Part 2

For several seconds, Maya said nothing.

The corridor around us carried on as if the world had not just cracked open.

A nurse pushed a cart past us. Somewhere behind a closed door, a monitor beeped steadily. Footsteps echoed over the polished floor. A child laughed faintly from another wing, the sound so out of place that it felt like it belonged to a different universe.

Maya kept staring down at our joined hands.

Mine were trembling.

Hers were still.

Too still.

“Maya,” I whispered, “please.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as though even hearing my voice hurt her.

Then she said, “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

Those words struck me harder than any answer could have.

Find out what?

My throat tightened.

“What are you talking about?”

She pulled her hand from mine slowly and folded it in her lap.

“I’m sick, Arjun.”

My heartbeat became loud in my ears.

“Sick how?”

She gave the smallest, saddest smile, the kind people wear when they have grown tired of explaining pain.

“At first, I thought it was weakness. Stress. Maybe grief.” She looked toward the window at the far end of the hallway, where gray Budapest light spilled across the floor. “I kept feeling tired. Bruises appeared on my arms and legs for no reason. I had fevers at night. I lost weight.”

I remembered.

I remembered the last months of our marriage.

How she had moved more slowly around the kitchen.

How she had sometimes leaned against the counter, one hand pressed to her stomach.

How I had asked, without looking up from my phone, “Are you okay?”

And how she had always answered, “I’m fine.”

And I had believed her because believing her was convenient.

“What is it?” I asked, though a part of me already feared the shape of her answer.

Her voice dropped.

“Leukemia.”

The word did not land all at once.

It floated between us, cold and impossible, waiting for my mind to understand it.

Blood cancer.

Maya.

My Maya.

“No,” I said stupidly. “No, that can’t be right.”

She did not argue.

That made it worse.

“They found it a few weeks after the divorce,” she continued. “The doctor said it had probably been developing for some time.”

Some time.

During our marriage.

During our arguments.

During those nights when I came home late and found her asleep on the sofa with the dinner untouched.

During the mornings when she stood quietly by the window, looking thinner, quieter, farther away.

May you like

My chest burned.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She looked at me then.

Not with anger.

That would have been easier.

Not with blame.

That would have been deserved.

But with a calm, exhausted tenderness that almost destroyed me.

“You had already left, Arjun.”

I couldn’t speak.

“You wanted freedom from our sadness,” she said softly. “I understood that. I didn’t want to become another chain around your life.”

“I also didn’t know how to say it.” Her fingers tightened around the fabric of her hospital gown. “How does someone call their ex-husband and say, ‘I know we ended badly, but I might die’?”

I lowered my head.

Shame flooded me so intensely I felt dizzy.

All this time, I had thought I was suffering because the apartment was empty.

Because no one waited for me.

Because love had failed.

But Maya had been fighting something far larger than loneliness, and she had been doing it alone.

“Are you undergoing treatment?” I asked.

She nodded faintly.

“Chemotherapy started three weeks ago.”

I looked at her hair again.

The short, uneven strands. The pale skin around her cheeks. The IV line taped to her hand.

“Who’s taking care of you?”

A silence followed.

That silence was its own answer.

“Maya,” I said, my voice breaking. “Where are your parents?”

She looked away.

“My mother is unwell. My father can barely take care of her. I told them it was just anemia. If they knew the truth, my mother would collapse.”

“And friends?”

She smiled again, but this time there was no warmth in it.

“People are kind for the first few days. Then life pulls them back.”

I felt something sharp twist inside me.

“You should have called me.”

She looked at me directly.

“Would you have answered?”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

Because I didn’t know.

Two months ago, if Maya had called, would I have answered? Or would I have stared at her name on the screen until it stopped ringing, telling myself that distance was necessary?

The silence became unbearable.

I stood up suddenly.

“I’m going to speak to your doctor.”

Her eyes widened.

“No, Arjun. Please don’t make this complicated.”

“It is complicated.”

“You’re not responsible for me anymore.”

Those words cut deeper than I expected.

I turned back to her.

“I was your husband for five years.”

“Was,” she said gently.

The past tense hung between us like a locked door.

I crouched in front of her chair so our eyes were level.

“Maya, listen to me. I know I failed you. I know I walked away when I should have stayed and asked what was wrong. I know saying sorry doesn’t fix anything. But I am here now.”

Her lips trembled, though she tried to hide it.

“You’re here because you saw me.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “And maybe I deserved to see you like this. Maybe this is the punishment for being blind.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t make my illness about your guilt.”

That stopped me.

Her voice was weak, but her eyes had regained a flicker of the Maya I knew.

Soft, but not fragile.

Kind, but never foolish.

“I’m not a test for your redemption,” she said. “I’m not a story where you come back, cry, and everything becomes meaningful again.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I looked down.

No. Maybe I didn’t.

Maybe some selfish part of me had already begun imagining that if I stayed by her side, my guilt would shrink. That if I helped her now, I could rewrite all the nights I had ignored her suffering.

But Maya was not a page I could edit.

She was a person I had hurt.

And now she was ill.

“I don’t know anything,” I said honestly. “Except that I don’t want you sitting alone in a hospital corridor.”

For the first time, her eyes filled with tears.

She blinked them away quickly.

Before either of us could speak again, a doctor in a white coat approached us.

“Mrs. Sharma?”

Maya stiffened at the name.

My surname.

She had not changed it yet.

The doctor glanced at me, then back at her.

“Is this a family member?”

Maya hesitated.

I waited, breath trapped in my chest.

Finally, she said, “He’s… someone I trust.”

Xem trước

Those words should have comforted me.

Instead, they nearly broke me.

The doctor introduced himself as Dr. Kovács, a hematologist with kind eyes and a face shaped by too many difficult conversations.

He led us into a small consultation room.

Maya sat on one side of the desk. I sat beside her, careful not to sit too close, as if proximity itself required permission now.

Dr. Kovács opened a file.

“The latest blood results are concerning,” he said.

Maya lowered her gaze.

I gripped my knees beneath the table.

“The chemotherapy response is slower than we hoped. It does not mean failure, but it means we must prepare other options.”

“What options?” I asked.

“A stem cell transplant may become necessary.”

Maya’s face remained still, but I saw her fingers curl into her palm.

The doctor continued, “For that, we need a compatible donor. Siblings are usually the first possibility.”

“She doesn’t have siblings,” I said.

Dr. Kovács nodded. “Then we search the registry. But finding a match can take time.”

“How much time?”

He looked at Maya before answering.

“That depends.”

Doctors always said that when the real answer was too frightening.

I leaned forward.

“Test me.”

Maya turned sharply.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Arjun, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not related. The chance is low.”

“Low isn’t zero.”

She gave me a look filled with panic, anger, and something like fear.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Dr. Kovács watched us quietly.

Then he said, “It is possible to test unrelated individuals, though the likelihood of a full match is much smaller. Still, we can begin the process if both parties consent.”

“I consent,” I said immediately.

Maya looked at me as though she wanted to stop me but lacked the strength to fight.

Her voice fell to a whisper.

“Why are you doing this?”

I looked at her.

Because I still love you.

The words rose in me, but I swallowed them.

They were too heavy.

Too late.

Too selfish.

So I said the only truth I had earned the right to speak.

“Because you shouldn’t have to fight alone.”

Maya’s eyes softened, then closed.

For a moment, she looked so tired I feared she might disappear right there in front of me.

The test was arranged that afternoon.

A nurse drew my blood in a small room that smelled faintly of antiseptic and coffee. I watched the dark red line fill the tube and thought of the strange cruelty of the human body, how something as ordinary as blood could become a battlefield.

Afterward, I returned to Maya’s ward.

She was lying in bed by the window, face turned toward the city.

The room had three other beds, but only one was occupied by an elderly woman sleeping under a pink blanket. The curtains moved slightly from the air vent.

Maya did not turn when I entered.

“You should go visit your friend,” she said.

I had forgotten about Rohit completely.

Guilt struck me again.

“I’ll call him.”

“He had surgery.”

“He has his wife with him.”

She was silent.

Then she said, “You always had an answer when you wanted to avoid leaving.”

I almost smiled.

Almost.

“I deserved that.”

“Yes,” she said. “You did.”

I pulled a chair beside her bed.

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

Outside, rain began to tap against the glass.

I noticed a small cloth bag on the bedside table. Inside were a toothbrush, a comb she no longer needed, a worn paperback novel, and a framed photo turned facedown.

I knew before I touched it.

Still, I reached for it.

Maya’s hand moved suddenly.

“Don’t.”

I stopped.

“Please,” she said.

I withdrew my hand.

But not before I saw the edge of the picture.

It was from our third wedding anniversary.

Maya in a yellow sari.

Me beside her, smiling like a man who had no idea happiness could expire.

Something lodged in my throat.

“You kept it.”

“I forgot it was there.”

We both knew she was lying.

The evening passed slowly.

A nurse came to change her IV.

Maya winced but did not complain.

I saw tiny bruises across her arms, some green, some purple, some fading yellow. Each one felt like evidence against me.

When the nurse left, Maya closed her eyes.

I thought she had fallen asleep, until she spoke.

“Do you remember the night after the second miscarriage?”

My body went rigid.

Of course I remembered.

Not fully.

Not honestly.

I remembered fragments.

The hospital room.

Maya crying silently into a pillow.

My own helplessness turning into frustration because I did not know what to do with pain I couldn’t fix.

“I remember,” I said.

“You didn’t come home until midnight the next day.”

I shut my eyes.

“My manager called. There was an emergency at work.”

“There was always an emergency at work.”

I had no defense.

“I sat in the bedroom,” she continued, her voice quiet and distant, “holding the little pair of socks I had bought. The blue ones. Do you remember them?”

“I kept thinking you would come in. That you would sit beside me. That you would say her name.”

Her.

My breath stopped.

We had never known the baby’s gender.

But Maya had always said she felt the second one was a girl.

“I couldn’t,” I whispered.

“I know.” Her eyes remained closed. “That’s when I realized we grieved differently. I needed to hold the loss. You needed to run from it.”

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye into her hairline.

“And eventually, you ran from me too.”

My hands clenched.

“I’m sorry.”

She opened her eyes.

“I know you are.”

That should have relieved me.

It didn’t.

Because forgiveness and repair are not the same thing.

Three days passed.

I returned to the hospital every morning before work and every evening after. At first, Maya protested. Then she stopped wasting energy.

I brought her soup from an Indian restaurant she once liked, though she could barely eat two spoonfuls.

I brought fresh clothes, cotton shawls, lip balm, and the coconut oil she used to love for her hair.

One evening, she laughed weakly when I placed the bottle beside her bed.

“What am I supposed to do with that now?”

I looked at her short hair.

Then I said, “Use it when it grows back.”

Her smile faded.

For a second, hope passed between us like a dangerous thing.

Then she turned away.

The hospital became my second life.

The office noticed.

My manager asked whether everything was all right.

I said no, and for once, I did not explain further.

Rohit, recovering in another wing, found out before I could tell him. When I finally visited him, he stared at me from his bed, one arm bandaged, his wife asleep in the chair beside him.

“You saw Maya,” he said.

I frowned. “How did you know?”

He looked uncomfortable.

“Arjun…”

“What?”

He sighed.

“She called me once.”

The room shifted.

“When?”

“About six weeks ago.”

I stared at him.

“What did she say?”

“She asked if you were doing okay.”

“She was sick and asked about me?”

Rohit looked down.

“She also asked me not to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because she begged me not to.” His voice lowered. “And because she said you had finally started living again.”

I laughed once, bitterly.

“Living?”

Rohit watched me carefully.

“Arjun, she still loved you.”

I stood abruptly.

“It’s true.”

“I said don’t.”

Because if he said it aloud, I would have to face the full weight of what I had abandoned.

That night, when I returned to Maya’s ward, she was not in bed.

Panic hit me instantly.

I found her at the end of the corridor, standing by the window with one hand on the IV pole.