Little by little, I rebuilt a routine that no longer had his name attached to it.
Two years passed.
I had almost convinced myself I was healed.
There were still songs I skipped.
Restaurants I avoided.
Anniversaries that quietly hurt.
But I could finally hear his name without feeling like someone had punched me in the chest.
That felt like progress.
Then, one night, my phone rang from a number I didn’t recognize.
I almost didn’t answer, but something made me swipe.
For a few seconds, all I heard was beeping in the background.
Then, a man’s voice said my name.
“Natalie?”
I froze.
It was Daniel.
His voice sounded thinner than I remembered.
Weak.
Like every word cost him something.
I sat up in bed immediately.
“Why are you calling me?”
There was a pause.
Then he said, “I’m in the hospital.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.
He tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough.
“I know I don’t have the right to call you,” he said. “But I needed you to hear this from me.”
My stomach dropped.
Every angry speech I had imagined giving him over the past 2 years vanished.
In their place was confusion.
Fear.
And something I hated admitting.
Concern.
I swallowed hard.
“What happened?”
“I… can I show you?”
Before I could answer, he turned the camera on.
And there he was.
Lying in a hospital bed, pale, thinner, hooked up to wires, with that same face I had once known better than my own.
I hated that my first instinct was to cry.
I hated that seeing him like that still hurt.
“What happened?” I asked again, barely recognizing my own voice.
He stared at me for a long moment, and his eyes filled with tears.
Then he said, “I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you.”
Everything inside me stopped.
I went completely still.
