Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Weight of Guilt
Consciousness returned not as a gentle tide, but as a cruel, crashing wave. Every cell in my body announced its protest with a dull, pervasive ache. My skull throbbed in time with the faint, insistent beep of a machine. The air tasted sterile, metallic, and carried the ghost of antiseptic—a scent that spoke of sickness, not sanctuary.
I shifted on the stiff sheets, a quiet gasp escaping my cracked lips. Fire lanced up my side where I'd hit the pavement. My throat was a desert of glass shards. My left ankle was a dense, swollen mass of pain beneath the thin blanket.
I blinked, vision swimming into focus on the buzzing fluorescent light.
And I saw him.
Taehyun.
He was perched on the very edge of the visitor's chair, but his posture was one of collapse. Elbows digging into his knees, head bowed so low his face was hidden. His hands were clasped so tightly the knuckles were bloodless monuments to his tension. He looked like a man praying to a god who had already turned away.
Pathetic.
The thought was a cold stone in the hollow of my chest.
I didn't speak. I didn't turn my head. I simply let my gaze drift past him, fixing on a neutral point on the opposite wall—a small scuff mark, a flaw in the perfect, punishing white. He no longer deserved the currency of my attention, the heat of my anger, or the sound of my voice. He deserved the void I now offered.
He sensed my wakefulness. A subtle tension rippled through him. His head lifted sharply. A sharp, ragged inhale cut the quiet.
"Hey…"
His voice was sandpaper and shattered glass. Cautious. Hopeful in a way that made my stomach turn.
I said nothing.
"You're awake." He said it like a revelation, his tone softening into something perilously close to tenderness.
I maintained the silence, letting it stretch, letting it become a physical wall between us.
I felt his gaze on me like a physical touch—scanning the IV line taped to the back of my hand, the bruise blooming on my temple, the way my jaw was clenched against the pain. He was taking inventory of the damage, and I hoped it carved him up inside.
"You scared the hell out of me." The whisper was raw. "You collapsed… your ankle's broken. You've been out for almost eight hours."
I turned my head slowly, deliberately, away from him. The movement sent a fresh spike of pain through my stiff neck. I embraced it. A small, private punishment.
"I didn't know you drank. You never…" He trailed off, the idiocy of the statement hanging in the air. Of course I never drank. Until last night. Until he turned my world into a funhouse of mirrors where the only escape seemed to be at the bottom of a glass.
"You weren't even standing properly when I found you," he continued, his voice gaining a faint, desperate edge. "You didn't listen. You just stormed off into the storm like the world wasn't trying to kill you."
My silence was my answer. My rebellion. My condemnation.
My chest rose and fell in carefully measured, silent breaths.
He reached out then—a fool's move. His fingertips, calloused and warm, brushed against the skin of my wrist where it lay on the blanket.
I flinched.
It was a tiny, involuntary spasm, but he felt it. He jerked his hand back as if my skin had scorched him.
"I know you're angry," he said, the words falling like stones. "You hate me. You should. I deserve that."
Oh, you have no idea, I thought, the words screaming silently behind my placid eyes.
"My men couldn't even stop you at the club," he tried, a hollow attempt at a chuckle dying in his throat. "And your friend… she looked like she wanted to kill me."
She should have, I thought. I should have.
"I didn't mean to hurt you the way I did. I just… I thought I was protecting you."
I turned my face further toward the wall, my profile a cold, unyielding line.
"I made so many mistakes," he confessed, the admission dragged from him. "And I kept expecting you to forgive me. Kept thinking you'd just… understand. Like you always did."
My fingernails bit into the starched cotton of the sheet.
"But last night…" His voice broke, truly broke. "Seeing you like that. Drunk. Screaming. Crying. Collapsing in the rain…"
I could hear him swallow, hard, fighting for control.
"I'm sorry," he breathed, the two words so heavy they seemed to bend the light in the room. "I'm so fucking sorry."
Tears, hot and treacherous, pricked at the corners of my eyes. Not for his apology. Not for his pain. But for the wretched, traitorous part of me that still, after all of it, wanted to crumble. To turn my face into his chest and let the sobs tear out of me, to let him absorb the chaos he'd created. To be weak with him, because he was the only one who had ever seen the full, ugly spectrum of my weakness.
I crushed the impulse. I let the silence swell, thick and suffocating.
He waited. A man accustomed to command, now utterly helpless before my quiet.
I gave him nothing.
Because the hurt was no longer just in my sprained ankle or my throbbing head. It was in the trust he'd pulverized. It was in the pure, simple joy he'd handed me with the cubs, only to snatch it back, tarnished by his unilateral decision. It was in the fire he'd lit in my soul, only to stand back and watch me burn to cinders.
He didn't get my voice. Not anymore. Not after making me feel so profoundly, utterly disposable.
Let the silence he'd so often used as a weapon now become his prison. Let him drown in the quiet echoes of what he'd destroyed.
---
Time became a blur of white walls and sterile quiet. I lay there, tracing the patterns in the ceiling tiles, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper to anchor myself. The fog of the night before was a murky, shameful pool. Flashes—blinding lights, pounding bass, Sara's worried face, the taste of too-sweet alcohol, the crushing weight of grief. Had I screamed our secrets? Had I sobbed about the forced marriage, the gilded cage, the stolen cubs? The not-knowing was its own kind of torture.
A soft knock at the door.
A nurse entered, her smile kind, her movements efficient. "Good morning. I'm glad to see you're awake." She checked my vitals, adjusted the IV. Then she paused, her demeanor shifting from routine to something more deliberate. She pulled the chair closer.
"The doctor asked me to discuss something with you, if you're feeling up to it."
I managed a weak, hoarse, "About what?"
She sat, her expression compassionate but professional. "It's about some of the behavioral and emotional patterns noted in your history. Your husband provided some context—rapid mood shifts, intense emotional reactions to stress, periods of high energy followed by crashes, dissociation."
I stared at her, the words settling like cold lead in my gut. "I don't know. My whole life has been… unusual lately."
She nodded. "He described episodes where you're extremely sensitive, even volatile, and then retreat into silence. Affectionate one moment, distant the next. It sounds… cyclical. Exhausting for you."
My throat closed. "Why are you telling me this?"
She glanced at her clipboard, then back to me, her gaze steady and gentle. "During your admittance work-up, the psychiatrist on call reviewed your case. Given the presentation—the extreme stress response, the dissociative collapse—along with the history described, there's a strong indication you might be experiencing a mood disorder. Most likely Cyclothymia."
The clinical term hung in the air.
"It's on the bipolar spectrum," she explained softly. "The mood swings aren't as severe as in bipolar I or II, but they are persistent and unpredictable. Highs that feel like frantic energy, lows that feel like crushing numbness or irritation. It can make you feel like you're at the mercy of your own emotions, like you're losing your grip on who you are."
My fingers twisted in the sheet. "You're saying I'm… mentally ill?"
She shook her head firmly. "I'm saying you are experiencing a medical condition. It's not a character flaw. It's not your fault. It explains why you might have felt so out of control, why your reactions might have felt disproportionate even to you. It's not you failing. It's a system in your brain needing support."
A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path to my temple. The dam behind my eyes threatened to burst. All the confusion, the self-loathing, the terror that I was simply broken in some fundamental way…
"So…" My voice was a shattered whisper. "It wasn't all my fault?"
The words were a child's plea. The nurse's eyes filled with a profound empathy. She reached over and squeezed my hand. "No, sweetheart. It wasn't your fault. Not at all."
She held my hand for a moment longer. "You don't have to carry this shame. This is manageable. With the right support—therapy, perhaps medication—you can find stability. You are not alone in this. Okay?"
I nodded, a jerky, helpless motion, swallowing back the sob that wanted to claw its way out. I hated this vulnerability. I hated being seen as sick, as pitiable.
But as she stood to leave, a terrifying, liberating thought took root amidst the wreckage:
What if the monster wasn't just him? What if a part of it had always been inside me, a chaotic storm I'd never had a name for? And what if… understanding that storm was the first step toward truly learning how to survive it?