His Amnesia, My Sentence

Synopsis

York Graham and I had grown up side by side, yet over the course of twenty years, that childhood bond had been boiled down into open hostility. He resented me for insisting on restoring his memories back then, blaming me for the car accident that nearly took the life of Vanessa Stefan, the woman he cherished above all else. I resented him for forgetting the promise he had made to marry only me, and for protecting Vanessa more fiercely than he ever protected himself after he lost his memory. During our seven years of marriage, we slept in the same bedroom, yet half a bed lay between us like a silent divide. We even kept our breathing deliberately light, afraid of disturbing each other. On the day I received my diagnosis for ALS, everyone was saying York should divorce me while I could still move, then hurry off and start over with another woman. Instead, he hid it from me and stayed at St. Mary's Church for two days and two nights, praying for only one thing—that I could stay with him a little longer. When I was dying, he held my already stiffened body in his arms, his chin resting against my gaunt shoulder. His voice sounded hoarse, as if it had rusted from the inside out. "Zara, what I owed you in this life has been repaid with seven years of unwavering care. If there is another life, do not appear again. Do not let me remember you. Let me protect her properly, just once," York said. My tears fell onto the back of his hand, and only then did I finally understand. The wish he had made beneath that tree when he was fifteen should have scattered with the wind on the day he lost his memory. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the snowy day when I first found York. This time, I no longer clung to the hope that he would remember the past. I only wished that he could stay by the side of the person he had chosen and live out his life in peace.