Chapter 7 — A Vacation for the Damaged

The hospital room’s sterile white walls felt like they were judging me. Three days of IV drips, whispered nurses, and doctors speaking in that careful tone people use when they’re not sure you’re strong enough for the truth. Three days of pretending I didn’t notice Leo pacing in the corner like a man trapped between guilt and obligation. I wasn’t sure which emotion terrified me more. When I finally woke without the world spinning, Leo was sitting beside my bed—too close, too attentive, like he was trying to memorize the shape of my breathing. “You scared me,” he said. He didn’t say for how long. He didn’t say why. He didn’t say whether he was scared of losing me… or scared of what losing me would make him look like. The silence hummed between us, awkward and loud. I could still see flashes of that blurred scene—Leo’s mouth on Barbara’s, her fingers curling around him like she owned the moment. Maybe it had been a hallucination. Maybe it hadn’t. With us, the line between truth and hurt was paper-thin. Leo cleared his throat, the way he always did before delivering something rehearsed. “I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly. “About us. About… everything.” My pulse quickened for a reason that had nothing to do with my condition. He leaned closer. “We never got a real honeymoon. Everything was rushed. Chaotic.” His jaw tightened, almost like he didn’t want to remember why. “I want a reset. Just you and me. Away from all of this.” I blinked. “A reset?” “A trip,” he said. “Miami. Sun. Ocean. Space to breathe. We could start over.” Start over. The words sounded like a promise dipped in desperation. Like something beautiful built on quicksand. I should have said no. I should have asked why now, why Miami, why the sudden effort. I should have asked him if guilt could really hold a marriage together. Instead, I felt the hospital walls closing in—the beeping monitors, the sterile air, the suffocating reminder that my body was as fragile as everything else in my life. “Okay,” I whispered. “Miami.” Relief washed over his face, and I hated how much I wanted that. How much I still ached for him, even when I wasn’t sure he ached for me. He brushed a strand of hair from my cheek, a gesture too tender for a man who had let so many shadows grow between us. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he didn’t. Or maybe some small part of me simply needed to believe he did.