I went to the hospital to surprise my husband with lunch after another week of missed dinners and unanswered texts. Instead, his colleague looked at me with tears in his eyes and whispered, "He hasn't told you anything, has he?" In that moment, every late night, every canceled plan, and every exhausted silence from the past year suddenly felt different.
Laurie and I had been married eleven years.
And for eleven years I had shared that man with St Jerome's.
He is a very good surgeon and I was proud of him and I knew the work mattered and I knew there were people walking around Ardmere because of him.
But over the last year I had got into the habit of putting his dinner under foil before I sat down to eat my own.
He missed Christmas lunch.
He missed our anniversary.
He missed Esme's eighth birthday.
And some nights he did not come home at all.
