The Day He Asked For Divorce Was The Day I Was Dying Chapter 3
I didn’t check into the hospital.
I spent the next three days going through the house. When Sam wasn’t home, I put labels on every
cabinet.
Medications. Documents. Warranties.
I even put his knee brace where he could easily find it. His knees were bad from years of working in the emergency room. Every winter, I used to turn on his heating pad for him before he came home.
I wrote all of this down on a piece of paper, then decided it wasn’t necessary.
In the end, I threw the paper away and left only my bank PIN and the utility account numbers.
On the morning of the fourth day, Sam came home to pick up some documents. He stopped in the entryway when he saw the boxes in the living room.
“What are you doing?”
I was putting photo albums into a box. “Packing.”
The tension visibly left his shoulders. Auto-added to the Library
“Yes.”
It was a hospice bed.
Sam walked over and looked at the photos spread out on the coffee table.
In one, we stood at the foot of a snow-covered mountain. He had wrapped his scarf around my neck,
his own nose red from the cold.
That was the year after my miscarriage. I had been thin as a rail. He had canceled an academic
conference to take me out west to clear my head.
On the back of the photo, in his handwriting: [I will walk every road with Grace Holloway, all the
way, step by step.]
Sam held the photo for a long time, running his finger over the line. “We were so young back then.”
I took the photo back and put it at the bottom of the box. “Being young wasn’t all bad.”
He didn’t argue.
For a moment, I thought he might say something else, ask where I was going, ask why I had gotten
so thin.
Then his phone rang, and the moment was gone.
“I’m at the house picking up some things. Don’t cry, I’m on my way.’
Whatever Juliette said on the other end made Sam’s face darken. “She’s not going to bother you. I’ll get her to sign the papers.”
I sat on the sofa and watched him hang up. “Is Juliette afraid of me?”
Sam rubbed his forehead. “She didn’t sleep last night. She’s worried you won’t agree to the divorce, worried I’m stuck.”
“Do you feel stuck?”
He didn’t answer. That was answer enough.
That afternoon, Juliette came to the house.
She wasn’t as dramatic as I had imagined, apologizing as soon as she walked in.
“Ms. Holloway, I’m sorry to intrude. I really didn’t want to come, but Sam said you were packing, and I wanted to say something to you in person.”
Sam stood next to her, looking uncomfortable.
Juliette looked at me, her eyes red-rimmed. “I know you two have ten years together. I wouldn’t stay if I thought there was still a chance for you.”
This close, I could see that Juliette really was fragile. Her voice was soft. Her words were careful.
“You don’t need to explain anything to me.’
Juliette shook her head. “He hasn’t been happy either, you know. He told me you two stopped loving each other a long time ago. When he comes home, you just go your separate ways.”
“Ms. Holloway, I’m not trying to take anything from you. I just… I can’t live without him.”
“That’s enough, Juliette.” Sam’s voice was low.
My stomach twisted painfully as I gripped the arm of the sofa.
Sam noticed and stepped closer, reaching for my forehead. “You look terrible.”
I moved away from his hand. “I’m fine.”
Juliette pulled an invitation from her bag and set it on the coffee table.
“I have a small gallery opening next Monday. Sam told me that’s your birthday. If you’d like to
come, I’d like to give you the first painting. As a way to… apologize.”
She sounded sincere.
But Sam frowned. “She won’t come.”
I looked at him. “Why not?”
“It’s not your kind of thing, and you haven’t been feeling well. Don’t push yourself.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
His face relaxed, visibly relieved. “Thank you, Grace.”
It was the gentlest thing he had said to me in weeks.
That night, I started vomiting blood.
At first it was just a few dark streaks, then more and more.
I knelt on the bathroom floor, the towel in my hand was soaked through with red.
My phone was on the sink, Sam’s number at the top of my call log.
I pressed dial, then hung up before it connected.
He was helping Juliette set up for her show that night.
Juliette was afraid of heights, so she needed someone to hold the ladder while she hung the lights. She was scared of the dark, so she needed someone to walk her home after the gallery closed.
I couldn’t be another burden.
At two in the morning, an ambulance took me to the emergency room.
When the nurse asked for a family member’s phone number, I gave her Sam’s mother’s number.
Margaret Bennett rushed to the hospital, her hair uncombed. When she saw me in the hospital bed, she just started crying.
“Grace, how could something this big happen and you not have told us?”
I held her hand, my voice barely a whisper. “Don’t tell Sam, Margaret.”
She froze.
“He’s starting a new life. I don’t want him to see me like this at the very
end.
Margaret couldn’t speak, she just held my hand and cried.
Near dawn, I woke up briefly to find Sam standing beside the bed, his face pale and tight, holding
my ER chart.
My heart went cold.
Then he put the chart down on the nightstand, his voice tight and low.
“Really, Grace? You’d rather lie and drag my mother into it just to avoid signing divorce papers?