On a quiet night during my hospital shift, my phone buzzed with an angry series of SnapChat messages from my neighbor, Mrs. Gable. [Dr. Carter, could you and your wife keep it down during your nighttime activities? We have kids in the next apartment!] [This has been going on for five nights straight! I knock on your door, and you guys just play dead. Are you doing this on purpose?] [Your wife is paralyzed, and you’re still pushing her like that? You bastard!] Sitting at my desk, still typing up medical records, a cold sweat broke out over my entire body. I had been working consecutive night shifts for the past five days. I hadn’t set foot in my apartment once! The moment my colleague arrived to cover my shift, I threw on my jacket and rushed out of the hospital. I dialed Chloe’s number repeatedly as I sped down the highway, but there was no answer. Strangely, Olivia, our live-in caregiver who never missed a call, wasn’t picking up either. Anxiety clawed at my chest, making my foot press harder on the gas pedal. Chloe and I had always been so in love. She would never betray me. Besides, she was paralyzed from the waist down. Intense physical intimacy was physically impossible for her. Then there was Olivia. Chloe had complained to me multiple times that Olivia was always on the phone with some sketchy guy during work hours. If I hadn’t been so busy and unable to find a replacement, I would have fired her weeks ago. Did that girl actually have the audacity to bring a man into my home? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I flew into our driveway at eighty miles an hour. My hands shook so violently that it took me three tries to punch in the door code. The apartment was pitch black, filled with the sound of heavy, ragged breathing. “Chloe? Olivia?” I called out, but only silence answered. A terrible dread washed over me. I fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on. What I saw made my heart stop. Chloe was sprawling on the hardwood floor, struggling to crawl! Olivia was nowhere to be seen! Chloe’s hair and face were soaked with sweat, and her wrists were covered in raw, red friction burns. Fury boiled inside me. That useless girl Olivia must have tied Chloe up just so she could have her little tryst in our apartment! How dare she?! Chloe lifted her head, her tear-filled eyes locking onto mine. “Ethan? What… what are you doing home?” Her voice was incredibly raspy. My heart wrenched in pain. How long had she been crying? I rushed over, lifted her gently, and carried her back to the bed. I pulled her into my arms, stroking her damp hair tenderly. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry I came back so late. I let you go through this…” “If the neighbor hadn’t messaged me, I wouldn’t have known this psychopath of a caregiver was doing this to you!” Chloe’s body suddenly stiffened, and she pulled back slightly from my embrace. “The neighbor? What did they tell you?” Seeing the sheer panic in her eyes only made my chest ache more. “Chloe, Olivia has been bringing a man here for the past five days. Has she been locking you up like this the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me? Did she threaten you?” Chloe let out a long, shuddering breath, then buried her face back into my chest. “Ethan, you’re so busy at the hospital. You save lives. I didn’t want you to worry about me…” “And the man she brought… he’s huge, muscular, and looked so dangerous. I was terrified you’d get into a fight with him and get hurt…” Listening to her soft, fragile whimpers, my self-loathing reached its peak. My beautiful wife had endured such abuse at home just to keep me focused on my work. At the same time, my hatred for Olivia reached a boiling point. I pulled out my phone to dial 911. But before I could hit call, Chloe snatched the phone out of my hand. She gripped my hand tightly, her eyes begging me. “Please, don’t. If the police get involved, everyone in the building will know… they’ll look at me with pity. I can’t take that.” Looking at her fragile, pleading face, I felt utterly defeated. Chloe had been paralyzed for years. Despite the expensive experimental medications and my daily physical therapy sessions with her, there was never any improvement. To pay for her treatments, I worked endless overtime, leaving her alone more and more. I had watched her grow increasingly insecure and fragile over the years. To avoid the pitying stares of strangers, she hadn’t left the apartment in months—she wouldn’t even go to the clinic for her checkups. It was my fault. I wasn’t rich enough, and I wasn’t a good enough doctor to cure her. Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from downstairs, followed by a car alarm blaring and two men shouting obscenities at each other. Instinctively, I moved toward the window to check. But Chloe gripped my hand even tighter. She pulled me down to her, burying her face back into my chest. “Ethan, I’m so scared. Please don’t leave me. Not even for a second.” I stopped. I wrapped my arms around her again. Nothing in this world was more important than Chloe. I held her in bed until her breathing slowed and she drifted off to sleep. Gently, I slid my arm out from under her, walked into the bathroom, filled the tub with ice-cold water, and climbed in.
Chloe and I had never consummated our marriage. On countless sleepless, agonizing nights, this was how I calmed my burning desires—shivering in a tub of ice water. To me, sacrificing my own needs was just another way of loving her. But tonight, the bathroom smelled strange. A foul, metallic, fishy odor lingered in the air, giving me a splitting headache. I searched around and finally traced the smell to the trash can. Buried at the bottom was a pair of lacy red women’s underwear. The anger I had just suppressed flared up again. That damn caregiver, Olivia! She actually used our bathroom for her dirty deeds! The next morning, I threw the trash out. I gave Chloe her sponge bath, changed her underpads as I did every day, and prepared to leave for work. But Chloe was acting strange. She seemed exceptionally clingy. “Ethan, when will you be home today?” Normally, she never asked, fearing she’d distract me. She was clearly still traumatized by yesterday. I stroked her hair gently. “I’ll come straight home after my shift. I’ll make your favorite—creamy Tuscan chicken.” Despite wanting to stay, I had to leave. Chloe’s experimental meds were running low, and I needed to find a freelance gig to cover the next batch. As I drove around the corner of our street, my phone rang. It was Olivia. Before I could even speak, she screamed through the receiver. “Dr. Carter! Did you seriously blackball me in the agency for ‘bringing men over’? How am I supposed to get another job now?!” “If you have this much free time, you should watch your own wife! Stop acting like a clueless idiot!” I hadn’t even tracked her down yet, and she had the nerve to call and yell at me? But what did she mean by that last sentence? Before I could ask, she slammed the phone down. I spammed her on Snapchat, but she blocked me instantly. A cold, uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Unable to shake it off, I called in sick and turned the car around.
When I pulled into our apartment’s underground garage, I found my assigned parking spot occupied. After calling the number on the windshield several times, a tall, muscular man with a cast on his leg limped over. He was panting heavily, and I noticed fresh hickeys peppering his neck. I recognized him. He was the jerk who always stole my parking spot. When I complained, he didn’t even apologize. He just gave me a menacing glare, got into his car, and drove off. It wasn’t even noon, and I had already been yelled at twice. My mood was in the gutter. Walking into the apartment, the sight of Chloe sleeping peacefully calmed my nerves. I gently brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. That’s when I noticed a faint smudge of pink lipstick on the corner of her mouth. I hadn’t applied any makeup on her this morning. She never wore makeup at home. My heart began to hammer against my ribs. Instinctively, my eyes drifted down to Chloe’s thighs. Over the years, despite my daily massages, her muscles should have shown some signs of atrophy from lack of use. But as I stared at her legs, I realized something I had been too blind to notice before. Her thighs were as firm, toned, and perfectly shaped as they were before the accident. Suddenly, her eyes fluttered open. She looked startled to see me. “Ethan? Why are you back? Is… is there something wrong with my legs?” I quickly shook my head, forcing a smile. “No, nothing. I just realized I forgot to do your physical therapy massage this morning. I couldn’t stop worrying, so I came back.” She giggled and pinched my nose, but then her face fell, and tears began to pool in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ethan. It’s all because I’m a useless cripple. I make your life so hard…” In the past, my heart would have broken. I would have held her tight and told her how much I loved her. But today, Olivia’s warning, the muscular man with the cast, and the perfect shape of her legs created a dark cloud of suspicion in my mind. Was it possible… that Chloe’s legs had already healed? To find out the truth, I went to the bathroom, wrung out a towel in scalding hot water, and walked back to the bedroom. “Let’s do a quick hot compress first,” I said casually, pressing the steaming towel directly onto her thigh. The intense heat turned her skin bright red instantly. I watched her face closely. Her expression didn’t change at all. She kept smiling up at me, warm and affectionate. A wave of intense guilt washed over me. I felt like a monster. Chloe loved me so much, and here I was, testing her and hurting her. I was disgusting. Panicked, I grabbed the burn ointment and began applying it to her skin with trembling hands. As blister after blister began to form on her fair skin, tears of pure remorse streamed down my face. “Chloe… I’m so sorry. It’s my fault…” Chloe paused, then slowly used her arms to lift her upper body, pulling my head into her lap. “It’s okay, silly. I can’t feel anything anyway. It doesn’t hurt.” She reached into the nightstand, pulled out a carton of milk, inserted a straw, and handed it to me. “You look exhausted, babe. Drink some milk and take a nap. You need to rest.” My heart warmed. I took a big gulp. But the moment the liquid hit my tongue, a faint, bitter aftertaste sent a chill down my spine. As a doctor, I knew that taste instantly. It was a dissolved sleeping pill. Chloe was staring at me, her eyes locked onto mine, waiting. I didn’t know how she had gotten her hands on the pills, but I knew one thing: right now, she desperately needed me to pass out. To play along, I pretended to yawn heavily. “I need to use the bathroom first,” I mumbled. I rushed to the bathroom, shoved my fingers down my throat, and threw up every drop of the milk. Then, I walked back, stumbled onto the bed, and closed my eyes, letting my breathing fall into a deep, heavy rhythm. After a few minutes, I felt Chloe lean over me. She waved her hand in front of my face. Once she was absolutely sure I was “dead to the world,” she let out a cold, disgusted sneer. “Useless simp.” Through the tiny slit of my eyelids, I watched my paralyzed wife throw back the blanket, swing her legs over the edge of the bed, and stand straight up on her own two feet.
She walked over to the closet, changed into a skin-tight, sexy dress, slipped into a pair of high heels, and walked out the door. The moment I heard the elevator doors slide shut, I bolted out of bed. I grabbed my keys and followed her. Keeping my distance, I hopped into a taxi and trailed her Uber. Chloe’s Uber pulled up to a trendy, upscale street. She walked straight toward a vending machine tucked into a dark alley. She pressed a sequence of buttons, and the machine swung outward like a door. It was a hidden speakeasy. I waited a minute, copied her actions, and slipped inside. The club was dimly lit, packed with people, and pulsing with loud electronic music. I had never been to a place like this and felt completely out of place. After pushing through the crowd, I finally spotted her in a VIP booth in the corner. Chloe was draped over a tall, muscular guy, her fingers tracing his jawline playfully. It was the jerk from the garage. My mind reeled. Was that why he always parked in my spot? So he could keep tabs on when I was home or at work? The humiliation of being cheated on burned hot in my chest. I clenched my fists and walked toward the booth. But as I reached the heavy velvet curtain of their booth, Chloe’s voice drifted out. “Babe, I think Ethan is starting to suspect something. He’s been acting really weird lately.” “It’s all because of that nosy neighbor! She actually Snapchatted him to complain. What a bitch!” “And because of her, you had to jump out of my bedroom window and break your leg. I’m so sorry, baby…” The man chuckled, pulling her closer. “What are you scared of? If he finds out, we just throw it in his face. He’s just a broke, pathetic resident doctor. What’s he gonna do? Fight me?” “You’re too hot to be stuck with a loser like him anyway.” He planted a wet kiss on her lips, and Chloe giggled, slapping his chest playfully. “Stop it! If it weren’t for revenge, I would have divorced him years ago.” “If he hadn’t botched my surgery back then, I wouldn’t have spent years recovering. All my suffering is his fault! You think he’s staying with me out of love? He’s just trying to ease his own guilty conscience!” “But you’re the smart one, babe. Getting your buddy at the rehab center to fake the bills? We split the therapy money he pays, and my secret savings account is looking very nice right now.” The man laughed loudly. “Well, you’re the mastermind who came up with the plan to get rich off his guilt!” Their laughter echoed in the booth, but everything went dead silent in my mind. I stood there, frozen. The thumping bass of the music sounded like a chorus of mockery, needles piercing my brain. I never could have imagined that this was how Chloe saw me. Years ago, when I first met Chloe, it was my first year as a resident. She had been in a horrific car crash. When she was wheeled into the ER, her legs were a mangled, bloody mess. She needed immediate, highly specialized surgery. But the moment her parents heard the projected cost, they hesitated. “Even with the surgery, she might still end up paralyzed, right?” her father had asked. “We can’t afford this. We have a son to think about.” Even when I offered to help them set up a payment plan through the hospital, they flatly refused to sign the consent form. I couldn’t bear to see a young girl lose her legs forever because of her parents’ selfishness. So, driven by my duty as a doctor, I made a risky decision. I pushed her into the OR and performed the surgery, taking full responsibility. Although I saved her legs, the delay caused by her parents meant she still required extensive rehabilitation, and a full recovery was never guaranteed. For years, I gave up opportunities to study abroad, turned down promotions, and skipped conferences just so I could stay by her side, massaging her legs and taking care of her every need. But her legs just wouldn’t get better. Eventually, she told me she wanted to give up, and the rehab center staff subtly suggested I stop bringing her in. I had carried that guilt for years. I suffered from insomnia, constantly blaming myself for not being a better doctor. And all this time, they were just playing me for a fool to steal my money.
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