In Health

Her eyes grew moist. "No, Nate, please, no."

My voice was scarcely stronger than hers, but my rage gave it menace. "Yes. What did you think would happen, Chloe? You told me that I wasn't good enough, that I'd never been good enough, that you had played me for a fool and abused my love and trust."

I laughed bitterly. "I used to think that when you begged me to stay, it was just a fear of death. But I realized later, it was because you would have left me if our positions were reversed, wasn't it?"

She couldn't meet my gaze. "I was never as strong as you, Nate."

"No! No, you weren't! You stupid, selfish bitch!" I took a couple of deep breaths. "When you left me like that, when you... god, I hated you. Hate you. But it was more than that, more than just hatred."

She withered away from me. "You destroyed everything good about me, Chloe. My compassion? Gone. What's the point? There's no justice, no true kindness in the world, or at least none that I could ever believe in. How could I ever trust another woman when my wife lied to me for twenty years and then--"

A feeble retort slipped from her lips, "I did love--"

"Shut up, you treacherous, worthless, cancerous whore!" I was worried that someone would come in and stop this, my final moment of retribution on this demon in the flesh lying in her deathbed, and tried to modulate my voice again.

"My preparation? None of it mattered. Not a bit of it. I married someone I was sure was loyal and loving; she wasn't. I planned for a happy family we could raise together; the disease destroyed those plans. I did everything I could to maintain our finances through your illness; we went bankrupt. I tried to surround us with friends who knew what we were going through; I lost them because it hurt too much to be around them after you left. I even..."

Through gritted teeth I hissed, "I even planned for the future, planned for the possibility of another love after you were gone. And even that-- even that!-- was ripped from me because of that damned cure. The cure that I found for you, that I moved heaven and earth to make available to you! You lived and betrayed me. Her husband lived, and I... I couldn't do that to him. And so the woman that I fell in love with, the woman I loved far more than I ever loved you, is forever out of reach!"

She was openly weeping now. This was not how she had meant for things to go; she expected, I was sure, to find the years had dulled my pain. That I'd be the meek and kind man that had taken care of her for the better part of two decades, not this lunatic ranting at her bedside.

I leaned back, easing up slightly. Not out of kindness, but for fear that her heart might give out before I could finish. "I left the city that we lived in together not long after you did. I had nothing because of you. Not a goddamned thing. You stole everything from me with your selfishness and cowardice." I spat out, "I wish you had died."

Chloe could barely get out, between painful gasps, "Please, Nate, p- please don't say that, I--"

"If you had, I could at least believe that my suffering meant something. That it was worth something! I wouldn't have known that you lied to me for two fucking decades! But instead..." I looked away. "Instead, I've just been marking off time until I die."

She rasped, "You... you didn't find someone? I was sure you would, that you'd find someone that deserved you. You were so loving. So handsome. You could have--"

"Of course I didn't! How could I build love without trust? Hell, how could I build friendship without trust? And how could I trust anyone after what you did to me? No, Chloe. The only intimate time I've spent since then has been with whores. Whores just like you. But at least I knew that I was paying for their time, and they never disappointed me when they left."

"Oh, Nate. Oh god, I'm so sorry, baby, I--"

My gaze snapped back to her. "Don't! You don't ever get to call me something like that again. You don't get to pretend to love me. You don't get to act all sorry and sad, like you had no idea what you would do to me. You're selfish, Chloe, and you're a monster, but you aren't stupid."

She looked at her frail, withered hands. "I thought... You were so good. So sweet. I thought, sincerely thought, that you'd..." Her jaundiced eyes tentatively drifted back towards mine. "You were always the strong one. I thought--"

"You. Broke. Me. No one is that strong, Chloe. No one." I painfully pushed myself to standing, sneering at her as I did. "I wish I had never met you, Chloe. That we never married. That I'd left you when you were diagnosed."

"Nate, I--"

The sneer turned to a snarl. "I wished for the longest time that I had left you crying on the floor when you fell the first time, that I had pushed your wheelchair down the stairs, that I smothered you with a pillow when you were too weak to resist. It's what I thought you deserved, Chloe." I chuckled as she wept. "But now I'm glad I didn't. I was wrong. You deserve to suffer like this for what you've done to me."

I turned to leave, hobbling and shuffling to the door. Just before I opened it, I half-turned back towards her. "I hope you make it a while longer, Chloe. I hope it's agonizing, the pain you feel as you count down the hours. If you want me to be happy? Survive as long as you can just like this." She wailed as I opened the door and left. A nurse jostled me as she ran past, towards my ex-wife's room.

When I reached the street, I stood straight and upright. My back was killing me; my own damned fault for that stunt with the cane. It rarely bothered me anymore unless I did something dumb like pretend that I was crippled to drive my ex-wife mad with guilt. Well, I wouldn't make that mistake again.

I'd drop the clothes at a donation center before I headed back home. They were an ancient casual outfit of mine that I'd taken to wearing when gardening. Marion had been on me for years to get rid of them; it wasn't like we were struggling for money. The cane would be donated, too. It had been my wife's ex-husband's, but he didn't need it anymore.

I met Marion at a support group for CRISPR Widows; she had separated peacefully from her husband when they grew apart after the fight was through. They were still friendly, but the spark had gone; he had attended our wedding six years back and was still in our lives as a great coparent.

I had some notoriety among the Widows, being one of the few men whose wife had abandoned him that way, and also being one of the few that so spectacularly aired my grievances in public. They had all dealt with their anger and bitterness in their own way, and it was through their support that I found the help I needed. Foremost among those who helped me was Marion; we became friends first, then fell in love as I learned to trust people again.

Dale and Katrina were at our wedding. I wasn't able to keep in touch early on; it was just too hard. But as I made a new life for myself, I reached out to them. Dale and I still played games online together, and Katrina and I talked from time to time. Marion knew about our past, but she also knew that she was my future. There was no jealousy there, only gratitude for a woman who had been my beacon at the darkest times of my life and for a man that would have risked his happiness for mine.

Marion and her ex-husband had kids before they knew he had the disease; his version was the recessive one, and they were lucky enough that it wasn't passed on. Thad and Terry were wonderful kids, almost in college now, and I had to resist the urge to spoil them rotten. I didn't resist often, if I'm honest.

What I had told Chloe, in case it wasn't clear, was a mix of truth, misdirection, and straight out bullshit. I did feel all those things towards her, that rage and hatred and wish for her suffering. After I left town, I tried to find a psychologist to help me deal with the pain, but all of them seemed to want me to forgive her.

It seemed like nonsense; how could I forgive a betrayal of that magnitude? This wasn't a spouse that had cheated during a time of weakness, or who let their alcoholism or depression turn them into something terrible for a time. This was a narcissistic monster that had stolen half of my life.

No. Eventually, with the help of friends from my support group, I found a psychologist that understood that different people needed to deal with massive betrayal in different ways. I couldn't let myself be consumed by hatred; that was my first goal, once I stopped isolating myself from others.

I wanted to find love again eventually, even if that seemed an insurmountable task. I was lonely, lonelier than I'd ever been, and I was going to do something about that. So, with my shrink, I planned, and I prepared, and I talked, and I worked.

The tool that I found, one I forged for myself with his help, was simple. I had heard the adage, "Holding onto hatred is like swallowing poison and expecting it to kill your enemy." I couldn't let go of the hate; I just couldn't figure out how to, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to.

Instead, I used a mental image of a vial, a noxious green stoppered bottle of poison that I'd store my angry thoughts about Chloe in. In the beginning, it was hard to keep them there, to store that toxin safely away from my everyday life. But this simple mental exercise made it easier and easier over time, until the only occasions that the hatred ever leaked out were when I intended for it to.

And now, finally, I had taken that vial and shoved it down the bitch's throat.

I whistled happily as I walked down the street, basking in the bright sunshine of the mid afternoon. Soon, I'd be back on a plane to my love and my stepchildren, and I felt lighter than I had in years. The hate was no longer simply contained. It had left me finally, and the future was all laid out before me. I took time to be thankful for all the many small joys in my life. Sometimes, it really is the little things.

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For those that are curious, CRISPR is a real technology that's being used experimentally to treat all kinds of genetic diseases, as well as to improve chances for cancer patients. Small-scale studies done in 2022 found that it could successfully be used to treat muscular dystrophy in a way that could allow for complete eradication of symptoms. And, yes, it does carry an enhanced risk of cancer for those that are treated with it.

This is one of those stories that seems like it should be in sci-fi, but it could easily happen within five years. I based a lot of the details about CRISPR Widows on real-life examples of couples whose relationships break apart after long but ultimately successful battles with diseases like cancer. As we see more long-term diseases that were once thought incurable treated successfully, I expect we'll hear a few stories not unlike Nate and Chloe's. Hopefully more of them will be like Dale and Katrina's, though.