It’s more than I deserve.
The facility feels different when you’re not in control of what happens inside it.
The first time I came here with Lucy, I walked in like I could buy my way through fear and uncertainty. Like money could smooth the edges of suffering.
Now, walking through those doors, I feel the weight of what she has lived with for years.
The fluorescent lights. The muted urgency. The quiet grief.
And Lucy moves through it as she belongs to it, not because she wants to, but because she had to learn how to exist here. She knows where to stand. Who to look for. Which nurse will tell her the truth without dressing it up.
She doesn’t ask permission to care.
She just does.
Dr. Teller meets us near Marianne’s room, and Dr. Köhler is there already, jacket off, sleeves rolled, clipboard in hand like he owns the building.
He doesn’t smile at me.
He doesn’t care who I am.
It’s almost… refreshing.
Lucy listens as they talk, locked on every word, every implication. She asks sharp questions. She pushes back. She demands clarity. When Teller tries to soften a reality, she cuts through it with a steady voice.
This is what love looks like.
This is devotion.
This is sacrifice.
I watch Köhler study her, and I see the moment he clocks what I already know.
Lucy North, doesn’t give up, she is a force all of her own.
Not on her mother. Not on her sister. Not on anyone she loves.
And I have never been more afraid of what it means that maybe she doesn't love me anymore. Because it means she can survive without me.
She can walk away and keep going.
And if she does, it will be because I forced it.
After they finish in the room, Lucy steps out to make a call to Emily. Her shoulders are tight. Her jaw clenched. She’s holding herself together with tangled threads.
I stand there, useless, until Köhler turns and looks at me like he’s deciding whether I’m an inconvenience.
“You,” he says. “You’re the husband.”
“Yes.”
He nods once. “Stop making her job harder.”
My jaw ticks. “I’m trying.”
He tilts his head, unimpressed. “Try harder.”
The bluntness hits hard.
