cut dug in very deeply.

“I’m not a good person, Isaac!”

The patient already had lung problems, and with those few cuts, he started bleeding profusely. All the machines monitoring his condition began to beep insistently. I was immediately thrown into a panic. I snatched the scalpel from Zachary and did my best to save the patient.

But the patient died on the surgery table because of Zachary’s cuts.

When I walked out of the operating room and gave the patient’s family the news, I was slapped.

“How could a murderer like you be my father’s surgeon? Dr. Everett said you stole this surgery from the doctor to try and get your job back. You killed my father!”

My ears rang as I saw Zachary hiding and crying in Charlene’s embrace.

“He insisted on doing the surgery, Charlie. He said he wanted to undo his wrongs, but he cut words into the patient’s organs! He killed the patient!”

Charlene sent me a cold glare and said, “Get on your knees and apologize to the patient’s family!”

I did my best to defend myself with tears falling from my eyes. “It wasn’t me! Zachary was this patient’s surgeon! I grabbed the scalpel because he cut the patient. I was trying to save the patient!”

“Don’t the nurses have the records for this surgery? Let’s check it and find out!”

The nurse brought out her records, but they shockingly reported that I had stolen the scalpel from Zachary and caused the surgery to fail.

Charlene stepped in front of me and slapped me without hesitation.

“Why would Zach frame you for this? Isaac, your reputation is already dead. Who would believe you? Apologize to the patient’s family!”

When I saw the patient’s family members crying helplessly, I could not say a word to explain myself.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

The patient’s family members threw themselves at me. Punching, kicking, and even spitting on me.

Once they were done venting their anger, Charlene eyed me with no pity.

“Where are your ethics, Isaac? You can deal with the compensation on your own. We’re done! We will meet at the courthouse once the cooling-off period is over!”

Charlene had, once again, tampered with evidence to help Zachary. I was at fault once more and became the person everyone cursed.

I paid the compensation money to the patient’s family out of guilt.

Days later, my and Charlene’s divorce could be officialized. I was finally free to proceed with my plans to study overseas. I called the friend I had met in medical school just before getting on the plane.

“Has everything been settled over there? Then you can let me handle the rest.”