The Love I Climbed Out Of

On the third day after donating a kidney to me, Evan Whitmore kissed the nurse making her rounds right in front of me. I lay frozen in my hospital bed, tears spilling down my face. “Crying already?” After the nurse left, he sighed helplessly. “I wasn’t planning to hide it from you.” “You just never noticed.” He opened the photo album on his phone and handed it to me. The latest picture had been taken ten minutes earlier, while I was in the bathroom vomiting until I could barely stand. He and the young nurse had been tangled together on my hospital bed. My teeth chattered. I forced the words out of my throat. “If you don’t love me anymore… why did you donate a kidney to save me?” His lips curved slightly. As if I’d told a joke. “Claire, we’ve been married ten years. What does love have to do with anything?” His kidney was perfectly healthy inside me, yet it felt as though it were feeding on my flesh and blood. He casually wiped a smear of lipstick from his mouth. His gaze passed over me and settled on the nurse outside the door. “She’s young. She’s sensitive about being called the other woman.” “Just pretend you don’t know. Don’t embarrass her.” The album titled “Caregiving Journal” contained more than nine hundred pictures. My numb fingers kept scrolling. There seemed to be no end. The night before my surgery, Evan had been kissing the nurse in the hospital’s on-call room. The day I nearly died, she had pulled him close for a selfie. They’d flashed peace signs beneath the red SURGERY IN PROGRESS light. Kissing. Hugging. Holding hands… At last, I reached the oldest photo. It was from three months earlier, the day I was admitted. The nurse and Evan had their heads together, discussing my CT scans. My suffering had brought them together. My tears dried. My hands stopped shaking. All I felt was sick. Seeing that I’d finally calmed down, Evan spoke slowly. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want it affecting your surgery.” “After you got sick, I couldn’t sleep. It felt like part of me had died, too.” “Luckily, she was so full of life.” When he mentioned Lily Parker, his eyes softened. “Being near her made me feel alive again.” He bent down and gently pressed against the incision on my lower abdomen. “The doctor said the surgery went well. My kidney is doing great in there.” He looked up at me. “Claire, I’ve been waiting for you to get better.” “Then I can keep her by my side openly. Finally live for myself.” His eyes held absolute certainty. It was the same look he’d worn years ago, kneeling in his family’s private chapel, insisting he would marry me. “Mrs. Whitmore, time to change your dressing!” The door opened, and Lily came in carrying a medical tray. She wore pink scrubs. Her high ponytail exposed the pale curve of her neck. Evan went to meet her, reaching out to ruffle her hair as naturally as breathing. “Tired after last night’s shift?” Lily shook her head with a playful pout. They flirted as if I weren’t there. My IV bag was empty. Blood had started backing up into the tubing. A sharp pain stabbed at the needle site. Lily glanced at it, then pressed a cotton swab against the swollen back of my hand. “Mr. Whitmore is so good to you.” She inserted a new needle, her voice full of envy. “He must love you so much to give up a kidney for you.” “What’s one kidney worth?” I suddenly laughed. “Not as much as your nine hundred photos.” Her hand froze. She looked helplessly at Evan. He stepped forward and shielded her behind him. “I told you not to make things difficult for her. Don’t humiliate everyone.” “If you can’t accept it, get a divorce.” I had loved the man standing before me for fifteen years. The year my family went bankrupt, my father jumped to his death. Our creditors dragged me onto the stage at an underground auction, offering me as the final lot to settle his debts. Evan burst in a second before the hammer fell. Under the blinding spotlight, he lifted me onto his back and carried me out. “Your family’s gone. I’ll protect you now.” His family paid thirty million dollars to settle the matter. They punished him in their private chapel, beating him so badly they nearly broke his legs. I knelt outside, crying. Through a crack in the door, he comforted me in a hoarse voice. “They’re just legs. As long as you’re safe, I’d give my life.” Over the next five years, he fought his way to the head of the family. The day he proposed, he placed the family’s bloodstained signet ring in my palm. “Nothing can stop us from loving each other now.” “No one can force us apart.” At twenty-three, Evan couldn’t have known. Ten years later, he would be the one to tear us apart.“Surely… there’s no need for a divorce.” Lily lowered her head, afraid to look at me. Fresh out of nursing school, she seemed terrified of ruining someone else’s marriage. Her thin voice trembled. “Those photos are just routine caregiving records… and a few everyday snapshots.” I couldn’t remember the last time Evan and I had taken a photo together. Had it been since illness left me gaunt? Or since he’d become too busy to come home? Maybe it was even earlier, when he started saying I was too clingy. Evan took her hand and gave her a reassuring look. Her expression suddenly changed. “Evan, your hand is bleeding!” Blood was still seeping from the back of his hand where his IV had been removed. “We need to take care of that.” She pulled him into the bathroom. Through the half-open door, I heard running water mixed with soft laughter. My phone vibrated. A new photo appeared in the album. So he really had wanted me to find out sooner… Evan had kept the album connected to our shared family cloud storage all along. After tending to his hand, Lily was washing his body. In the intimate photo, her hands brushed over every mole on his skin I knew by heart. I pulled out my IV and let blood bead on my hand, staring blankly at the ceiling. They came out an hour later. Lily had changed out of her scrubs and into a short skirt. She gave me an apologetic smile. “Mrs. Whitmore, our movie’s about to start.” “I’m borrowing Evan for two hours!” Evan picked up his jacket and followed her without hesitation. I caught his sleeve one last time, my voice shaking. “Evan, my incision hurts… Could you please stay?” He pried my fingers off one by one and left without looking back. “You’re in a hospital. It’s not like you’ll die without me.” The door slammed. I sat on the bed without enough strength to stand. A year earlier, one of Evan’s enemies had tried to poison him. I’d been poisoned saving him, and my kidneys had failed. “Claire, why would you do something so stupid?” He had knelt beside my bed, his eyes red, and sworn an oath. “I’ll never betray you. Not in this lifetime.” “If I do, may I die a horrible death.” His vow still echoed in my ears. But the photos kept coming. Now they had captions. In the dim movie theater, Lily’s fingers were laced through his. “Dragged my CEO to the movies. He just can’t keep his hands to himself.” Disgusted, I hurled my phone away. The monitor let out a piercing alarm. As they rushed me back into emergency surgery, I heard the doctor shouting angrily at the door. “What upset her this badly? Where’s her family?” By the time Evan arrived, I was out of danger. He stood beside my bed, looking impatient. “Did you have to pull this while I was watching a movie?” Lily sounded annoyed, too. “Mrs. Whitmore, it’s just a normal rejection episode.” “I didn’t even get to see the ending.” I yanked down the IV bottle and threw it at them. “Get out!” Rumors began spreading through the hospital. “Poor Mr. Whitmore. He gave his wife a kidney, and now he has to put up with her going crazy every day.” “Lily’s the real victim. She’s barely in her twenties, and that crazy woman targets her just because she’s pretty.” The new nurses whispered outside my room before coming in to change my dressing. I closed my eyes. I didn’t have the strength to defend myself. They put down my medication and fled as if I were a monster. After taking the pills, I broke out in a rash and struggled to breathe. Evan grabbed the medication box and threw it at one nurse’s head. “Who told you to give her this?” “Don’t you know my wife is allergic?” The two young nurses answered in trembling voices. “We were just delivering it for Lily. She has a fever today.” Evan’s heaving chest settled. He crouched beside my bed, almost coaxing me. “Let it go. Everyone makes mistakes. Don’t blame her.” “She just graduated. She doesn’t know better. I’ll teach her.” Enduring the burning itch all over my body, I spoke one word at a time. “No need. I’ve already fired her.”Evan shot to his feet. “Claire, are you insane?” “Was trapping me for ten years not enough? Now you want to ruin her life, too?” He shoved over my IV stand. Glass shattered across the floor. “Don’t forget, this hospital might be in your name, but I gave it to you!” That afternoon, while I was in too much pain to move, I was “escorted” out of my room. My attending physician looked uncomfortable. “Mr. Whitmore thinks it would be best for you to recover at home.” I hadn’t been home in three months. When I walked through the door, even my dog didn’t come to greet me. Lily, who supposedly had a fever, was lying in the living room in my pajamas. Noticing me looking for the dog, she explained. “Mrs. Whitmore, I’m allergic to dog hair.” Only then did Evan glance over. “If you have the strength to walk home, you really have been faking it these past few days.” “I boarded the dog at a pet shop. Pick him up yourself when you’re better.” Once I got better, I wouldn’t be coming back. Traces of Lily were everywhere. The bedroom. The bathroom. The kitchen. The rooftop garden. There was even a printed photo album in the study. The pictures inside were more intimate and explicit. “If you can’t stand it, move out. Haven’t I bought you several houses?” Anything Evan gave me, he could take back whenever he wanted. In ten years, I’d held on to neither love nor money. I’d only worn myself down, growing sick, foolish, and old. I stared at his back and spoke through my despair. “Evan, you only lost a kidney.” “Why does it feel like you lost your heart?” His steps faltered, but he never turned around. He simply picked up the barefoot Lily with care and carried her into the bedroom. He hadn’t lost his heart. He’d given it to someone new. Evan stopped hiding their intimacy from me. So I installed security cameras throughout the house and recorded them. After Lily was fired from the hospital, she became his personal secretary. Today was the Whitmore Group’s annual gala. I arranged for someone to play a video at the event. When Evan brought Lily home late that night, anger radiated off him. She held his arm and gave it a little shake. “Don’t be upset, Evan. Since your wife got sick, she’s become so much… less attractive.” “Anyone with eyes could tell that wasn’t her in the video. It was AI.” My eyes widened. She came closer, as if by accident. “Replacing my face with yours was my little thank-you gift.” She stepped back, smiling with perfect innocence. “Oh, do you miss your dog?” “When you have time, take a look in the garden.” Evan pulled her behind him. “Stay away from her. Who knows what other dirty tricks she has waiting for you.” My hands and feet went cold. Not because of Evan, but because a terrible thought had flashed through my mind. I dug in the garden for three hours. Until my fingertips touched something stiff. The little dog Evan and I had once rescued together. Now he lay in my arms, horribly cold. When we married, Evan said he couldn’t bear to put me through childbirth. The puppy we’d rescued, Puff, would be our child. “While I was staying with you at the hospital… I didn’t keep an eye on Puff. He accidentally starved.” Evan turned his face away, his throat moving. “I’m upset he’s gone, too.” Something like panic crossed his face when he saw my empty eyes. “I was worrying about you day and night. About the surgery. That’s why I forgot about him.” He caught my hand and pressed it to his lower abdomen. “I lost a kidney for you. It hurts like hell here, too!” I said nothing. I pulled my hand away, picked up the shovel, and drove it toward my stomach. “Evan, take your kidney back.” “I owe you nothing. I want a divorce.”