Surgery To Forget My Toxic Husband

The freezing wind outside whipped pellets of snow against the car window. I stared at my own blurred reflection in the glass, and it suddenly hit me: the last ten years had been nothing but a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.

In the passenger seat, Jonathan flicked his cigarette ash. The lingering warmth of our physical intimacy from moments ago hadn't even dissipated yet, but his words were already piercing through me like ice shards.

"To be honest, its getting boring with you. My new intern, thoughshes got some real fire in her." He turned his head to blow a smoke ring, his voice dripping with a pride he didn't care to hide. "Youth just hits different. Shes like malleable clay; shell do whatever I ask, however I want it. Not like you. Youve become so... rigid."

I gripped the hem of my wool coat until my knuckles turned white. My voice shook uncontrollably. "How long has this been going on? Why are you telling me this now?"

He let out a short, mocking laugh and crushed his cigarette into the tray. "I pay for everything you wear, everything you eat. You live in my house. What does it matter if I tell you? Its not like youd ever actually leave me."

Those words felt like a sledgehammer to my chest. My mind flashed back to a rainy night three years ago. To help him secure that life-saving investment for his firm, I had sat at a dinner table and matched a client drink for drink, downing an entire bottle of hard liquor while three months pregnant. I ended up in a hospital bed, losing the babyand with it, any chance of ever becoming a mother.

It turned out that everything Id gambledmy body, my child, my futurewas nothing more than a bargaining chip he felt entitled to trample on.

The cars heater was blasting, but I felt a deep, marrow-deep chill. Even my breath felt like frost.

...

After Jonathan finished his little confession, he picked up his phone to reply to some messages. The glow of the screen illuminated his face, a faint, satisfied smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

I sat there, silently adjusting my clothes. My right handthe ring and pinky fingershad been numb for years. The nerves had been severed by a lead pipe once; theyd been sewn back together, but the connection was never quite right.

He kept typing, occasionally letting out a soft chuckle.

When his phone rang, he answered immediately. His voice transformed instantly.

"Yeah, just finished up some business."

"What are you craving? I'll have someone deliver it."

"Be good. Get some sleep, okay?"

Just a few words, but spoken with the tender tone one uses to soothe a kitten. It was a voice I knew all too well. Ten years ago, he used that exact same cadence to comfort me in the ICU when I was too weak to speak.

He hung up. I went back to staring at my silhouette in the window.

Ten years ago, Jonathan wasn't "Mr. Sterling," the CEO. He was just a guy in a cramped studio apartment starting a business, the kind of guy who accidentally pissed off the local neighborhood thugs.

One night, four men cornered us in an alley. The leader had a steel pipe; the others had bricks. Jonathan tried to push me behind him, tried to take them all on himself. A pipe swung into his shoulder, and he dropped to his knees with a muffled groan. They swarmed him, kicking him with lethal intent.

I threw myself over him, shielding his back with my own body. The second strike of the pipe landed squarely on my spine.

I spent four months in the hospital. Jonathans hand shook so hard he could barely sign the surgical consent forms. The doctors told us the nerve damage was irreversible; my motor skills and sensation in my limbs would never be the same.

He stayed in that hospital corridor all night. The next morning, when he walked in, his eyes were bloodshot, but he was smiling. He told me the surgery was a total success. He climbed into the bed and held me from behind, pressing his face against the bandages on my back. He didn't say a word, but I felt his shoulders shaking.

Since then, every winter, the old injury flared up. My spine would go stiff; my right hand would lose its grip. Back then, hed rush home to press hot towels against my back, massaging me vertebra by vertebra. Once, after finishing the massage, he traced the scars on my hand and whispered, "Once we have the money, Ill find you the best doctors in the world. We'll fix this."

Eventually, he got the money.

But he never mentioned the doctors again.

It was as if hed become a different person. He climbed the ladder in two years, and five years ago, we got married. On our wedding day, he told me hed give me the world. He believed it, and so did I.

But the man from that studio apartmentthe one who treated me like his entire universewas gone. I couldn't find him anymore.

The warm air from the vents hit my face, but I couldn't feel the heat.

Jonathan checked his watch. "Let's go home."

He started the engine. Everything felt normal, as if the last five minutes of cruelty had just been idle chatter.

I asked quietly, "The intern... when did you hire her?"

He laughed. "You sound just like my mother." His phone lit up again; he glanced at it but didn't reply. "Joanna, find a hobby. If you spend your whole day policing my life, how are we supposed to live?"

As the car pulled into our apartments underground garage, the engine cut out. Silence filled the space for a few seconds. He didn't move to get out.

"Im starting a business trip tomorrow," he said, staring straight ahead. "I need to head back to the office tonight. I wont be coming up."

I opened the door and stepped out. I watched his taillights disappear around the corner of the ramp.

Inside, I went straight to the bathroom. I scrubbed my skin, desperate to wash away the traces of him. I turned the water up until it was scalding, until my skin turned a raw, angry red. I stayed under the spray until the water heater ran out and the stream turned icy.

I dressed and sat on the living room sofa. No TV, no lights. The only sound was the low hum of the central heating.

My phone buzzed. A notification. An article from a medical journal Id followed months ago: MECT Therapy: When Memory Becomes a Disease.

Was it actually possible? Could a procedure really wipe the slate clean?

As I walked back into the kitchen to get some water, I saw two half-finished iced lattes on the coffee table. Jonathan doesn't drink lattes. I looked at the timestamp on the receipt stuck to the side: 3:00 PM.

At 3:00 PM today, I had been at the hospital for a check-up on my spine. Jonathan had actually called mea rare gestureand said hed pick me up. I had been surprised and touched. I waited for him for a long time. I called him four times. He didn't answer.

When he finally picked me up, he didn't head home. He drove out to a secluded spot by the river. When he kissed me then, I smelled a perfume that wasn't mine.

It all made sense now. He drove me to the outskirts of town to "spend time" with me just to give that girl enough time to slip out of our apartment. He just didn't expect the intern to leave evidence behind on purpose.

I threw the cups in the trash and went to the bedroom. The bed was made perfectly, but it wasn't the way I tuck the sheets. I found a strand of hair on the pillowlonger than mine, darker than mine.

I stripped the bed, shoved everything into the wash, and pulled out fresh linens. Then, I cleaned the entire house from top to bottom.

By 2:00 AM, the floors were polished to a mirror shine. I sat on the sofa and inhaled. There was still a faint scent of a perfume that didn't belong here.

The next afternoon, a friend request popped up on my phone.

The message read: "Hi big sister! I'm the new intern at Jonathans office. He told me I should reach out and learn a few things from you~"

I stared at those words for thirty seconds before hitting Accept.

She sent a voice note immediately. "Sister, Jonathan said you used to be a designer! Thats so cool! Im brand new to the industry and dont know anything. I hope you can give me some pointers..."

Then, she sent a selfie. Round eyes, pale skin, a practiced, dimpled smile.

I didn't reply. I flipped the phone face down on the table.

Jonathan didn't come home until the third night. He walked in and glanced around. "What, did you do a deep clean?"

I was sitting at the dining table with two sets of plates laid out. "I saved some dinner for you."

He barely looked at it. "Already ate." He walked to the sofa and grabbed the remote.

"You had your intern add me on," I said.

He paused for a fraction of a second, then took off his blazer and draped it over the armrest. "Oh, Macy. Right. I mentioned you to her. Told her to ask you for advice if she gets stuck."

"Do you honestly think she added me because she wants 'advice'?"

Jonathan looked at me and sighed. He stood up, walked to the table, and took a single bite of the cold food with his fork. "Joanna, shes barely twenty. Do you really need to be this petty with a kid?"

I didn't say another word.

He dropped the fork after two bites and headed for the bedroom. As he passed me, he stopped and looked at my face. "You look pale. Go to sleep."

The door shut. We had been sleeping in separate rooms for a long time now. Through the wall, I heard the muffled sound of him on a call. He was laughing. It was the exact same laugh Id heard in the car.

I pulled up that article again and read it over and over. At the very bottom, there was a small line of text: Department of Psychiatry, Memorial Hospital. Consultation for MECT therapy.

I saved the number to my contacts.

My back throbbed all night. The pain had been my shadow for ten years, but it was always worse in the winter. Jonathan used to massage it. But that was two years ago. He hadn't touched my back in two years.

The next morning, I went to the hospital alone. I got the scans, did the tests. The lead physician frowned as he looked at my charts. "Your physical condition isn't great. Have you been keeping up with your physical therapy?"

"Yes," I lied.

He looked at me, seeing right through it. "Mrs. Sterling, this kind of nerve damage requires consistent, disciplined intervention. If it continues to degrade, youll lose even more mobility."

He didn't push me further. He just wrote a new prescription and added some heavy-duty painkillers.

Leaving the clinic, I called Jonathan. It rang until it went to voicemail. I ended up taking an Uber home.

As I walked into the apartment complex clutching my bag of meds, I noticed an extra car in the garage. When the elevator reached our floor, I started toward the door but stopped.

Voices were coming from inside. Two men. Jonathan and his childhood friend, Mark.

"You and Joanna have been through a lot," Mark was saying. "You wouldn't be where you are today without her."

Jonathans voice sounded thick, like hed been drinking. "Without her? Has she worked a single day at the firm? Ive supported her for ten years. Food, clothes, luxurywhat has she ever lacked?"

"Im not trying to pick a fight," Mark countered. "But youve basically laid your cards on the table now. Whats the plan? Arent you afraid shell actually leave you?"

The sound of a glass hitting the table. Jonathans voice dropped an octave. "She loves me to death. Shes incapable of leaving me. Besides, even if we did split, with that body of hers..."

He trailed off and poured another drink. "Look, I owe her for what happened back then. If it weren't for that, I would have made a clean break a long time ago."

In the hallway, I put my keys back in my pocket. I turned around, got back in the elevator, and hit the button for the lobby.

I walked out of the building. It was snowing. I had nowhere to go. I found a park bench near the street and sat down. I pulled out my phone, found the number with no name attached, and dialed.

Ring... ring... ring...

"Hello, Memorial Psychiatry."

My voice was steadier than I expected. "Hello. Id like to schedule a consultation for MECT therapy."

"Certainly. May I ask the primary reason for the visit?"

I looked up, letting the snow fall onto my hair, my shoulders, my cheeks.

"I want to forget someone. I want every trace of his existence gone."

MECT. Modified Electroconvulsive Therapy. It was originally designed for severe depression, but a known side effect was significant memory loss surrounding the period before treatment. On forums, people shared their stories: after the sessions, the people and events that made them want to die were simply... gone. They said it was like being born again.

I turned off my phone and sat on that bench until the snow stopped. On the way back, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a single envelope and a pen.

That night, I downloaded a divorce settlement template. I sat with my fingers hovering over the keyboard for a long time. In the section for "Division of Assets," I typed one word: None.

Jonathan had given me a bank account over the years; there was enough in there to keep me afloat for a long time. Everything elsethe penthouse, the cars, the companynone of it was what I wanted.

I signed my name, sealed the envelope, and addressed it to Jonathans office. I mailed it before the sun came up.

I walked out of that home with a single suitcase. At the door, I turned back one last time. On the console table sat a framed photo of ushim with his arm around my shoulder, smiling warmly.

I flipped the photo face down.

I reached the neighboring city by afternoon. The admitting doctor was a young woman. She asked me again why I wanted MECT.

"I want to forget the last ten years," I said.

"All of it?"

"Everything."

She paused. "The treatment will likely cause you to lose the majority of your long-term memory. Not just the trauma. The happy moments go too. Are you sure?"

Happy moments.

I thought about it. Jonathan buying me a cheap thirty-dollar necklace with his first paycheck. The metal turned green, but I wore it for four years. The way he held me on our wedding day, drunk and whispering, "Meeting you was the only luck I ever had." The way he pressed his ear to my stomach when I was pregnant, telling the baby, "Take your time growing, kid. Your dad's building an empire for you."

And then the baby was gone.

"Im sure," I said.

She asked more questions: Suicidal ideation? Sleep disorders? Flashbacks? I checked every box. She looked at my spinal scans and closed the file.

"Well schedule the first session in three days. Use this time to think if theres anything you truly don't want to lose. If there is, write it down. You can 're-meet' those memories after the treatment."

I shook my head. "Theres nothing."

Three days later.

The prep room was silent. The nurse secured my arm and placed the IV. "Just relax," she said. "The anesthesia will put you to sleep. You might wake up with a headache, but thats normal."

I lay back as the drugs entered my system. My body grew heavy, my fingertips went numb. That dull sensation spread from my right hand to my left, through my limbs, my torso, and finally, my mind.

Just as my consciousness began to slip away, the phone on the nightstand vibrated.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The screen lit up. I could see the name clearly. Jonathan.

The phone kept ringing. I closed my eyes.

The last thing that flashed in my mind wasn't Jonathans face. It wasn't the cruel things he said in the car. It was that tiny, blurred image from the first ultrasound. The doctor said it already had a heartbeat. I just didn't get to hear it before it stopped.

Mommy has to forget you too. Im so sorry.