I nodded.
“Thank you.”
I went to see my friend, but I barely remember the conversation. Mark was propped against pillows, pale but alert after surgery, and he noticed immediately that something was wrong.
“Man,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “you look worse than I do.”
I tried to smile.
It didn’t work.
“I saw Sophie.”
Mark’s expression softened. “Here?”
I nodded.
“In a patient gown.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “You didn’t know?”
The room seemed to shrink.
I stared at him.
“What?”
Mark closed his eyes briefly. “Ethan…”
“You knew?”
His silence answered for him.
I stepped back from the bed.
“You knew Sophie was sick?”
“Not everything,” he said quickly. “Not details. Just that she’d been having tests.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“She asked me not to.”
The betrayal was different this time, but it still hurt.
“How did you even know?”
Mark rubbed a hand over his face. “Because she called my wife after one of her appointments. She didn’t have anyone else nearby. Claire drove her home twice.”
I felt my stomach twist.
Claire.
Mark’s wife.
Someone outside our marriage had been helping Sophie while I slept in my apartment and told myself distance was healing.
“She didn’t want you to know,” Mark said. “Claire wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you. Sophie begged us not to.”
“And you listened?”
“She said you were barely holding yourself together after the divorce.”
I laughed once, bitterly. “That was generous of her.”
Mark’s voice turned firm. “Don’t make this about pride.”
I looked at him.
He was sitting there with stitches in his chest, and somehow he still managed to look at me like an older brother about to tell me the truth I had avoided.
“You left, Ethan,” he said. “I know you were hurting. I know you thought you were doing the right thing. But you left. Whatever Sophie did afterward, she did because she believed she couldn’t depend on you.”
I wanted to argue.
I wanted to defend myself.
But the words wouldn’t come.
Because deep down, I knew Mark was right.
He sighed. “That doesn’t mean you can’t show up now. But don’t show up expecting forgiveness just because you’re scared.”
I looked toward the window, at the city beyond the hospital glass.
