My Cold Wife Trapped My Soul

My wife was a scientist of renown. A public figure.

In interviews, when the subject of emotion came up, shed say:

I don't believe I am a suitable partner.

I would never prioritize love. Under no circumstances.

I am only willing to dedicate my finite time to the infinite pursuit of science.

After the segment aired, the world was full of praise for her fearless devotion to her work.

I, meanwhile, quietly tucked away my medical report.

I had cancer. Stage four.

The days she spent in London, accepting her prestigious award.

Those were my last days on this earth.

The final sensation before my consciousness dissolved was the blinding, searing light of the operating room lamp.

When I felt my spirit detach and rise, I was able to see the operating theater in its entirety.

I saw the monitor next to my bedthe line that tracked my heart rate had flattened into a single, merciless stroke.

In that moment, I realized with startling clarity.

I was dead.

I dont know why, but I had become an invisible presence, able to drift freely.

Just this morning, I had been coherent enough to talk to Serena Ashworth.

She was taking a flight at noon for a major academic conference overseas.

So, I had gotten up at seven to make her breakfast.

For someone so outwardly minimalist and detached, Serena had very specific tastes.

Her sourdough toast had to be just a little crisp, and her milk had to be steaming, not scalded.

My daughter, Paige, used to joke: "Dad, youve spoiled Mom with all this meticulous care."

I never argued with her. After taking care of Serena so thoroughly for two or three decades, even the most troublesome tasks had simply become habit.

"Serena, I heard the temperature is going to drop sharply in London because of that Arctic front."

"I packed an extra down vest for you."

"Your gum is in the left pocket of your carry-on. You always get altitude sickness on the plane; chew a piece, it helps."

"And don't stay up too late. Your heart's been bothering you, hasn't it? Get some rest..."

"Its a Polar Continental air mass."

Her voice cut me off, sharp and sudden. I looked up dully, meeting her clear, bright eyes.

The phrase beauty unmarred by time fit Serena perfectly. Her features were exquisite; she was nearing middle age, yet the years had left no trace on her.

That coldness, which she had carried since she was a young woman, could still reach straight to the core of my heart.

She was correcting the imprecision of my opening statement. The "Arctic front" Id mentioned was precisely a "Polar Continental air mass."

But I was only trying to show concern. I lowered my gaze, smoothing down the lapel of her jacket.

"I know."

"Travel safe, Serena."

She turned and walked past me. She assumed I had the afternoon free.

That wasn't true.

She was heading across the Atlantic for a major academic presentation.

I also had a meeting to attend.

It was my pre-operative consultation.

The doctors said the success rate for the surgery was only twenty percent.

When the doctor informed me that my gastric cancer had been discovered too late and had already metastasized throughout my body, I sat in the hospital corridor for an entire afternoon.

A television mounted in the corner was playing a rerun of Todays Talk, the interview Serena had done a few days prior.

The woman with the chillingly cool gaze didnt want to waste much time on anything besides research.

Even when asked about her husband, she only offered a terse dismissal.

"I am an obtuse person."

"I dont understand love. My husband... he is a responsibility, mostly."

"Anniversaries? Theyre mere formalism. I'd rather spend that time running a few more experiments than preparing for such a thing."

It was precisely the kind of thing Serena would say.

Forget anniversaries; she didnt even celebrate birthdays.

When I was younger, I used to cling to the hope that she might one day surprise me and wish me a happy birthday.

But I never waited long enough to see her arrive.

The brain that could memorize countless data points was stubbornly unwilling to remember the four digits of my birthday.

Eventually, I stopped waiting. Id sit alone at the table and prepare a bowl of long-life noodles, marking the day myself.

Serena was an iron tree; she would never bloom. It took me over twenty years to finally admit that truth.

It was only in the last few years that I began to feel differently about myself.

Call it exhaustion, or surrender.

Funnily enough, she was she, and I was I.

This truth, which she had laid out plainly for me decades ago, I was only now truly understanding.

I folded the prognosis into a crease-covered square, put it in my pocket, and only called my daughter.

Paige and I were close.

Because Serena never really liked children, and her only daughter showed absolutely no aptitude for science.

After listening to my detached, emotionless account, Paiges voice caught in her throat.

"Dad..."

"Did you tell Mom..."

"I didn't tell her."

I looked down at the granite floor.

"I don't want to tell her."

She was her, and I was I. Besides, what difference would it make if she knew I was sick?

Would she set aside the research she was madly pursuing day and night to care for me?

"Paige."

"Dad doesnt know how much longer he has to live."

"When Im gone, don't tell your mother."

I lowered my head to smooth out the creases in my shirt. Why should I bring something that Serena was utterly indifferent to, to clutter her life?

"Okay."

Paige answered from the other end of the line.

"But Dad, honestly, Mom doesn't deserve you."

"She truly doesn't deserve someone as good as you."

...

My spirit drifted through the hospital corridor.

I saw the surgeon exit the operating room, shaking his head regretfully. Paige was slumped, sobbing by the bedside.

She had brought me to the hospital at noon and had stayed outside the OR until night, but her father had failed and would not open his eyes again.

She was crying so hard, and I was fluttering frantically right next to her, but she couldn't see me.

I wanted so badly to hold her, to tell her not to cry, just like when she was little.

Paige had done so well. She hadn't become a scientist, as her mother wished, but her paintings were loved by many, and she was scheduled to have an exhibition in Italy later that year.

I sat next to her, looking up at the night sky, singing to her as I used to do when she was a child.

She couldn't hear me, but I felt that somehow, she would know her father was there.

...

Suddenly, I was swept away by a current, carried to a place very far away.

The senses of a spirit after death are bizarrely unique. I could perceive what was happening at the hospital after my death, yet at the same time, I arrived at the conference hall where Serena was presenting.

Her conference was scheduled to last seven days.

A woman like her could easily become the focal point of any gathering.

Young, beautiful, with a resume that was practically unprecedented and unlikely to be repeated.

In truth, Serena had always been the center of attention since childhood.

In college, the boys who chased her were as numerous as fish in a river.

In that slightly more traditional era, boys would boldly wait outside her dorm building.

Each time, she would look at them with that same look of absolute distance.

Dressed in the simplest white blouse, textbooks tucked under her arm, she would look down at them with a restrained, detached air:

"I'm sorry, I don't like you."

The words were utterly without mercy.

What many girls proudly saw as "being popular," for her was nothing more than a simple nuisance.

She was already winning national awards left and right back then.

Her name was frequently on the lips of professors. I was one of the students who looked up to her, always on the absolute periphery.

I only dared to glimpse the edge of her shirt when we exited the dining hall.

Serena had no idea that I had been secretly crushing on her for three or four years before we met through an arranged introduction.

And I certainly never expected that three years after graduation.

The woman my family arranged for me to meet would be her.

"I won't have a person I like."

That was the first thing Serena said to me when we met.

"If I have to say I like anything, I like experiments, mathematicsnothing to do with people, in short."

She frowned slightly, yet even this couldn't diminish her dazzling beauty.

She explained herself concisely.

"We are not discussing romance."

"We are simply ensuring the existence of an heir. Do you understand?"

...

She was very clear back then.

It was I who decided I could accept it. It was I who wanted to be with her.

I kept thinking that we had all the time in the world, that one day her clear, unflinching gaze would finally land on me.

I kept thinking that she

would fall in love with me.

Was it sheer arrogance? To pin the hope of all my daily, tireless efforts on that slim chance of love emerging over time?

My spirit drifted to her side.

I watched her exchange serious words with the scholars opposite her.

She was tall, cool, and elegant.

"Wasn't I foolish?"

I rested my hand in my pocket, looking at her.

"They say smart people look at ordinary people the way ordinary people look at fools."

Meanwhile, my body was being driven away in a hearse to the crematorium.

The academic symposium was buzzing with life.

"Serena, do you think I was truly a fool?"

Serena took a photo of the London night view and sent it to my phone.

Of course, I could no longer reply.

Paige really hadn't told her mother about my death; she had even blocked Serena from seeing the obituary Id sent out via text.

That was fine. Id clung to her for too long when I was alive; I didn't want to trouble her in death by making her change her flight.

Besides, I didn't think she particularly wanted to see me one last time.

The London night view was beautiful. But for some reason, that night, she stared at her phone for a long time on the windy balcony.

I drifted closer to see, and I suddenly realized: In the past, whenever she sent me a message, I always replied instantly.

When she traveled abroad, she would casually send me a few photos. I would reply with an emoji Id saved from Paigea big thumbs-up, or two, with the words "So awesome!" written on them.

This time, she waited a long time. I didn't reply.

"Dr. Ashworth, its raining again outside."

"Please come back in, youll catch a chill."

A young mans voice called out behind herone of her students. In the academic world, some things are silently understood.

The student stepped forward, a little too intimately, to drape a jacket over her shoulders, but she gently pushed him away.

"Fish and chips."

"Its awful."

Serena sent me a picture of the restaurant.

My remains were being placed into the cremation furnace.

"Raining again."

Serena sent a picture of the view outside her hotel window.

Friends and family were attending my burial service.

"Presentation tonight."

"Flight back tomorrow."

Serena stood on the stage, the lenses of many cameras focused on her.

I used my somewhat rusty memory of technical English to understand the presentation.

Her research achievement seemed to have added a brilliant new chapter to human development.

There she was, standing in the spotlight, shining in her domain, never failing to exceed expectations.

I suppose that was the reason I had loved her for so many years.

But that was my love for her; it wasn't her love for me.

The spring rain fell softly. As my ashes were being buried next to a simple square tombstone, I finally understood this truth.

That night, when the conference ended, Serena tried calling my number. When the third call went unanswered, she changed her flight to one leaving at midnight.

She frowned the entire flight; her face was even colder than usual.

It made sense. For years, I had been available to her whenever she called. It must have been disorienting to suddenly be unable to reach me.

Normally, I would always pick her up at the airport whenever she returned home.

I would be sure to arrive an hour or two early and just wait there for her.

These were also habits. A person cant bear to see their beloved inconvenienced. I always did my utmost to make her life comfortable and perfectly arranged.

But this time, she had to walk through the deserted terminal alone and hail an expensive cab at four or five in the morning.

She arrived home at six a.m. She knocked first, but no one answered. She used her fingerprint to unlock the door and pushed it open.

The house was empty.

Everything was just as she had left it. The sink was spotless, the dining table bare.

Only, the slippers I usually wore were sitting by the entryway.

She unfastened the jacket shed been too rushed to change out of, walking around the unlit house, circle after circle.

The bedroom, the balcony, the bathroom.

Finally, she pulled open the door to the washing machine.

...

Finding nothing, she paused, pulled out her phone, and called me.

After a long wait, she was met with a busy signal.

She sighed, sliding her thumb down the list to another number.

Paiges.

Their relationship had been strained since before Paige was a teenager.

In recent years, Paige only came home to see me, with no intention of engaging with her mother.

Serenas attitude was much the same: she was consumed by her research, which essentially meant she didn't want to be bothered with raising a child.

She had been absent during the most crucial stages of her daughter's development, so Paige never had a kind word for her.

"What do you want?"

"Where is your father?"

Both of their voices were sharp, but Paige hesitated.

Then came a strange laugh, an indescribable sound. She repeated the question in a low murmur.

"Where is my father?"

"My father is gone."

"Gone where?"

Serenas frown deepened. The morning sun had just begun to fall on her brow.

I heard the raw, choked edge in my daughter's voice on the other end of the line.

"He didn't go anywhere."

"Dad passed away, Mom."