Chapter 2
At two in the morning, a nurse came out and called for Andrew, letting him know that Emily was awake.
When Andrew walked in, Emily was lying there with her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes looked hollow, like her soul had already checked out and left her body behind.
"Emily," he called. She didn't react at all.
"Emily," he called again, louder this time, a hint of frustration in his voice.
Slowly, her gaze drifted over and settled on his face.
Andrew felt something off in her eyes for a moment.
It wasn't what he'd imagined. There was no sadness, no blame, and no begging for comfort. It was a look he'd never seen on Emily before. She was calm, almost like she was staring at a stranger.
"Are you done with your drama?" he said. That was the first thing he said to her.
Emily's lips moved, her breath fogging up the oxygen mask. Her voice was so quiet that Andrew had to lean in close to catch it.
She said, "Andrew, I'm not being dramatic."
"Not being dramatic? So, do you call that not making a scene, downing a whole bottle of sleeping pills? Do you know what time it is? I have a meeting first thing in the morning..."
"I was saying goodbye to you," Emily cut him off.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, soft as a needle falling into cotton.
The word "goodbye" hit Andrew like a bullet, slicing right through all his annoyance and assumptions, and lodged itself somewhere deep in his chest, a place he never knew existed.
He froze for a second. Then he said something that would haunt him for the rest of his life, something he'd replay over and over, something that would wake him up in the middle of the night, his heart aching.
He said, "If you're going to die, stay away from me. Don't make it my problem."
Emily smiled, a fragile, barely-there smile hidden beneath her oxygen mask. Then she closed her eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness.
Andrew turned and walked out of the ICU, then slumped into a chair in the hallway for a bit. He texted his assistant: [Delay tomorrow's meeting to the afternoon.]
Then he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to catch some sleep.
He told himself he'd done enough. He'd stayed up until two in the morning. What else did Emily want from him?
What he didn't know was that on Emily's phone, there was an unsent memo. The title: [The Day I Decided to Die.]
It said: [October 15, 2024. Sunny. Today is my thirtieth birthday.
[Andrew didn't remember. That was normal. He didn't remember last year, or the year before that. We've been married for five years, and he's never remembered. But this year was different.
[This year, I started reminding him a week ahead of time. I circled the date on the calendar, texted him, and stuck a sticky note on the fridge. Yesterday, I reminded him again: "Honey, tomorrow's my birthday."
[He said, "Oh, what do you want?" I said, "I want you to come home for dinner." He replied, "Depends."
["Depends." I spent the whole day waiting. From eight in the morning until eleven at night, I kept waiting to see what would happen.
[He didn't come home. At 11:15 PM, he texted me that he was out at a business dinner, not coming back tonight.
[I stared at that message for forty minutes. It wasn't sadness. It was something weird.
[It felt like reading a medical report that said you were already at the terminal stage, but you weren't surprised. The pain had been there for ages; you never bothered to see a doctor.
[Suddenly, I remembered our first year together. Back then, whenever I got upset, he'd try to make it up to me, buy me flowers, and actually say sorry.
[But every "sorry" always had a "but" attached: "Sorry, but I'm really busy," or "Sorry, but you're being unreasonable."
[At least he used to say sorry. Now, he doesn't bother to say it at all.
[I took the cake out of the fridge, a six-inch strawberry cake I'd baked myself that afternoon. I lit a candle and sang "Happy Birthday" to myself.
[Then I ate the cake, crying as I ate.
[It wasn't because he forgot my birthday. It was because, as I cried, the first thing that crossed my mind was that if he comes home and sees my eyes swollen and red from crying, he'll get irritated again.
[Look at that. When I'm crying, I have to worry about his feelings. Meanwhile, he doesn't bother to remember my birthday.
[Suddenly, I felt exhausted. It was not the kind of tired you can sleep off, but the kind that settles deep in your bones, your blood, every cell in your body. It was like a rubber band that's been stretched for five years, finally snapping.
[I don't want to keep holding on anymore. I want to let go.
[Some of you reading this are probably thinking why not get a divorce instead of ending it all?
[I've asked myself that question a hundred times. The truth is, I don't know how to walk away.
[It's not about the legal process or paperwork. For the past five years, I've basically made myself a side character in my own life, orbiting around him.
[I don't have a job, no social life, nothing that's really mine. My whole world shrank down to this house and him.
[I really tried. I tried picking up hobbies, such as baking, flower arranging, and painting. But I could never stick with any of them, because each one made the loneliness worse.
[I baked a cake, but no one ate it. I arranged a bouquet, but no one noticed. I painted a picture, and he looked at it and said, "There you go wasting your time again."
[You know, the worst thing someone can do to you isn't hitting or yelling. It's making you feel like everything you do is wrong, like existing feels like a mistake.
[Andrew never thought he was the problem. He figured as long as he brought home the money, didn't cheat or gamble, and came home occasionally, he was already a good husband. He thought I was being overly sensitive.
[The last time we argued, I asked him, "Can't you care about how I feel?" He shot back, "Do your feelings pay the bills?"
[That was the moment I realized that in his eyes, my feelings weren't worth a single dollar.
[So, today, I turned thirty. I don't want to go on anymore.
[This isn't about being petty, or making threats, or waiting to see if he'll regret it. I don't want to live anymore.
[To live is to wait every day for someone who never comes home. It means sending endless messages, only to wait in vain for a reply that never arrives.
[If I have to keep shrinking myself until I become quiet, shapeless, and invisible, I don't want to go on living.
[I'm writing this because I know that after I die, Andrew will check my phone. He'll find this.
[I want him to know. I didn't die suddenly.
[I died a little every day, for five whole years, until I was completely gone.
[The cake tastes great. If there's another chance, I don't want to bake cakes anymore. If there's another chance, I don't want to be a human being.]