He Begged Me to Let Him Go, Now He’s Begging to Come Back Chapter 02
The surgery lasted four hours.
Henry’s spleen was badly torn. There was more than three hundred milliliters of blood in his abdomen.
I stood under the operating lights, repeating the same motions over and over. Clamp. Suture. Clamp. Suture.
The monitor beeped. The scrub nurse handed me forceps without being asked.
My mind was blank when it came to Greg and Linda. On the table, I recognized only organs, not people.
At three in the morning, I finished.
I pulled off my bloodstained scrubs, shrugged back into my white coat, and walked out.
Greg was sitting alone on a bench in the hallway. Linda was gone. He must have sent her to rest.
When he heard my footsteps, he looked up. His eyes were bloodshot.
“The surgery was successful. His vital signs are stable. He’s been transferred to the ICU for monitoring.”
I gave him the update the way I would for any patient’s family member, then turned to go to the on-call room.
“Emily.” Greg stood and blocked my path.
The hallway was empty except for us. The ceiling lights hummed faintly.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a bank card.
“There’s seventy thousand dollars in this account.”
His voice was soft, but there was something condescending underneath. “The PIN is your birthday.”
I looked down at the black card. “What’s this for?”
“You left with nothing back then.” Greg sighed, and his eyes took on that pitying look he must have thought made him look kind.
“I know things haven’t been easy for you. Working your way up from resident to attending. You must have struggled.”
He paused. “Take this. Buy yourself something nice. A car, maybe. Stop riding that old bicycle.”
Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Think of it as my way of making up for what Linda did. She was young. She didn’t know what she was doing.”
Young. Didn’t know what she was doing.
These words were meant to erase the unpaid debt, the affair, the wrist-cutting, the manipulation, and all the years he stole from me.
I looked at his face, so familiar and so ridiculous all at once.
He had already decided I was struggling. That I was barely getting by. That I was still nursing old wounds.
Seventy thousand dollars. That was what he thought it would cost to buy his guilt away.
“Greg.” I didn’t take the card. I just looked at him.
“I lent Linda eleven thousand dollars back then. At the highest bank interest rate, that comes out to less than twenty-one thousand dollars with interest over five years.”
“So the remaining forty-nine thousand… is that your way of paying me off for the affair?”
Greg’s expression flickered. He hadn’t expected me to say it so directly.
“Emily, do you have to put it that way?”
He frowned, irritation creeping into his voice. “I’m trying to do something nice for you. You were never this materialistic.”
Materialistic.
He didn’t call me materialistic when I gave up a fellowship opportunity to live with him in a tiny studio apartment and eat instant ramen for two years.
He didn’t call me materialistic when I wore the same shirt until it was faded and threadbare so I could save every dollar to buy him computer parts.
He called me materialistic now. Now that he had money and wanted to throw money in my face.
I reached out with two fingers and slid the card out of his hand. “You know what? If you want to buy your peace of mind this badly, Mr. Thornton, I’ll take it.”
I looked at him and let the corner of my mouth lift. “I earned it.”
Not the money. I earned the right to stop being the one who always gave everything away.
Back then, I wore faded clothes and ate the cheapest food in the cafeteria. I saved everything I had to help him build the website for his company.
He called me selfless. He called me understanding. He said I wasn’t like other women who only cared about money.
I used to be proud of that. I thought it made me special.
Now I knew the truth. It didn’t make me special. It made me cheap.
He had stolen years of my life and paid me back in compliments.
Greg watched me take the card, and some of the tension left his shoulders.
He looked relieved. He thought he had fixed things. The corner of his mouth even twitched upward. A small, almost imperceptible smirk.
He had the nerve to treat the betrayal and the pain he caused like a debt he could settle anytime he wanted, write a check, and walk away clean.
“I’m glad you understand.” He straightened his jacket sleeve and put his polished mask back on.
“Linda has a temper. Be patient with her if you see her around the hospital.” He paused. “I owe you that much.”
I tucked the card into my pocket and turned toward the on-call room. “Don’t worry, Mr. Thornton. I’ll do my job.”
The window at the end of the hall was cracked open.
Night air rushed in, smelling of disinfectant and something sharper beneath it.