2. Nora
— ? —
Nora
The locker room at the clinic smelled like industrial cleaner and old coffee, which was somehow more depressing than it should’ve been.
I’d come in early to grab my jacket before rounds, too tired to have made coffee at home, too tired to care that I looked like I’d slept about three hours because I had.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with that particular frequency that made my teeth hurt, and I was halfway to my locker when I heard them.
“I’m just saying.” Sasha’s voice, carrying from around the corner.
Not quite a whisper. Louder than it needed to be.
“He’s always finding excuses to touch me.
Like, always. Yesterday he put his hand on my back when we were walking out of the Hollister barn, and I swear to God, Mel, it lasted like five seconds. That’s not accidental.”
My feet stopped moving. My hand was still reaching for my locker. My whole body had gone very still, the way it does when you hear words that weren’t meant for you and your brain is trying to decide whether to process it.
“I mean, he takes you everywhere.” That was Mel, one of the techs, her voice bright with gossip. “Have you seen the rosters? It’s like he can’t do a single call without you anymore.”
“Right?” Sasha laughed, and it was a sound I’d never heard from her before: satisfied, smug, dripping with victory. “He practically loves me at this point. Like, I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes it really does feel like I’m basically his wife. More than his actual wife, anyway.”
My stomach dropped through the floor.
“Does she even notice?” Mel asked. “I feel like if my husband was spending that much time with another woman, I’d lose my mind.”
“Honestly? I don’t think she notices anything. She’s too busy being sad and pathetic, wandering around the clinic looking like someone kicked her dog. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually. Like, girl, read the room.”
They laughed.
They laughed, and I stood there with my hand on my locker and my ears ringing and my breakfast threatening to make a reappearance all over the tile floor.
They laughed like I was a joke, like my marriage was a joke, like the slow disintegration of everything I’d built with Hunt was nothing but entertainment for their morning.
I stepped around the corner.
Sasha saw me first. Her face went through a quick, calculated shuffle, the surprise shifting into a smile that never reached her eyes. Mel had the decency to look uncomfortable, at least, her cheeks going red, but Sasha just tilted her head and let that smile spread wider.
“Oh,” she said. “Hey, Nora. Didn’t see you there.”
Mel coughed. “I should go, I have to prep for, um, the thing.” She practically ran out of the locker room, her sneakers squeaking on the floor.
Sasha didn’t move.
She just stood there, arms crossed, leaning against the lockers with that satisfied expression still plastered across her face.
Waiting. Watching. Like she wanted to see what I’d do, wanted to catalogue my reaction for later, wanted to add “made her cry in the locker room” to whatever list she was keeping.
I walked past her without a word.
My spine was straight. My face was blank.
I didn’t give her anything, not a flinch, not the satisfaction of seeing me break.
I walked out of that locker room like I hadn’t heard a single syllable, like my heart wasn’t pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, like my hands weren’t shaking at my sides.
The hallway blurred around me. Left turn, right turn, past the supply closet, past the break room, past all the familiar landmarks of a building I’d worked in for years.
I wasn’t thinking about where I was going.
I wasn’t thinking about anything except the sound of their laughter and the word “pathetic” and the look on Sasha’s face when she’d said “basically his wife.”
Hunt was in his office.
I knew that because I always knew where he was now, because I’d learned to track him through rosters and scanners and the schedule app, because it was the only way I could find my own husband anymore. The door was open. He was at his desk, head bent over paperwork, his shoulders tight with tension.
I knocked on the doorframe.
He looked up. This time there was no softening first, no unguarded second before the shutter. The careful neutral expression was already in place, the one he wore all the time lately, the one I hated, the one that made me feel like I was talking to a stranger wearing my husband’s face.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
“No. Not even close.”
His eyebrows drew together. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
I wanted to laugh. What was wrong. What was wrong.
“Hunt.” I heard my own voice and didn’t recognize it, flat and worn down to nothing. “I’m so tired.”
“Okay.” He stood up, came around the desk. His hands twitched at his sides, the old instinct to reach for me, but he didn’t follow through. “Tired of what? Did anything happen at home? Are you sick?”
“Tired of the rosters.”
His face closed again. That careful, closed-off thing that made my chest hurt.
“Nora, I told you, it’s just scheduling. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.” I was shaking now. I could feel it in my hands, in my voice, in the tight coil of my stomach.
“It’s a big deal when I find out about my own marriage from other people’s screenshots.
When a tech’s wife knows more about my husband’s schedule than I do.
When I walk into the locker room and hear Sasha telling Mel that she’s basically your wife now. ”
Hunt went pale. “What did she say?”
“Does it matter? Does it matter what she said when everyone in this building has watched you bench me, Hunt? When I haven’t worked a real call with you in months? When every dangerous rescue on the roster says Anderson/Reed like that’s just the way things are now?”
“It’s not what you think.” His voice was tight.
Controlled. The voice he used when he was holding a card back, when he was managing me instead of talking to me.
“I’ve been trying to let you rest. Lighten your load.
You’ve been tired lately, and I thought if Sasha took some of the harder calls, you could recover. That’s all. That’s the only reason.”
I stared at him.
I stared at my husband, at this man I’d built my whole life around, and I felt a seam crack open in my chest. Anger I could’ve handled, and the hurt was old news.
What cracked was the hope, the last tiny stubborn piece of it I’d been hoarding, the one that said maybe he had a reason, maybe he still saw me, maybe we could find our way back.
“I never asked you to rest me.” My voice came out barely above a whisper. “I never asked for a lighter load, or to be protected from my own job, Hunt. I asked to be your partner.”
“You are my partner.”
“Then why does everyone in this building think Sasha is?”
He didn’t answer. His jaw worked. His hands clenched at his sides.
“It’s temporary,” he finally said. “It’s not what you think it is. You’re making this bigger than it needs to be.”
The words hit me like a slap.
I watched my husband wave away my hurt like a scheduling conflict. Like the dissolution of everything we’d built was an inconvenience he didn’t have time for. Like I was being dramatic, emotional, unreasonable, for noticing that he’d replaced me with another woman and told everyone but me.
“Right,” I said. “Right. It’s temporary. It’s not what I think. I’m making it bigger than it is.”
“Nora.” He reached for me, finally, but I stepped back. His eyes flickered. Pain, maybe. Or just frustration that I wasn’t cooperating. I couldn’t tell anymore. “Come on. Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what? Don’t ask questions? Don’t notice? Don’t care that my husband barely looks at me anymore?”
“I look at you.” His voice cracked. “I always look at you.”
“Then why can’t you see me?”
The silence stretched between us, thick and terrible.
Hunt’s hands dropped to his sides. His face was working through a complicated argument with itself, the careful mask slipping, but I didn’t trust it anymore.
I didn’t trust anything about this man who’d promised me back to back and given me his assistant’s text messages and another woman’s name on every roster that mattered.
“I’ve got rounds,” I said. “And you’ve got a bear relocation to prep for. With Reed.”
“Nora, wait.”
I didn’t wait.
I walked out of his office and down the hall and into the supply closet, where I locked the door and pressed my back against it and forced myself to breathe through the tightness in my chest. There were no tears; I was too tired for them.
I just stood there in the dark, surrounded by boxes of gauze and bottles of antiseptic, and let the anger fade into a quiet, final thing that scared me more than anger ever had.
That night, I lay awake next to him again.
Hunt was asleep. He’d come to bed early for once, had tried to pull me close, had murmured a few words against my hair that might’ve been an apology.
I’d let him hold me because I didn’t have the energy to fight.
His arm was heavy across my waist, his breathing slow and even, his heart beating steady against my back.
Back to back, he’d said. Always.
The bear relocation was tomorrow. The biggest call of the season. The one I should’ve been leading with him, once, back when we were partners in more than just name. Anderson/Reed. Of course it was Anderson/Reed.
I set a finish line in the dark, silent and sure.
One more time. After the bear call, I’d ask him one more time. I’d lay it all out, everything I’d been carrying, everything I needed, and I’d give him one more chance to see me. One more chance to be my husband instead of a stranger I scheduled through.
And if I was still married to a ghost after that, I was done waiting.
Hunt’s arm tightened around me in his sleep. His lips pressed against my shoulder. A gesture he didn’t know he was making, muscle memory from a marriage he was too busy to tend.
I watched the shadows on the ceiling and counted down to the end.