“I never said you were the villain.”
Julie grunts. “I’m not sure our families would agree.”
“Families? You mean my family.”
“Your family. My family. Our mutual friends. People here at the hospital. Don’t act like you don’t see it. Perfect Elijah abandoned by his awful wife. The looks. The whispers. They don’t go unnoticed by me. And that’s fine. I made a very conscious decision to walk away knowing this would happen. But it’s been a year. Haven’t I served my time?”
I can’t answer that question. I just … can’t. One night we were making love with so much intensity I felt like a damn virgin, falling in love with this woman all over again. It felt pivotal. Something so out of our ordinary that I knew things would be different between us. But my different was not even on the same planet as her different. Before I could suggest we ask her parents to watch Roman so we could get away, maybe renew our wedding vows, and work on giving Roman a brother or sister … BOOM!
“I need out, Eli.”
Need.
Not want. NEED.
Julie needed out of our marriage. And when she broke down crying, I actually felt sorry for her. She sounded like a victim pinned beneath an overturned car. Begging me to help her.
“What do you want me to do, Jules?”
Anything.
I wanted to do whatever she needed. All I could focus on was helping her out of her pain. Lifting that proverbial car from her so she could breathe … so she’d stop crying. It was always instinctual to take away her pain.
“I need you to let me go.”
She wanted me to let go of fifteen years of marriage, just like that. Live with joint custody for the next sixteen years. Untangle my life from hers. Julie wanted me to stop breathing. She’d been so adamant about my lack of understanding her motives, her feelings. But I just couldn’t understand why you’d work so hard to have everything you ever wanted and then just … let it go. Because that’s what I believe. The life we had was everything. How do you let go of everything?
Taking two slow steps, I pick up the framed photo from her desk. Same frame. Different picture. It used to be a photo of our family at Disney World. It’s been replaced with a photo of Roman at the zoo with Julie. “You know the patients who survive the unimaginable? The ones who, by all rights, should be dead? And yet … they hang on. As doctors we have no explanation for the heart that’s still beating in a body that’s broken beyond repair. We remove our hero cape and toss it aside because we’re not worthy of taking credit for something that’s clearly greater than our most honed skill. It’s the fight. The patient fights for something they refuse to lose, even when to everyone else it’s over.”
I return the photo to her desk and continue. “I never saw you fight. You just … let go. And the only explanation you’ve ever given me is ‘I just can’t explain it. You won’t understand, and it won’t change anything.’”
“Eli …” She bows her head, closing her eyes.
“If you could give me something … the tiniest of clues … it would profoundly change my life.” Emotion hits me in the form of desperation. I refuse to blink and let her see me cry again, but fuck … it still hurts.
Julie opens her eyes but keeps her chin tipped to her chest. She won’t even look at me. “I fell out of love.”
“With me …” I whisper.
She slowly shakes her head while lifting her own teary gaze to meet mine. “With myself. I fell out of love with the woman I was with you. And to this day, I still can’t explain it because the words sound so selfish and utterly ridiculous in my own head. I just wanted to be someone different. And I couldn’t do it when I felt anchored to you. And as much as I wanted to just forge ahead, I felt this ticking clock counting down the hours of my life. And every day felt like a missed opportunity to honor myself by living the life I wanted to live.”
“The hair. The tattoos. The new clothes. The…” I glance at her chest “…the implants …” I shake my head. “Did you think I wouldn’t be okay with them?”
“Don’t do this …” she whispers.
“Do what? I don’t understand why you can’t tell me—”
“Because it’s embarrassing!” She presses the heels of her hands to her head before running her fingers through her red hair. “I wanted a new start. A rebirth. I felt like a butterfly dying to emerge from my cocoon, and you were the cocoon. I didn’t want to become something in your eyes. I wanted to simply be someone in the eyes of a man who didn’t watch me stumble through my awkward teen years. Who didn’t have a firsthand account of how much I hated sex for months after I lost my virginity because I didn’t have the confidence to be sexy and adventurous. I want a man who didn’t see me break down a million times during medical school. It’s like you were the contractor who built me. But I don’t want to be with someone who knows every single part of me. I want to be exciting and new. I want to have a man look at me with curiosity and wonder. I want to keep a part of me for myself. An unsolvable mystery, not a forgone conclusion.”