Chapter 4My Cold Wife Trapped My Soul

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 Today’s Talk, the interview Serena had done a few days prior.

The woman with the chillingly cool gaze didn’t 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 don’t understand love. My husband... he is a responsibility, mostly."

"Anniversaries? They’re 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 didn’t 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. I’d 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.