flashback

The fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor cast a sterile, blue-tinged glow that made everything look like it was underwater.

Through the open door of room 307, a different kind of light spilled out—

warm,

Golden,

alive with the murmur of overlapping voices and the occasional burst of genuine laughter.

She stood just beyond the threshold, a statue in the shadowed hallway, her back pressed against the cool, painted cinder block wall.

Inside, they were a tableau of perfect happiness.

Her sister,

propped up on white pillows,

her face pale but animated,

was the sun around which every planet in their solar system finally,

Rightfully,

orbited.

Her parents flanked the bed, their hands clasped together, their faces etched with a year’s worth of worry that had finally melted into radiant relief.

His parents were there too, beaming.

And Kyivan.

Kyivan was perched on the edge of her mattress, his body angled toward Anya's as if pulled by a fundamental force of nature.

He was holding her Anya's hand, his thumb stroking the back of it with a tenderness that was a physical blow to her chest.

She had been married to this man for 1826 days, and in all that time, he had never once looked at her with even a fraction of that softness.

Five years.

It was their anniversary.

The irony was a sharp, metallic taste in her mouth.

She had spent the first four alone with a cold dinner.

She was spending the fifth one alone in a hospital hallway.

Her heart wasn’t pounding.

It felt like it had shriveled into a cold, hard stone in her chest, its beating a dull, distant thud she could barely perceive over the roaring in her ears.

This was the moment she had supposedly been waiting for.

The escape clause.

The day her sister would wake up and she could step out of the ill-fitting skin of her life.

*So why did my legs feel like they were made of water? Why was there a pressure building behind my eyes that threatened to crack my skull open?*

She watched as her sister said something, Anya’s voice too faint for me to catch the words.

Kyivan threw his head back and laughed—a real, unguarded, joyful sound she didn’t know he was capable of making.

The sound wrapped around her, tight as a vise.

Everyone else laughed with him, a chorus of celebration from which she was excluded.

She was the audience to her own life’s demolition.

His gaze swept across the room as he laughed, and for one breathtaking, terrifying second, it landed on her.

Their eyes met through the doorway.

The laughter died in his throat.

His face, which had been open and warm, shut down instantly.

The green of his eyes, which had been sparkling, iced over.

It was a look that lasted less than a second, but it conveyed everything:

*You don’t belong here. This isn't for you.*

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