The Stranger's Wife | Rewritten

1 ⁓ Faking it

I was way too good at faking it.

Well, maybe not as good as I imagined.

The clanging sound of lockers opening and closing should have been background noise to me by now. Yet, every day around this time, a feeling of dejection would settle over my heart like dirt falling on a coffin.

The throb of loneliness was sharp and bitter as always as I studied my colleagues making their way home.

All these women, brilliant nurses and powerful surgeons were going home to a significant other. The young ones usually had some hot date with a handsome hunk they'd met a couple of weeks ago off Tinder; the older ones couldn't wait to go home to their husbands of twenty plus years.

But me? I was going home to my retired dad and my cat Oreo.

There was nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that today was my eleventh wedding anniversary.

I was married to an illusion, a man I'd only met and seen once on what had turned out to be the worse day of my life so far. The day my mother died.

I knew that having someone to go home to wasn't always roses and sunshine. Nurse Brimmer whose locker was two doors over was in no rush to get home to her alcoholic and sometimes abusive husband of six years. She took her precious time putting away her surgical clogs in the appointed dirty shoe rack and then with a sigh, she slipped on the shoes she'd come with.

Her blue eyes were guarded as she approached me, her surgical cap still on her head and a small smile tugging the corners of her lips.

"Dr. Miller," she said in acknowledgment. "Another late night, hmm?"

"The usual fourteen hours," I said as I pulled on my jeans and buttoned them up. "I just might have to move my bed into this place. My husband wouldn't mind at all." I laughed and it was not the happy kind. This was the laugh of a disgruntled woman.

Nurse Brimmer frowned. "I don't get it. Why do you want to be married so badly? You always make jokes about not having a husband at home as if it's the worse thing in the world."

I bit my lip, fighting back the urge to tell her that I was actually married. That I had a husband. That today was our wedding anniversary and that I was going home alone to an empty bed.

There would be no roses and dinners at some fancy restaurant. I would not be dressing up in lingerie this night, my sole purpose to seduce him and remind him that I was still hot and sexy.

There would be no 'I love you' and 'I can't live without you'. No cuddles after sex and no fight the next morning because it was Sunday and I had to go in for work on what was supposed to be my day off.

I wanted to tell nurse Brimmer that just because her marriage was shit, didn't mean that every other marriage was too. My parents had a happy marriage up until the day my mother died and I refused to settle for less.

Honestly, after a while, I didn't care that my husband had deserted me two days after our wedding. That he hadn't stayed for my mother's funeral. After all, he was a stranger that I'd met and married on the very same day.

I was just seventeen, for crying out loud. At first, I was eager to marry him because I thought it meant I was a grown woman and I couldn't wait to start my Disney fairytale and happily ever after with my literal prince charming.

So damn eager, it got my mother killed.

After her funeral, I buried myself in school, graduated early and got myself into medical school. I didn't think about my husband for years and I rarely missed him, but lately, gah, he was all I could think about.