Malik and Jade

Chapter 6 (Jade): It Just Doesn't Matter

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

Malik issuing a demand to me?

I'll give you another week, Jade, and then no more avoiding me. We're going to talk everything out whether you want to or not.

We were going to talk whether I wanted to or not? He could talk all he wanted. I didn't have to listen. I didn't even have to talk. Those were the kinds of conversations I considered pointless. What was there to say? Hey, I know you saw me cuddled up to this woman I have feelings for, but, you know, ummm, hmmm...yeah, so, well, good talk.

"Malik," I said softly, "I'm not sure if your only goal in life is to make me mad every time you open your mouth and to overshadow every milestone of Nour's with your selfishness, but if so, let me tell you...you're succeeding in life. Brilliantly."

Turning to walk upstairs to my room, leaving him to watch Nour, Malik caught up with me at the foot of the stairs and turned me around to face him. I used to look up into his eyes because I loved that handsome, intelligent face, but now I didn't bother and was fine with staring at his chest.

"I'm trying to make things better, Jade," he said. "I know you're hurting, but if you'd just listen, it might help you understand."

"I don't want to understand anything. You may think I'm stupid, but I know what I witnessed in that hallway and no amount of listening is going to change that. Sixteen hours before that scene, I'd been cut open to deliver our baby -- but that was nothing compared to the way you ripped me open when I saw and heard you with your blonde."

"She's not my blonde, Jade." So calm. The doctor has spoken soothingly so he must be believed.

"She's very much your blonde. You know it. She knows it. I know it. And the entire hospital knows it."

My husband sighed, clearly the most put-upon man in the world. "One week, Jade," he repeated. "One week and then we're talking."

When I brought Nour downstairs with me the next morning for breakfast, I was happy he and I would have our days together while Malik was at work. I thought of the walks we'd take in the sun, with him in his bassinette/stroller combination so he could lie on his back with a thin blanket covering the bassinette to protect him. We'd walk and walk, just leaving everything behind to enjoy the fresh air. We take another walk in the afternoon and in between our walks, I'd hold him, feed him, bathe him and watch him kick those little legs while he lay on his blanket and I read to him. I was looking forward to all I had to teach him.

Unfortunately, Malik was downstairs in the kitchen, eating eggs and toast. Why was he home? I assumed he was going in late, but Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursday mornings were his scheduled surgery days and those days usually began early.

"Would you like some eggs, Jade?" he asked nonchalantly, throwing a smile my way as he got up from the table and headed toward the stove. "I'll make you some."

"No," I said, then caved to my curiosity. "Why are you here?"

"I live here," he said, ignoring my hostility, then continued more slowly as if he were anticipating an explosion, "and I'm off for the next two weeks."

Why? Why? Had I done something to piss off karma? Is that why it'd been one thing after another for me?

I'd been looking forward to having Nour to myself at home for a bit. I'd even put off my parents and in-laws and asked for this time alone with my baby, out of the NICU finally, away from everyone so I could just have the time for us to bond as mother and child, not at-risk baby/mother/NICU staff.

I spun around to leave the room and Malik stopped me again. "Where are you going, Jade? I thought we could take Nour for a walk in his stroller this morning."

"I'm going to make a schedule for the next two weeks. I thought I'd be alone and now...you're here."

"A schedule? C'mon, Jade, can't we just share this time together and enjoy our son?"

I could hear it in every word he spoke: I was being unreasonable. So I turned more fully toward him to show him the depth, and breadth and height of my unreasonableness.

"You don't get it. At all. You just don't get it, Malik. You have no idea what it's like to have everything you assumed about your life turn out to be a lie. You have no idea what it's like to have your husband care so little for you, have so little respect for you that he's seen -- in a public place -- hugging and kissing another woman he used to be in a relationship with. And he did this in the place he works, on the floor where his wife was recovering from a C-section and his premature son was in the NICU fighting for his life."

The great surgeon opened his mouth to speak, but I kept wielding my scalpel and making my cuts.

"So, no, I have no wish to share this time together with you. I can't even stand looking at your face, and just being around you and having to smell your cologne makes me sick to my stomach. I'm doing everything I can to get through this, knowing I'm stuck with you for the rest of my life, trapped in this dead marriage, and I have to make peace with our circumstances soon, but right now I'm simply trying to get to the point that I can at least be near you without feeling like I'm going to get sick."

Malik's face was...I don't know what. Shocked, dismayed, wounded, hurt -- those didn't even seem to cover the range of the emotions playing over his face. As far as I was concerned, he had no right to hurt. He'd brought that on by himself and he could deal with some, just like I was.

How does it feel to know you've lost the love and affection of someone you thought you could depend on caring about you?

"You know what, forget making a schedule. I'll take morning and evening shift today, and you can take the afternoon. Every day we'll switch, so tomorrow you can have morning and evening and I'll take afternoons. I get him for every feeding though. Any objections?"

"About a million," he said, and although I was no longer looking at his face, I could hear the sadness in his tone and imagined his beautiful brown eyes reflected that. "But if that's what you want, Jade, I'll do it."

"And when you go back to the hospital in two weeks, you can have the evening shifts."

"I'm not going back to McCaffey's," he said. "I gave them two months' notice and now I'm taking two weeks off before I start at the university's teaching hospital."

The teaching hospital had been after Malik forever, but he'd never wanted to leave McCaffey. Now I knew the reason why. Brooklyn worked there.

It helps that I see you around the hospital every day. Or maybe it doesn't help.

Two months' notice meant he quit right after I gave birth. Right after I saw them together.

Even though I wasn't looking at his face, he was clearly reading mine.

"Ask me why, Jade."

"No. Because it doesn't matter why. It just doesn't matter anymore."

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA