The Price of His Love

I stood frozen outside the breakroom. Blood still seeped through the gauze on my cheek, but the tears fell faster.

Rogers voice carried through the door, cold and clinical. It was a blade that cut apart every shred of faith I had clung to for three years.

The moment I paid her mothers hospital bills, I started the clock, he said. His tone was unrecognizable from the man who once swore he loved me. "Jona needs that overseas commendation. Bianca is tough. And she is naive enough to take the blame."

So that was it. I was not a partner. I was a tool. A stepping stone.

"Once she returns, I will convince her to transfer her combat medic merits to Jona. In exchange, I marry Bianca. It is a fair trade."

Fair? I spent three years dodging shrapnel, stitching wounds, bleeding for that commendation, all to clear a path for his favorite colleague. That was his idea of fair.

His colleague slammed his coffee mug down and stormed out. He froze when he saw me in the hallway.

Roger looked up. His eyes met mine, and his pupils tightened.

My mind shot back three years. He had held my hands, looked into my eyes, and told me he loved me. But he said I had to serve three years as a combat surgeon to prove my devotion. Come back, and I will marry you.

For three years, bullets grazed my head. Mortar fire damaged my hearing. I operated with insurgent rifles at my back. Every time I was near death, I told myself it would be worth it. Survive, and I could marry Roger.

Everyone knew Roger was a genius with severe affective detachment. He could not feel emotions. But during the darkest year of my life, he took out his checkbook and operated on my dying mother himself.

I thought he was my savior. I did not know he was leading me into another hell.

"Roger, we are done." My voice was terrifyingly calm. It felt as if those three words had drained the last life from my veins.

Roger frowned, clearly annoyed by the interruption.

"Bianca, eavesdropping is incredibly unprofessional."

He stood up, adjusting his pristine white coat. "But since you heard it, it saves me the trouble of drafting a cover story. Come to the chief of surgerys office with me this afternoon and sign the merit transfer over to Jona. Tomorrow morning, we go to the courthouse and get married."

I stood perfectly still, staring directly into his eyes.

There was absolutely no warmth there. Just a barren, calculated wasteland. He didn't even have the basic human decency to look guilty about getting caught in a lie.

The veil finally dropped. He wasn't terrified of losing me. He never loved me at all.

"Let me repeat myself, Roger. We are breaking up."

"I am not giving my commendations to Jona. And I am absolutely not marrying you."

I spun on my heel and walked away.

Roger lunged forward, his long fingers clamping around my wrist like a vice. I could hear the forced patience in his voice, masking a bubbling irritation.

"Bianca, stop being irrational."

"You serve three years in a combat zone, and I marry you when you get back. That was the transaction we agreed upon from day one. Why are you suddenly backing out of the deal?"

A transaction.

The love I had literally risked my life to prove was just a line item on a ledger to him.

I looked back at him, a bitter, broken smile twisting my lips.

"Because you lied to me."

Roger blinked, genuine confusion washing over his handsome face.

"You told me you loved me," I whispered. "I would never put my life on the line for a man who was just using me."

He stared at me, totally lost. His emotional detachment meant the concept of "love" was like a foreign language he had never bothered to study.

But for some reason, hearing me say those words made his chest tighten. His gaze flicked down to the fresh, bloody scrape on my cheek and my red, swollen eyes. A strange, suffocating pressure built in his lungs.

He honestly wondered if he needed to schedule a psych evaluation. Something inside him felt medically wrong.

While he was distracted, I ripped my arm out of his grip and kept walking.

I hadn't even made it past the outpatient corner when a chaotic scream ripped through the corridor.

Before I could process what was happening, a hysterical middle-aged woman tackled a nurse against the drywall. She had a hunting knife pressed tight against the nurse's carotid artery, twisting a fistful of her hair.

"You worthless bitch! You gave me the wrong meds and killed my baby! Youre paying for my child's life with yours!"

I recognized the sobbing nurse instantly. It was Jona.

Instinct overrode my trauma. My combat training kicked in, and I took a slow, calculated step forward to de-escalate.

"Ma'am, I need you to breathe. Look at me."

"Do you know who I am? My name is Dr. Bianca. Im a combat surgeon, you might have seen me on the local news. Just lower the knife, and we can figure this out."

The woman locked her wild eyes on me for a few agonizing seconds. She seemed to recognize my face. She pulled the blade a fraction of an inch away from Jona's throat, swinging it erratically in my direction.

"Figure what out?!" she shrieked.

"Do you know how many rounds of IVF I went through?! I finally got pregnant, and this stupid slut mixed up my prescription! My baby is gone! And she had the nerve to tell me I was just genetically defective and deserved the miscarriage!"

I took a deep, steadying breath, closing the distance inch by inch.

"She was entirely out of line, and I am so sorry she said that to you. Listen to me. I went to med school with one of the best fertility specialists in the country. Her success rates are incredible. I will personally introduce you to her. Youre still young. You have so much hope left to start a family."

The womans crazed expression wavered. The hand gripping the knife began to tremble.

She was breaking down. She was just about to drop the weapon.

Suddenly, two hands slammed violently into the center of my back.

I was shoved hard, launching directly into the woman.

The sickening sound of tearing flesh filled my ears.

The hunting knife buried itself straight to the hilt in my abdomen.

Agony exploded through my nervous system like a live wire. The waiting room erupted into terrified shrieks.

The grieving mother went pale, dropping the handle of the knife like it burned her. Hospital security rushed in, tackling her to the linoleum.

Hot, thick blood pulsed out of my stomach, pooling rapidly onto the pristine white tiles.

I clamped both hands over the wound, fighting the darkness closing in on my vision, and weakly turned my head to see who pushed me.

It was Roger.

He was the one who threw me onto the blade.

My vision blurred, but the sheer disbelief anchored me to consciousness.

Roger was standing at the edge of the crowd. He looked down at me, doing a rapid, clinical visual assessment of my blood loss to calculate if the wound was fatal.

Once he was satisfied I wasn't bleeding out fast enough to die on the spot, his face went completely blank. He wrapped a protective arm around a trembling, crying Jona and walked away.

I collapsed into the growing puddle of my own blood and let the darkness take me.

When I finally opened my eyes, the harsh scent of antiseptic and sweet fruit filled my nose. I was in a private recovery suite.

Roger was sitting in a chair beside my bed, meticulously peeling an apple with a surgical scalpel.

"You're awake," he said smoothly. "I apologize. My psychiatrist informed me that my actions in the lobby were socially unacceptable."

"He said I shouldn't have based my decision purely on the triage of survival probabilities. But looking at the variables, if that woman twitched, Jona's carotid artery would have been severed. Immediate exsanguination. Zero chance of survival. By pushing you into the blade, I ensured you took the hit to the lower abdomen. Highly painful, but statistically non-lethal."

He finished the peel in one continuous ribbon and offered the apple to me.

"From a purely mathematical standpoint, I made the correct choice."

"Let's renegotiate our deal, Bianca."

I didn't take the fruit. I slowly turned my head to stare at the wall.

"Get the hell out of my room," I rasped.

Roger paused, clearly confused by my hostility. He tried again.

"I recognize that your emotional state is volatile right now. Fine. You can keep your combat commendations. Consider this a trade for saving Jona's life today."

"We'll go to the courthouse tomorrow."

Another transaction.

He was bargaining with my life like I was a used car on a lot.

A wave of absolute, sickening revulsion crashed over me. I pushed through the searing pain in my stitches, threw my torso forward, and swung my arm.

Crack.

My palm connected violently with his cheek.

But when I opened my mouth, a pathetic, broken sob tore out of my throat instead of a scream.

"Stop treating me like an animal, Roger!"

"You're a brilliant surgeon! You know the anatomy! The blade missed my inferior vena cava by literally a fraction of an inch! If it had severed that vein, the mortality rate is one hundred percent!"

"What if I had died right there on the floor?!"

Roger froze entirely.

For the absolute first time in my life, I saw something fracture behind his eyes. It was raw, unadulterated terror.

He slowly lowered his head, his voice dropping to a hollow, tight whisper.

"I'm sorry. I'll take my cognitive therapy more seriously. I will learn how to protect you properly."

"Just... please don't die, Bianca."

The room fell into a suffocating, heavy silence.

When he realized I wasn't going to look at him or speak another word, he set the apple on the nightstand and quietly walked out of the room.

A second later, my phone buzzed on the table.

I answered it. A deep, steady voice came through the speaker, grounding me instantly.

"Bianca. I'm on a military transport plane heading your way. I'll be touching down soon."

"Pack your things and come with me. That man doesn't love you. He doesn't even possess the biological capacity to understand what love is."

Tears spilled over my eyelashes, soaking into my hospital pillow.

I felt like an idiot. A tragic, pathetic clich holding onto a ghost.

"But Wyatt," I cried softly, "he saved my mom. He promised he was going to learn how to keep me safe."

"Let me be stupid just one last time."

Wyatt let out a heavy, frustrated sigh on the other end of the line.

"And what happens if he's just playing you again?"

I closed my eyes, letting the last thread of my naive hope snap.

"If he's lying to me again, I'll pack my bags and leave with you."

"And I will never, ever forgive Roger as long as I live."

The next morning, I ate the apple Roger had left for me.

We got back together.

He visited my room every single day. Sometimes he brought fresh fruit. Sometimes he just sat in the armchair, quietly reviewing my chart and checking my surgical drains. He would awkwardly force himself to make small talk, trying to mimic what he thought a normal, loving boyfriend sounded like.

His cognitive behavioral therapy was clearly making a dent. He was trying.

But he was also the chief of cardiothoracic surgery. His schedule was brutal. On the Friday afternoon we were finally supposed to go get our marriage license, two emergency trauma surgeries got dumped on his lap.

He rescheduled for the following week.

But when the next week rolled around, a massive pile-up on the interstate flooded the ER.

"Bianca, I'm so sorry. I can't scrub out right now. Next week. I promise I will clear my entire afternoon next week."

"It's fine," I told him over the phone. "Save lives. Drink some coffee."

I was a doctor too. I understood the triage. I took the bitter disappointment swelling in my chest and locked it in a box.

It was just another week. I survived three years of artillery fire; I could survive a few more days of waiting.

Later that month, the hospital administration held a mandatory all-staff assembly. After the Chief of Medicine droned on about budget cuts, he switched gears.

"Additionally, HR is rolling out a massive update to our internal benefits and payroll software. We need to update our dependent and marital status records."

"If anyone here has recently gotten married, please raise your hand so we can get a preliminary headcount."

A ripple of low chuckles went through the auditorium. Everyone knew this was the Chief's way of publicly teasing the staff.

I glanced to my right. Beside me, Roger slowly raised his hand.

Immediately, a chorus of catcalls and whistles erupted from our department's seating section.

"Oh, come on, Dr. Roger! The whole hospital knows you're dying to put a ring on Dr. Bianca, but raising your hand before the ink is dry doesn't count!"

"Seriously man, you two are making us sick with the lovesick puppy routine! Give us a date already so we know when the open bar is!"

"Put your arm down, Chief, she's not going anywhere! Just make sure you get the good champagne!"

The good-natured teasing made my face burn. I smiled, a warm flutter in my chest, and gently tugged on the sleeve of his white coat.

"Put your hand down, you idiot," I whispered playfully. "He asked for people who are already legally married."

But as I looked across the aisle, my stomach dropped.

Jona had her hand raised too. And she was staring directly at me, a vicious, triumphant smirk plastered across her face.

Every alarm bell in my nervous system went off at once.

A second later, Jona stood up. Her voice carried clearly through the massive room.

"You guys have it all wrong."

"I'm the one who married Dr. Roger."

Dead silence.

And then, absolute chaos. The auditorium exploded like a grenade had been dropped in the center aisle. Hundreds of eyes darted frantically between me, Roger, and Jona. The whispers morphed into a deafening roar of shock and aggressive gossip.

The Chief of Medicine froze at the podium, completely blindsided. It took him a solid ten seconds to recover.

"Alright, settle down! Shut it down! This is a professional environment, not a tabloid! Assembly dismissed! Everyone back to your wards!"

I couldn't hear the rest of his speech.

It felt like a mortar shell had gone off right next to my head. The ringing in my ears was absolute. My entire body went numb.

I stood up and moved like a ghost, letting the current of the exiting crowd carry me toward the hallway.

Roger caught up to me in a deserted stairwell, grabbing my arm. He looked incredibly guilty.

"Bianca, please let me explain."

"Jona's father was my mentor in med school. He practically raised me. He has stage four pancreatic cancer. His dying wish was to see his daughter married to someone who could take care of her. We made an arrangement. I used this marriage to repay my life debt to him."

"But Jona and I already have a contract. The second her father passes away, we file for an annulment. Then I marry you. I swear."

I stared at his perfectly symmetrical face. My chest felt hollowed out, like someone had taken an ice scoop to my ribs. The cold draft howling through my empty chest was unbearable.

"When exactly did you two go to the courthouse?" My voice sounded like crushed glass.

Roger flinched. He dropped his gaze to the concrete floor.

"It was... the first Friday afternoon we were supposed to go."

"Then why did you keep telling me 'next week'?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "Bigamy is a felony, Roger."

He stared at his shoes, his voice laced with heavy, genuine remorse.

"I'm sorry. I lied to you again. I just thought I could stall you long enough until my mentor passed."

The chill seeped all the way into my bone marrow.

"Roger," I whispered. "I am never, ever going to forgive you."

I walked straight to the HR department and put in for an indefinite leave of absence.

Given the spectacular public humiliation I had just endured, the HR director didn't ask a single question. She just stamped my paperwork with a look of deep pity.

As I walked out of the hospital's main glass doors, someone stepped into my path.

Jona.

Her chin was tilted up, radiating the smug arrogance of a victor standing over a corpse.

"Giving up already?" she sneered. "If Roger hadn't promised me your combat commendations, I wouldn't have even let you stick around to play his pathetic little side piece. But we're legally bound now. If you keep throwing yourself at my husband..."

"You're nothing but a cheap, homewrecking whore."

Her insults didn't even register. I was just exhausted.

"You have zero class, Jona. You're a disgrace to your father's reputation," I said coldly.

"And regardless of your pathetic jealousy, you shouldn't speak to the person who took a knife for you like that."

I don't know which button I pushed, but Jona instantly lost her mind.

"Took a knife for me?!" she shrieked, her face turning ugly.

"That psycho bitch lost her kid because she was genetically weak! Her body was trash! It had nothing to do with me mixing up some stupid pills! And then she had the nerve to go slit her wrists at my house?! My family had to pay out a massive settlement to her gross husband!"

"She should have just died quieter! Fucking white-trash parasites!"

My expression darkened instantly.

As a medical professional, her lack of empathy was horrifying. Mixing up a patient's prescription was a catastrophic, lethal error. Instead of remorse, she was spitting on a dead woman's grave.

I opened my mouth to verbally tear her apart, but a blur of motion caught my eye.

A middle-aged man in a filthy jacket was sprinting toward us from the parking lot, a massive meat cleaver gripped in his fist.

Jona saw him. All the blood drained from her face. She let out a bloodcurdling scream and scrambled backward.

The man swung the heavy blade wildly, catching Jona on the upper arm.

She screamed again as he chased her toward the glass doors, roaring like a wounded animal.

"My wife killed herself because of you, and you're still out here running your filthy mouth! My family is dead! I have nothing left to lose! I'm sending you straight to hell, you murdering bitch!"

Jona tripped over the curb and crawled frantically toward the hospital lobby. Patients and nurses in the atrium began screaming, scattering in total panic.

My combat instincts took over. If an active shooter or a maniac with a blade got loose in a crowded hospital lobby, it would be an absolute bloodbath.

I spun around and sprinted toward the danger.

The man grabbed a heavy metal trash can and hurled it at Jona's back. She went down hard, sprawling flat on the concrete.

Before she could get up, he grabbed her by her hair, yanked her head back, and pressed the edge of the cleaver against her throat.

"Run! Keep running, you piece of shit! I'm going to carve you up!"

"Stop!" I yelled, skidding to a halt a few feet away, my chest heaving.

"Don't do this!" I pleaded. "Do you remember me? I'm Dr. Bianca! I signed the forgiveness waiver for your wife when she stabbed me!"

The man glared at me, his eyes wild and bloodshot. His grip on the cleaver tightened.

"Back off! I don't kill innocent people!"

"You're a good person, Doc. But if you're trying to save herforget it!"

Security guards began slowly circling us, drawing their batons. The man's jaw set. He was fully prepared for suicide by cop.

"I'm trying to save you!" I screamed, desperate to break through his psychosis.

"You and your wife adopted a little girl, right? Lily! She's eight! When I went to your house to drop off the legal waivers, I met her. She's so smart! She already lost her mom; she cannot lose her dad today!"

"If you die here, or rot in a cell, she goes into the foster system! They'll tear her apart!"

The man's lower lip began to tremble. He stared into space, unconsciously whispering his daughter's name.

"Lily..."

The cleaver shook against Jona's skin. A raw, guttural sob ripped from his throat.

"But I crossed the line! I don't have a way back!"

"Doc... please. Call social services. Tell them I'm sorry. I failed her..."

Tears flooded his eyes.

When a person cries heavily, their vision blurs for a fraction of a second. Their adrenaline spikes, then dips. It's the ultimate tactical blind spot.

This was my window. I shifted my weight, preparing to lunge forward and secure his wrist.

Just wait for the blink. Now!

Suddenly, a violent force slammed into my spine.

I was shoved hard from behind.

I stumbled forward, completely losing my footing, crashing directly into the man holding the cleaver.

The blade didn't hit Jona.

It went straight into my stomach.

It slid perfectly into the exact same, partially healed surgical wound from a month ago. Except this time, the blade was wider, heavier, and it went so deep the steel tore through my back.

A horrific fountain of arterial blood exploded from my torso, painting the concrete red.

I collapsed to my knees, choking on copper, and slowly turned my head.

I didn't even need to guess.

It was Roger.

Bianca, my fading mind whispered to itself. You got played again.

I hit the pavement, completely submerged in a pool of my own blood, and the world went totally black.