“I won’t,” I replied. “If this works, I want you to be the first thing I see.”
His breath caught. He kissed my forehead.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too.”
“Of losing you.”
The anesthesia crept through my veins, and the world slipped away.
When I woke up, my head felt heavy.
My eyes were wrapped in thick bandages. Machines beeped softly around me.
“Nigel?” My voice sounded small.
“I’m here,” he said immediately.
Something in his tone was wrong. There was no excitement. No triumph.
“Was the surgery unsuccessful?” I asked.
“It was successful. You’ll finally be able to see,” he said. But there wasn’t any joy in his voice.
My stomach twisted.
Something in his tone was wrong.
He began unwrapping the bandages from my head.
I felt each layer loosen, cool air brushing my eyelids.
“Don’t hate me. Before you see this, I need to tell you everything isn’t the way you think,” he said suddenly.
I let out a nervous laugh. “What does that even mean?”
But my heart was racing.
Light pierced through my eyelids.
I gasped.
“Don’t hate me.”
At first, everything was a blur of white and gold. It felt like staring straight into the sun.Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I blinked rapidly. Shapes began to form. Lines sharpened. Colors flooded in.
I could see the world for the first time after decades!
A blue curtain. Gray machines. A pale ceiling.
And then, in front of me, a face. He looked older than I had imagined. Dark hair streaked with silver. Brown eyes rimmed with exhaustion. A thin scar near his left eyebrow.
My breath caught. That scar.
I could see the world for the first time.
The memory slammed into me!
A boy on a swing. A shove. A fall. A rock.
I clapped my hands over my mouth in shock and froze. “How… How is it possible that it’s YOU? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Let me explain, my love,” Nigel said, his voice trembling.
I shook my head as my vision sharpened around him. “Don’t call me that. You pushed me. You’re the reason I lost my sight!”
His face went pale. The scar above his eyebrow confirmed everything.
The memory slammed into me!
“I was eight,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean for you to fall like that.”
“But you did!” I shot back. “You disappeared after that day. Then you reappeared, pretending we’d never met? You let me marry you without telling me who you were!”
The nurse stepped closer. “Ma’am, please stay calm.”
“I want to leave,” I said. “Right now!”
Nigel reached for my hand, but I pulled away.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Ma’am, please stay calm.”
Within minutes, I was in a wheelchair, overwhelmed by bright lights and unfamiliar faces.
Nigel followed as they rolled me down the hallway.
“Please,” he said. “Just hear me out.”
“I can’t,” I replied.
Outside, the sky stretched wide and blue. It was the first sky I had seen in years, and it felt cruel that the man who gave it back to me was the one who’d taken it away.
“Just hear me out.”
A cab that the nurse had called for me arrived.
I didn’t look at Nigel again.The ride home was a blur of color and motion. Trees. Traffic lights. Storefronts. The world felt too big.
When I stepped inside our house, everything looked foreign. The couch was gray. The walls were pale yellow. Family photos lined the hallway.
I stopped at one of our wedding pictures. I was smiling, my eyes closed, touching his face. He was looking at me as if I were his entire world.
I didn’t look at Nigel again.
My chest tightened.
I walked into his office and opened drawers with shaking hands.
If he’d lied about this, what else had he hidden?
Then I found stacks of research. Medical journals. Surgical sketches. Notes filled with dates from years before we started dating. My name was written on a folder from nearly 15 years earlier!
I sank into his chair and called my best friend, Lydia.
Then I found stacks of research.
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