His Duty, My Goodbye

I’ve never been one for beating around the bush.

So when I found the string of fiery texts between my firefighter fiancé, Nate, and some girl I’d never heard of, I didn’t fall apart. I didn’t scream. I just handed him his phone and waited, my face perfectly calm, for an answer.

The silence in our apartment stretched until it was thin enough to snap. Finally, he spoke, his voice raspy.

“She’s a girl I rescued from a fire. She’s… going through some things. I’ll admit, for a second, I felt something.”

“But Ava,” he pleaded, “we’re high school sweethearts. We made it this far. I swear to you, I’ll cut it off. Clean break.”

I stared into Nate’s eyes, so full of earnest desperation, and pushed down the sharp, twisting pain in my chest.

I nodded. The wedding was still on.

I had no idea how quickly that promise would turn to ash.

On our wedding day, one of his fellow firefighters, Ben, burst through the chapel doors like a human cannonball.

“Nate! It’s Maya! She found out you’re getting married! She’s on a roof downtown, says she’s gonna jump!”

The diamond ring, the one he was about to slip onto my finger, hovered in the space between us.

Then it fell.

The clink it made against the polished floor was the loudest sound I’d ever heard.

Nate was a blur, a lightning strike bolting for the door.

I stared at his back, my eyes burning so hot I thought they might bleed. I pulled every ounce of air into my lungs and screamed.

“Nate, if you walk out that door right now, we are done! Do you hear me? We are over!”

He paused for a fraction of a second—a flicker of hesitation. He didn’t even turn around. And then, he was gone.

The vow he’d made to me had become a joke, and I was the punchline.

…

The wedding devolved into a grotesque circus.

The whispers of our guests were a thousand tiny needles in my ears, a high-pitched hum of pity and speculation. Our parents rushed to my side, their faces masks of confusion and panic.

Nate’s teammate, Ben, just stood there, his face the color of raw liver, wringing his hands.

“Ava… I’m so sorry. It’s just… Maya, she has severe depression. Nate saved her life before… and she’s latched onto him. She says he’s the only one who can talk her down. It’s a life-or-death thing, he didn’t have a choice. Please don’t be mad at him…”

Ben had been Nate’s shadow for three years. He used to greet me with a wide, easy grin, calling me “sis” like we were already family.

Now, he couldn’t even meet my eyes.

I wondered how many of Nate’s dirty little secrets Ben had helped him hide. How many late-night calls from Maya had he helped cover up?

A suffocating pain bloomed in my chest, and for the first time, I truly understood the taste of betrayal. My parents gripped my hands, their own voices tight with unshed tears.

“What is going on? He’s on leave for his own wedding! Who in God’s name needs to be rescued by him right now?”

Nate’s parents stood nearby, his mother frantically dialing his phone over and over, muttering through gritted teeth, “You just wait, Ava, honey. I’m going to make that son of mine crawl back here. If he doesn’t, I swear I’ll have his hide!”

The fallen diamond ring was kicked around by shuffling feet on the red aisle runner, rolling further and further away, just like my heart, which had been stomped into the ground.

I stood frozen in my white dress, the train pooling around my feet like a heavy, rain-soaked cloud.

I had imagined my wedding day a million times. Not once did I imagine this: a pathetic one-act play where the groom abandons his bride at the altar for another woman.

For five agonizing hours, I called Nate 108 times. He didn't answer once.

I watched my phone screen light up and go dark, light up and go dark, until the battery finally died, leaving me with a silent, black rectangle.

The late afternoon sun streamed through the stained-glass windows of the church, casting a mottled patch of light on my empty ring finger. The light should have been warm, but it felt colder than ice.

The guests trickled away, leaving behind a battlefield of wilting flowers and half-eaten cake.

Suddenly, the world began to spin, the church dissolving into a massive vortex. The last thing I heard before the blackness swallowed me was my mother’s ragged, terrified scream.

1

I woke up in a hospital. The sterile, cold scent of antiseptic filled my nose.

A nurse was changing my IV bag. Seeing my eyes open, she spoke in a soft voice.

“You need to take it easy now. You’re watching out for two people. No more stress. You have to take care of yourself.”

Two people?

I stared at the stark white ceiling as a single, silent tear escaped and traced a cold path into my hair.

I was seventeen when Nate stuffed a crumpled love note into my locker, so nervous he practically tripped over his own feet.

In college, we were long-distance. He once drove his clunker of a car for twenty hours straight through three states, just to surprise me for my birthday.

The day he graduated from the fire academy, he held me tight, his eyes red with emotion. “My job is to run into fires for strangers,” he’d said. “Imagine what I’d do for you.”

Seven years. The memories flashed through my mind like a movie on fast-forward.

I looked at the barely concealed joy on my parents’ faces, and on Nate’s parents’ faces, and forced a smile that felt more painful than crying.

How could I tell them? I was pregnant with the child of the man I’d loved for seven years, but our story was over.

At seven o’clock that evening, after being gone for six hours, Nate finally showed up.

He was pale, and he looked at me with just the right amount of guilt in his eyes.

“Ava, I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “Maya… I couldn’t just let her die. It’s my duty.”

My throat felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I swallowed the bitterness and asked, my voice cold, “Are you the only firefighter in the entire city? Did they all die today?”

“She doesn’t jump yesterday, she doesn’t jump tomorrow. She picks our wedding day, and you’re the only one who can save her. What kind of game do you think she’s playing, Nate? Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

He fell silent. After a long moment, he took my hand. It was freezing. His voice was tight.

“Ava, in seven years, I have never asked you for anything. Not really. But I’m asking you now. Please, don’t make a big deal out of this. Don’t let it get back to Maya. With her condition… she can’t handle that kind of stress.”

I stared at the plea in his eyes, and my heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible fist, the pain so sharp I couldn’t breathe.

He should be apologizing to me, not asking for favors.

A person’s first instinct doesn’t lie. He never once thought about how humiliated I was, left alone at our wedding. He never considered why I would have collapsed, why I was in a hospital.

The first words out of his mouth, the first thoughts in his head, were all for another woman.

Tears fell like broken pearls, hitting the white hospital blanket and blooming into small, dark stains.

It took all the strength I had to force out a single word. “Fine.”

He let out a breath, the relief on his face so obvious it was like a slap. Then, he delivered an even crueler blow.

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