Malik and Jade

Chapter 20 (Malik): The Bare Minimum

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

The pensive mood in my car followed me into the house, and I listened for Jade, hearing music playing in the living room, so I slowly followed it there.

It didn't happen often, but as a surgeon, it was inevitable that sometimes you lost a patient. Right in the middle of an operation, the person would start slipping away and despite everything, no matter how hard you tried to save them, you still lost them. Every time, it cut deeply, but you had to be somewhat emotionless about the deaths because otherwise, you'd be drained by the end of the day.

I'd felt like that with Jade, as if I'd been watching her slip away from me and I was powerless to stop it. Even on the rare occasions when I'd lost a patient, I'd never felt as helpless as I'd felt when Jade had retreated from me. I'd never felt as horrified as I'd felt when I saw her face in the hospital hallway. My wife, who'd just given birth to our premature baby boy only hours before, had been shattered by what she'd seen and heard.

I fixed people; I didn't break them. The first rule of being a doctor was do no harm. 

The bare minimum. 

I followed that precept scrupulously with my patients. It was only with my wife that I'd forgotten that. Jade. Jade hadn't even merited the consideration that I gave to my patients. For no other reason than she was my wife and the mother of my child, she should have been first in my consideration.

That thought brought me up short.

My wife. The mother of my child.

Her roles in my life defined her and that was how I'd approached her. That was what I'd wanted to have a good life: a good wife, a good mother to our children.

But she was more than wife and mother.

Something I'd overlooked, hadn't considered. But as I'd watched Jade struggle through her conversation with me five months ago, she wasn't wife, then. She wasn't mother. She was Jade. A woman who'd been hurt and misled and deceived by her husband, a woman struggling to find a way to make the circumstances of her life work despite the blow she'd been dealt at my hand.

As she was explaining how she was going to stitch our lives back together, with each word she'd spoken at our kitchen table, instead of drawing us together, I'd felt her retreating. Her words were saying one thing, but what was actually happening was the complete opposite. 

That helplessness I didn't know how to fight overwhelmed me as I sat and listened to her as she'd requested. With every hard-fought word from her mouth, her bravery and courage had come shining through as clearly as the sacrifice she was making. She was giving me what I wanted.

A wife. A mother. Then, shockingly, surprisingly, a lover. 

I was getting back what I'd always wanted. 

But in a way even I couldn't miss, she was making it clear without actually saying it that I wasn't getting her. Jade. I was getting the roles she'd always filled but now only for Nour's sake. Afraid to push her, I'd agreed to her terms, trying to convey that she and I would have a good life, but she'd ignored that and focused on Nour. 

All she'd asked in return for everything she was offering was my fidelity...and what a slap that had been. That was all she expected from me. The only thing I could offer to her. My value to her was limited to being a good father who was faithful to his wife.

The bare minimum.

Now, at the end of the five month deadline she'd given herself to ease her way back into our marriage, Jade was talking to me more. Although it wasn't as awkward as things between us had been five months ago, the easiness that had always been between us wasn't there. There was a barrier Jade had erected around herself, and I knew it was because she was protecting herself.

From me. From the hurt I'd inflicted on her. Her former openness was a memory. 

Except when her family and my brother and his wife came around. Seeing Jade's friendship with Nasim and his wife left me as the outsider, an observer. She was much more her old self around them, full of laughter, talking easily with them, smiling brightly. If you ever want to feel the full force of what you've lost, have someone else find it.

Watching them together, I was forced to take stock of what I'd given her before we'd fallen apart: a nice home, a very comfortable life, a husband, a lover. But what of myself had I given her?

The bare minimum.

That was about to be driven home today since my schedule had unexpectedly cleared up and I'd been able to come home two hours early from work. Jade had a song playing loudly as she danced around the living room with Nour in her arms. 

You're gonna catch a cold

From the ice inside your soul

Nour giggled up at her as she rocked from side to side, but as the song continued, I didn't feel like laughing.

....you broke all your promises

And now you're back

You don't get to get me back.

"Hey, Jade," I called to her above the music, needing to not hear anymore. "I'm home."

Jade whirled around, which Nour loved because he rewarded her with a huge belly laugh. Hurrying to her phone, she turned the song off, her cheeks very pink but whether it was from the dancing or embarrassment, I wasn't sure.

"Looks like you two were having fun dancing. What song was that?" I asked.

She was definitely blushing because her face went from pink to red. "Mmmm, that was Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri."

"Don't let me interrupt," I said with a half smile. "Nour looked like he was enjoying it."

"Oh, we've been dancing for a while, and it's time to get dinner started anyway," she said.

"I can help," I told her.

Hurrying over to me, she handed Nour into my arms. "Thanks, but I don't need any help. You can play with Nour while I get dinner going."

Later that night, I looked up the song lyrics on my phone and wished I hadn't. I hated that the song might be the soundtrack for Jade's life, that every hurt-filled lyric seemed to be pointed at me. I hated that it spoke to how much pain she was in because of my actions.

I didn't like that.

"If you don't like something, do something about it," my father had always told me when I was growing up. I'd lost track of how many times he'd told me that, and how many times I'd done something about it. But I'd just allowed Jade's pain to continue for a year, listening to her when she said she needed space and time away from me. In that time, she hadn't healed, but she'd learned how to live with the pain. That damn song even spelled it out for me:

I've learned to live, half-alive

My problem was I didn't know how to fix someone that I'd broken. I knew how to fix my patients with surgery, but I'd left Jade to piece herself back together for a year, let her determine how we were going to move forward, let her decide that this life she'd set out for us, this life she was settling for, was the best we could do. And I'd gone along with it.

Half-alive. The bare minimum. 

I didn't like that.

So I was going to do something about it.

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA