Chapter 2

The next twenty-four hours were a blur of sterile white rooms and the dull, persistent throb in my leg. I called Olivia from the emergency room. No answer. I called her again from the hospital bed after they' d set the bone in a temporary cast. It went straight to voicemail. I left a message.

"Olivia, it's me. They're saying I need surgery on my leg. A plate and screws. I... I need you to sign the consent forms. Please, just call me back."

I tried her a dozen more times. Each unanswered call felt like a fresh twist of the knife. I was alone, broken, and the woman who had promised to be there in sickness and in health was gone. Finally, on the thirteenth try, she picked up. Her voice wasn't worried or apologetic. It was irritated.

"What, Ethan? I'm busy."

"Busy? Olivia, I'm in the hospital. I broke my leg. The doctor said I need surgery tomorrow morning."

There was a huff of exasperated breath on the other end of the line. "Oh my god, can't you handle anything yourself? I'm dealing with a real crisis here. Liam had a panic attack because of you. He's completely overwhelmed. I have to take care of him."

The words struck me silent. A real crisis. My shattered bone was an inconvenience. Her concern was a resource she had already allocated elsewhere.

"Olivia," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "I need you to come here. I can't sign my own consent forms, they gave me strong painkillers. They need my next of kin. My fiancée."

"I can't!" she snapped, and I could hear Liam's voice whining in the background. "I told you, I'm overwhelmed! Just get a nurse to do it or something. I have to go."

The line went dead. She hung up on me. I stared at the phone in my hand, the screen dark, reflecting my own pale, shocked face. It was over. That single, callous click was more final than any argument, more definitive than any breakup speech. I was nothing to her.

I accepted the reality of it with a strange, hollow calm. A sigh escaped my lips, a sound of utter defeat. It wasn't a choice anymore; it was just a fact. I was alone.

A nurse came in a little while later, a kind-faced woman with tired eyes. "Mr. Miller? Your fiancée, Olivia, she was here earlier, you know. Right after you were admitted."

I looked at her, confused. "She was?"

"Oh yes," the nurse said, fluffing my pillow. "She was very frantic. Kept asking the doctors about the other gentleman, the one who came in with her. Liam, I think his name was. She was so worried about his heart palpitations. It's nice to see someone so devoted."

The irony was so bitter it almost made me laugh. Devoted. Olivia was devoted, just not to me. The world had seen her concern for Liam and mistaken it for love for her fiancé. Everyone had been watching their show, and I was the only one who didn't know I was just a prop.

I looked at the nurse, the hollow feeling inside me hardening into something else. Resolve. "I don't need my fiancée," I said, my voice clear and steady. "I'll sign the forms myself. Just give them to me."

The nurse looked hesitant. "But sir, the medication-"

"I'm an astrophysicist," I cut her off, a spark of my old self returning. "I can handle a few calculations. I'm lucid enough to understand the risks of surgery. Please, just bring me the paperwork."

She finally relented. I signed my name on the dotted line, my hand shaking only slightly. It felt like the first decision I had truly made for myself in a decade.

Later that night, unable to sleep through the pain, I mindlessly scrolled through my phone. And then I saw it. A new post on Olivia's social media. It was a picture of her, sitting by a hospital bed, holding a man's hand. The man in the bed was Liam, looking pale but smirking for the camera.

The caption she wrote destroyed the last shred of hope I didn't even know I was holding onto. "Taking care of my brave soldier. He gets so stressed, but he's the strongest man I know. ❤️"

She was doting on him. Publicly. She was sitting in a hospital, broadcasting her affection for the man who had assaulted me, while I lay in a different hospital across town, completely and utterly alone, with a leg he had broken. The betrayal was so absolute, so brazen, it almost didn't feel real. It was a photograph of my own personal hell, and she had posted it for the world to see, completely oblivious, or perhaps completely indifferent, to my pain.