Better Alone

The white walls of the hospital room seemed to amplify every jagged edge of Zeke’s fury. His voice, once a gentle murmur that promised forever, was now a weapon, each word a brutal cut across Aries’s already ravaged soul. “This was not what I wanted,” he fumed, the words like a whip-crack in the oppressive silence. “This was not a part of the freaking plan! We were supposed to be happy! We were supposed to be in love! We were supposed to have our little family by now!” His voice escalated with each accusation, rising higher and higher, a crescendo of betrayal that hammered against her eardrums. Every sentence was a fresh bullet, shattering the fragile remnants of Aries’s heart, a heart that barely beat after enduring more loss than she thought possible for someone barely twenty-eight.

She lay there, a ghost of her former self, tied to the bed by tubes and wires that mocked her very existence. Just weeks ago, her body had been a vessel of hope, carrying their child. Now, it was just a shell, a broken reminder of what was and what could never be. The pain of the miscarriage had been a physical torment, a rending of flesh and spirit, but the subsequent loss, the one that had nearly taken her life, that had been the true abyss. Her body was still screaming, of aches and phantom sensations, but it was the silent scream of her soul that truly deafened her.

Zeke stepped closer, his shadow looming over her, a dark silhouette against the muted hospital light. He lowered his voice, but the change only made his next words more insidious, a poisoned whisper meant to burrow deep. “But you! You could not even successfully carry a child.” The venom in his tone was palpable, each syllable dripping with contempt, dissolving her worth, her womanhood, her very essence. “And you wanted to die on me??” His voice rose again, laced with a bizarre blend of anger and a twisted, self-serving fear. “You wanted to die on me? No! I would rather be divorced than be a widower.”

The words hung in the air, thick with cruelty, suffocating her. He would rather be divorced. Not heartbroken, not grieving, not even just sad. He preferred the clean cut of legal separation over the messiness of grief, over the inconvenience of her near-death. The realization struck her with the force of a physical blow, stealing her breath. This wasn’t the man who had held her hand through sickness, who had whispered promises of eternity. This was a stranger, a coward shrinking from the devastation, blaming her for a tragedy that had shattered them both.

As if all the fight had drained from his body, Zeke suddenly crumbled. He didn’t drop to his knees in despair, but rather slumped heavily into the hard plastic chair beside the bed, an exhaustion born of emotional fatigue, not physical suffering. His shoulders sagged, and he brought out a file, thick and stark against the pale hospital blanket. With a weary, almost disgusted gesture, he threw it towards her, the thud of the paper against the mattress a finality she hadn’t been prepared for. “Please,” he whispered, his voice broken, a hollow echo of the man she loved, “sign it, let’s be done with this.”

The word “please” was a mockery. It was a plea for his own liberation, not an olive branch. Whimpering, a sound she barely recognized as her own, Aries’s trembling fingers fumbled with the slick cover of the file. She opened it, her eyes blurring as they scanned the contents. Divorce papers. Already filed. Already drawn up. He hadn’t even waited for her to be discharged. He had orchestrated this while she lay unconscious, while her body fought for every precious breath.

A bitter, humorless laugh escaped her, a harsh, guttural sound that scratched at her throat. Then her lips curled, not into a smile, but a snarl of pure, unadulterated anger. There it was, buried deep within the legalese: an offer of alimony. A pittance. A miserly sum that insulted not only her intelligence but the entirety of their shared history. He was “kind enough” to offer her crumbs after stripping her bare.

“How dare you???” The question tore from her, raw and guttural, fueled by a scorching rage that finally broke through the numbness. It was a rage that, for the first time in weeks, felt like life. “You come into my room and after saying all these things, you offer to pay me that miserly sum??” Her voice was rising now, mirroring his earlier fury, but hers was a righteous indignation. “Everything we own, we built together, and I will be damned if I do not get compensated adequately for what I have been through.” The words tasted like ash, but they also tasted like power, a reclaiming of herself from the wreckage.

She shifted, the movement sending a fresh wave of agony through her body, but she barely noticed it. Her focus was solely on the man across from her, the stranger who wore her husband’s face. “You couldn’t even wait for me to get discharged, you filed for a divorce and had the gall to bring it to me AND berate me for losing our child?!” Each word was a lash, stinging him, and she saw a flicker of something in his eyes – was it regret? Shame? She didn’t care. “You are a disgrace, Ezekiel,” she continued, her voice trembling with the force of her contempt, “and I will fight for what I deserve.”

Zeke, for the first time, seemed to backpedal, visibly recoiling from the raw emotion she wielded. “Look Aries…” he began, his voice softer, but she saw through it. It was the voice of a man trying to placate, not to heal. He stopped talking when he saw the unyielding hurt and profound pain in her eyes, pain so deep it seemed to swallow him whole. “Listen…” he tried again, but she cut him off, raising a weak but firm finger, silencing him.

“You couldn’t even let me heal, Zeke,” she said, her voice now broken, a thin, fragile thread that conveyed more devastation than any scream. Tears, hot and bitter, finally breached her defenses, tracing paths down her temples and into her hair. “You’re not who I thought you were. We promised to stay together for better or worse, and with the first sign of bad, you’re running away?”

The more Aries spoke, the angrier she became, the bitterness consuming her, fueling her resolve. The tears were no longer a sign of weakness, but of a fierce, desperate fury. He wanted a clean break? He wanted to escape the messy reality of her shattered life? Not without a fight. Not without a cost.

“I want half of everything,” she declared, her voice regaining its steel, a sharp edge that would cut him as deeply as he had cut her. “The money in the bank, the house, the cars, everything! Every goddamn thing, down to the cutlery!” With that final, defiant declaration, she gritted her teeth against the searing physical pain and the even deeper agony of her heart. She turned away from him, facing the cold, indifferent wall, effectively ending the conversation. She had said her piece. She had drawn her line.

Only when the soft click of the door signaled his departure, did the rigid control she had clung to finally shatter. Heart-wrenching sobs wracked her entire body, convulsing her with their intensity. The physical pain, raw and unrelenting, could not compare to the agony of her heart breaking, fracturing into a million irreparable pieces. The loss of her child, the near-loss of her life, and now, the absolute annihilation of what she thought was forever. It was too much. The world blurred through a haze of tears, and she simply surrendered to the torrent of grief, alone in the silence, in the shattered fragments of her former life.