5. Tessa
TESSA
I turned off the highway and headed toward Bellhaven General Hospital before I could change my mind.
The drive took twenty minutes in late-afternoon traffic, and I spent every one of them gripping the steering wheel tighter than necessary.
My hands ached by the time I pulled into the visitors' lot.
I sat there for a moment after I killed the engine, staring up at the glass-and-steel tower that rose against the September sky.
Priya's words kept circling back. Go to his world. Make him see you.
What was I even doing?
I got out of the car anyway. The air smelled like exhaust and cut grass from the landscaping that bordered the lot. I crossed the pavement toward the entrance, my scrubs still on from my shift at the clinic. I probably looked like I belonged here. I felt like an idiot.
The lobby was all polished marble and soft lighting, the kind of place that cost money just to walk through.
A woman at the reception desk glanced up as I approached, her expression pleasant and professional.
I realized I had no idea what to say. Looking for my husband sounded ridiculous.
Checking on Dr. Reid sounded like I was a patient. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for Dr. Callum Reid." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I'm his wife."
She smiled, polite and practiced, like she dealt with doctors' wives every day. "Dr. Reid is in surgery. OR Three, top floor. You're welcome to wait in the surgical wing lounge if you'd like."
I thanked her and headed for the elevators, my pulse kicking up with every step.
The elevator doors slid open and I stepped inside, pressing the button for the top floor.
My reflection stared back at me from the polished steel — tired eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail that had seen better days. I looked away.
The surgical floor was quieter than I expected.
I stepped out into a hallway that smelled like antiseptic and floor wax, the fluorescent lights humming overhead.
A nurse passed me without a second glance, her sneakers squeaking against the linoleum.
I followed the signs toward OR Three, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my throat.
There was a window.
I stopped in front of it and looked through the glass into the operating room beyond.
Callum stood at the table, gowned and gloved, his hands moving with the kind of precision I had not seen in eleven years — not directed at me, anyway.
Ingrid Halvorsen stood across from him, her blonde ponytail tucked under her surgical cap, and even from here I could see the focus in her eyes.
They were working on someone's chest. I could see the monitors beeping steadily, the open cavity, the instruments passing between them like a language they both spoke fluently.
I watched Callum lean in closer. He said something I could not hear through the glass, his eyes never leaving the patient.
Ingrid answered, nodding once, her hands moving in tandem with his.
They worked together the way people do when they have done this a thousand times before.
Smooth. Synchronized. Completely absorbed in what was in front of them.
This was the attention I had been asking for.
Not the surgery itself — I understood the work, I respected it, God knew I had spent enough years making sure he could do it.
But the way he was looking at what was in front of him.
The way he leaned in when Ingrid spoke. The way his whole body was oriented toward the table, toward her, toward the problem they were solving together.
He gave her his full attention, and I could not remember the last time he had given me even half of it.
I pressed my hand against the glass without meaning to. The surface was cool under my palm.
Callum adjusted something with a pair of forceps, his movements careful and deliberate.
Ingrid said something else and he glanced up at her — just for a second, just long enough to meet her eyes over their masks — and then went back to work.
It was nothing. It was professional. It was only the two of them doing their jobs.
It still felt like a punch to the chest.
I stood there and waited for him to look up.
Waited for him to glance toward the window, to register that I was there, to give me even a fraction of the attention he was giving the woman standing across from him.
He tilted his head slightly, listening to something Ingrid said, and his hands never stopped moving.
They were closer than we had been in months, bent over the same patient, breathing the same air.
I knew it was only work. I knew that. But watching it still felt like swallowing glass.
I waited five minutes. Then ten. My legs started to ache from standing but I could not make myself move. Maybe if I stayed long enough he would finish, step back, look around. Maybe he would see me.
He did not look up.
A nurse brushed past me in the hallway and I realized how ridiculous I looked — standing at a window like some pathetic wife checking up on her husband. My stomach turned over. Priya had been wrong. Coming here had been a mistake. Callum was not going to see me. He had not seen me in years.
I turned and walked back down the hallway, past the lounge I had not bothered to sit in, past the elevators I had taken to get here.
I took the stairs instead. My footsteps echoed in the stairwell, sharp and hollow, and I was grateful nobody else was there to see my face.
My chest felt tight and my throat burned and I just needed to get out of the building before I started crying in public.
By the time I reached the ground floor I could barely breathe.
I pushed through the door into the lobby and walked straight through to the parking lot without looking at anyone.
The late-afternoon sun hit my face and I stopped, blinking against the brightness.
My car sat exactly where I had left it. Everything was exactly where I had left it.
Except me.
I got in my car and drove home, my hands shaking on the wheel. The city blurred past in a wash of storefronts and traffic lights. I felt like I was watching it all from underwater. Distant. Muffled. Not quite real.
The Reid house was quiet when I let myself in.
The hardwood floors creaked under my feet as I walked through the living room, past the couch where Owen liked to spread out his toy cars, past the dining table where we had celebrated Sophie's tenth birthday two days ago.
Everything looked the same. The same furniture, the same pictures on the walls, the same life we had built together. Nothing felt the same.
I climbed the stairs to the bedroom.
The room was dim, the late-afternoon light filtering through the curtains in pale stripes across the floor. I stood at the foot of the bed and looked at the pillow on Callum's side. He had not slept there in a week. Maybe longer. I had stopped counting.
My wedding ring caught the light as I lifted my hand.
I stared at it for a long moment. I had not taken it off in eleven years — not when scrubbing in at the hospital, not when washing hands at the clinic, not when doing dishes at home with Sophie and Owen. I twisted it once, feeling the familiar weight of it.
Then I pulled it over my knuckle.
It slid off easier than I expected. I stood there with it sitting in my palm. It was supposed to mean something. Just a ring.
I walked to the bed and set it down on the pillow. Right in the center where he would see it if he ever actually came home and looked. I did not wrap it in anything. I did not leave a note. What would I even say? He would not understand. Or worse, he would, and he just would not care.
I left it there and walked out of the room.
Sophie's door was open. She was sitting on her bed with a book about horses spread across her lap, her braid falling over one shoulder. She looked up when I appeared in the doorway, her expression shifting from absorbed to curious.
"Mom?"
"Pack a bag, sweetheart," I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. "We're going to stay with Priya for a few days."
Sophie's eyes went wide. "Why?"
"I just think it would be good for us to have a little change." I crossed the room and sat down on the edge of her bed, the mattress dipping under my weight. "You and Owen and me. We'll have an adventure."
"What about Dad?"
My stomach twisted. "Dad's very busy right now with work. He's got surgeries scheduled and patients who need him, and honestly he probably won't even notice we're gone."
The words came out harsher than I meant them to. Sophie just looked at me, her dark eyes — Callum's eyes — searching my face for something. I tried to smooth my expression into something reassuring.
"It'll be fun," I added. "Priya's got that big TV and she said you could watch whatever you want."
Sophie closed her book slowly, setting it aside on the comforter. "Are you sad?"
God. "A little, yeah."
"Because of Dad?"
I took a breath and let it out. She was ten.
She deserved honesty, or at least as much of it as I could give her.
"Your dad and I are just going through a rough patch right now, and I think some space might be good for us.
It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you or Owen, okay?
This is just grown-up stuff that we need to figure out. "
"Is he going to be mad that we left?"
I almost laughed, except it would have come out bitter. "No, baby. He won't be mad."
He probably would not even notice. Not tonight, anyway. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not until he finally came home long enough to realize the house was empty and his children were gone.
Sophie nodded slowly, but she did not look convinced. She looked worried. She looked too old for ten and it made my chest ache.
"Pack your bag," I said gently. "Grab some clothes and your toothbrush and anything else you want to bring. I'll get Owen."
She hesitated, then slid off the bed and went to her dresser. I stood and walked out before she could ask me any more questions I did not know how to answer.
Owen was easier. He was seven and he thought sleepovers were exciting no matter where they happened. I found him in his room building a tower out of blocks, his tongue sticking out slightly in concentration. The tower wobbled when I knocked on the doorframe.
"Hey, buddy. We're going to stay at Priya's house for a little while. Want to pack your cars?"
His face lit up. "Can I bring all of them?"
"Bring your favorites."
"Okay!"
He scrambled to his toy box and started pulling out cars by the handful.
I helped him stuff them into his backpack along with a change of clothes and his favorite pajamas — the ones with the rockets on them that were getting too small but he refused to give up.
He chattered the whole time about which cars were the fastest and which ones Priya might like, and I was grateful for the noise.
It filled up the space where my thoughts kept trying to crowd in.
By the time we were all packed it was almost evening. The light outside had gone golden and soft, the kind of light that usually made me think about dinner and homework and bedtime routines. Instead I was loading my children into the car and driving away from the only home they had ever known.
Sophie climbed into the backseat and buckled herself in without a word.
Owen followed, clutching his backpack on his lap, already lining up cars on the seat beside him.
I got behind the wheel and started the engine, my hands still shaking slightly.
The house sat behind us in the rearview mirror — windows dark, door closed, everything locked up tight. I put the car in reverse.
"Mom?" Sophie's voice was small from the backseat.
I looked at her in the rearview mirror. Her face was serious, her braid crooked from where she had been lying on the bed reading. She looked older than ten. She looked older than she should have to be.
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
"Are you and Dad fighting?"
"No, baby. We're not fighting."
It was not a lie, technically. Fighting required two people who were both present. What we had was absence. What we had was him working and me waiting and both of us pretending that counted as a marriage.
"Then why are we leaving?"
I gripped the steering wheel and tried to find words that would make sense to a ten-year-old when they barely made sense to me.
"Sometimes people need a little space to figure things out, you know?
Your dad has been working a lot, and I've been working a lot, and I just think it would be good for us to take a break and spend some time together.
Just the three of us. No work, no schedules, just us. "
"Will we come back?"
My throat went tight. I did not know how to answer that.
I did not know if we would come back or if Callum would even realize we were gone.
I did not know if the ring on his pillow would mean anything to him or if he would just assume I had misplaced it.
I did not know anything except that I could not stay in that house one more night waiting for him to look up and see me.
"I don't know yet," I said finally. "We'll see how things go."
Sophie did not look satisfied with that answer — she was too smart to be satisfied with it — but she did not push.
She just nodded and looked out the window as I backed out of the driveway, her expression unreadable.
Owen kept playing with his cars, oblivious, making quiet engine noises under his breath.
I drove away from the Reid house with my children beside me and my wedding ring still sitting on the pillow where I had left it. The sun was setting behind us, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. I kept my eyes on the road ahead and I did not look back.