The restaurant is the kind of place where the waiters wear white gloves and know not to refill your water until the glass is exactly half empty. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the East River. The silverware is heavy. The napkins are linen. Everything costs too much and tastes like obligation.

I sit three chairs away from Evander. Close enough to be his wife. Far enough to be forgotten.

There are eight of us at the table. Clients from a Singapore firm. Their lawyer. Their translator. Waverly Ortiz sits directly across from Evander, taking notes on a tablet, her fingers fast and precise. She's wearing navy blue. Modest neckline. Pearl earrings. She looks like someone's favorite daughter.

The first course arrives. Something with microgreens and edible flowers. I push it around my plate. My beta-blocker makes everything taste like metal.

The client on Evander's left raises his champagne glass. He's older, red-faced, the kind of man who thinks volume equals authority. He begins a toast in Mandarin. The translator leans in to whisper the English into Evander's ear, but I see Evander's jaw tighten. Whatever is being said, it's not good.

The client's voice rises. He's smiling, but it's the wrong kind of smile. A challenge. A test. The translator's whisper becomes more urgent.

Evander reaches for his champagne glass. His hand is steady, but I know that grip. Knuckles just slightly too white. He's about to drink to something he doesn't agree with. Something that will cost him later.

Waverly moves first.

She stands, just slightly, and reaches across the table. Her hand closes over Evander's glass before he can lift it. She meets the client's eyes and raises the champagne.

"Allow me," she says. Her voice is bright. Warm. She tilts the glass toward the client in a gesture that looks like respect and drinks the entire thing in one long swallow.

The table goes quiet.

She sets the empty glass down gently. She smiles at the client. He laughs. A big, booming sound. He says something in Mandarin that makes the others laugh too. The translator doesn't bother translating. The tension breaks like a snapped thread.

Evander stares at her. I watch him stare at her.

The main course comes. Wagyu beef. Truffle risotto. I eat three bites. Waverly eats nothing. She's gone pale. She presses her napkin to her mouth. Her hand trembles just slightly.

"Excuse me," she whispers. She stands. Evander stands with her.

"I'll take you outside," he says. His hand goes to her back. The same place he used to touch me. Before the surgery. Before the medications. Before I became something that needed careful handling.

They leave the table together. I watch them walk toward the restroom hallway. His hand stays on her back the entire way.

The client across from me asks a question about market projections. I smile. I nod. I have no idea what I say.

Twenty minutes pass. Evander returns alone. He sits down and picks up his fork like nothing happened. The client asks where his associate went.

"She wasn't feeling well," Evander says. "I sent her home in a car. Incredibly selfless, what she did. Saved us all a very awkward conversation."

The client nods approvingly. "Good instincts. You should keep that one close."

"I intend to," Evander says.

I set down my fork. The sound is too loud. Evander doesn't look at me.

Dessert arrives. Something with gold leaf. I stand.

"Excuse me," I say. "Restroom."

No one responds. I'm not sure anyone hears me.

I walk past the hallway where Evander took Waverly. I keep walking. Through the bar. Through the lobby. Out the front doors into the cold March air.

I stand on the sidewalk. The river is black and flat. A taxi passes. Then another. I could get in one. I could go anywhere.

But I don't.

I think about the nitroglycerin bottle on my nightstand. The refill date I wrote down. The torn divorce papers in my drawer.

I think about Waverly's pale face. Her trembling hand. The way Evander touched her back.

I think about the bullet fragment lodged two millimeters from my left ventricle. The scar tissue. The daily pills. The thing I did that was supposed to mean something.

A woman who faked a stomachache just got more tenderness than the woman who took a bullet.

I stand there until my hands go numb. Then I go back inside. I return to the table. I sit in my chair. Evander is laughing at something the client said. He doesn't ask where I went.

I finish my dessert. It tastes like nothing.

We leave at eleven. In the car, Evander checks his phone. He types something. His mouth curves up at the corner. Not quite a smile. Something smaller. Something I used to get.

He doesn't say a word to me the entire ride home.

The bills come in white envelopes. Mount Sinai's logo in the corner. Blue ink. Professional font. I stack them on the desk in the guest room where I've been sleeping for two weeks.

Cardiology consultation. Emergency room visit. Lab work. Prescription refills. The numbers climb. I add them in my head because I don't want to see the total written down.

My personal account can't cover it. Not anymore. Not after three years of this.

I could ask Evander. His name is on the joint account. He wouldn't even notice the charge. But I know what he'd say. I can hear his voice in my head, cold and precise: *Another bill, Genevieve? How much is this costing me?*

I sit at the desk. I look at the pill bottles lined up on the windowsill. Orange plastic. White labels. Dr. Mercer's name printed at the bottom of each one.

The beta-blocker is almost empty. So is the anticoagulant. The refill date was yesterday.

I pick up my phone. I open the pharmacy app. I stare at the refill button.

I close the app.

I tell myself it's just for a few days. Just until I figure something out. Just until I can think.

I don't refill them.

Day one is fine. I feel lighter, actually. Less fog in my head. I make coffee. I water the plants. I sit by the window and watch the street below.

Day two, my hands shake a little. I assume it's caffeine. I switch to tea.

Day three, my chest feels tight. Not pain. Just pressure. Like someone's palm pressed flat against my sternum. I lie down. It passes.

Day four, I wake up at 3 a.m. drenched in sweat. My heart is beating wrong. Too fast, then too slow, then a strange flutter that makes me sit up gasping. I drink water. I count my breaths. Eventually it stops.

Evander doesn't notice. He leaves early. He comes home late. On day four he doesn't come home at all.

Day five, I'm making breakfast. Oatmeal. I'm stirring the pot when the kitchen tilts sideways.

I grab the counter. My hand slips. The spoon clatters into the sink. The floor rushes up.

I don't feel myself hit the ground. I just know suddenly I'm looking at the underside of the table, and my body is doing something I can't control. Shaking. Seizing. My teeth slam together. I taste copper.

The fragment. The bullet fragment two millimeters from my left ventricle. It's moving. Or my heart is moving around it. I can't tell. I just know it feels like something inside me is tearing.

I can't reach my phone. I can't reach anything. I try to call out but nothing comes. Just a sound like choking.

The world goes white at the edges.

Somewhere far away, I hear a crash. Footsteps. A woman's voice, high and frightened.

"Oh my God. Oh my God. Yes, I need an ambulance—"

Clara Hayes. My neighbor. The one who always smiles at me in the hallway.

I try to say thank you. Nothing comes out.

The white edges close in.

I wake up behind glass.

That's the first thing I notice. Everything is blurry and there's a wall between me and the world. No. Not a wall. A window. I'm in a room and people are walking past outside and no one is looking at me.

There are tubes in my arms. A clip on my finger. Something beeping in rhythm with my heart.

Mount Sinai. ICU. I know this room. I've been here before.

I try to sit up. A nurse appears beside me, her hand gentle on my shoulder.

"Easy," she says. "You're okay. You're safe."

I'm not okay. I know that. But I nod anyway.

"Your husband is here," she says quietly. Something in her voice makes me look at her face. She won't meet my eyes.

I turn my head toward the glass.

Evander is standing outside. Hands in his coat pockets. Charcoal overcoat. No scarf. He's staring at me through the glass, but his face is blank. Not worried. Not relieved. Just... waiting.

Dr. Mercer approaches him. I can't hear what he's saying, but I see his mouth moving. Explaining. Updating. Evander cuts him off with a single raised hand.

I watch Evander's mouth form the words: *"Is she stable?"*

Mercer nods.

Evander nods back. Once. Efficient. Then he turns toward the glass. Toward me. His voice carries through, loud and clear, like he wants to make sure I hear.

"Are you trying to guilt me into staying? Is dying your leverage now?"

The nurse beside me goes very still.

A passing nurse in the hallway stops walking. Mercer stares at Evander like he's spoken a language no one recognizes.

Evander straightens his tie. He turns. He walks away.

I watch him go. I watch the glass where he was standing. I watch the empty space.

The beeping of my heart monitor doesn't change. Steady. Even. Alive.

I close my eyes.

The nurse squeezes my hand. She doesn't say anything. There's nothing to say.

I lie there and listen to my heart. The one I broke saving his.

I see them on the sidewalk outside our building.

Evander's coat is unbuttoned. Waverly stands close to him, her hand on his forearm. They're laughing about something. Her head is tilted back. The afternoon light catches her earrings.

I'm half a block away. I have a folder in my hand. Imaging results. Dr. Mercer wants to see Evander and me together next week to discuss options. I was going to tell him over dinner, but he hasn't been home for dinner in nine days.

So I walk toward them. Just to tell him. Just to say: *Thursday at two. Dr. Mercer's office. Please.*

Waverly sees me first.

Her smile drops. Her eyes go wide. She steps behind Evander's shoulder, one hand flying up to her chest like she's shielding herself. Like I'm coming at her with a knife.

I stop walking. I'm still ten feet away.

"Evander," I say. My voice is quiet. Steady. "I need to tell you something."

He turns. His face changes. Not surprise. Something colder. Annoyance.

"Genevieve." He steps in front of Waverly. His body a wall between us. "What are you doing?"

"I have an appointment next week. Dr. Mercer wants to see us both—"

"You need to leave her alone."

I blink. "What?"

"You heard me." His voice is low. Hard. The voice he uses in negotiations when someone won't back down. "This is harassment."

"I'm talking to you. I'm not—"

He moves.

One step forward. His hand comes up. Palm flat. He shoves me.

Not hard. Not violent. Just enough.

I stumble backward. My heel catches the curb. I go down.

The pavement is cold and sharp. My palms hit first, then my hip, then my shoulder. The folder scatters. White pages everywhere.

And then my chest.

Oh God. My chest.

It feels like something inside me snaps. Not breaks. Snaps. A wire pulled too tight. The pain shoots outward from the center, white-hot, blinding. I can't breathe. I try to pull air in and nothing comes.

The fragment. The bullet fragment. It's moving. Or my heart is slamming against it. I don't know. I just know I'm dying.

I hear Waverly's voice, high and thin. "Oh my God, is she okay?"

"She's fine." Evander's voice. Flat. "She does this."

I'm on my side now. Curled around the pain. My mouth is open but no sound comes out. Just this terrible gasping.

Footsteps. Not toward me. Away.

I force my eyes open. Evander has his hand on Waverly's shoulder. He's guiding her toward a black car idling at the curb. She looks back once, her face pale, and then they're inside. The door closes. The car pulls away.

I'm still on the ground.

Someone is running toward me. The doorman. His uniform jacket flapping. He drops to his knees beside me.

"Ma'am. Ma'am, can you hear me?"

I can't answer. The pain is eating me from the inside out.

He pulls out his phone. His voice shakes. "Yes, I need an ambulance. Woman collapsed. She's not breathing right. Yes, I'll stay on the line."

The world tilts. The sky is gray. I can see the tops of buildings, the bare branches of the trees lining the street. Everything is so far away.

I think: *He pushed me.*

I think: *He walked away.*

I think: *He left me here.*

The sirens come. Red lights flashing against the pavement. Hands lifting me onto something flat and hard. Voices asking questions I can't answer.

I close my eyes.

The beeping wakes me.

Steady. Rhythmic. I know that sound. I've heard it too many times.

Mount Sinai. ICU. Again.

There's a tube in my arm. A clip on my finger. The room is dim. It's night, I think. Or maybe just the blinds are closed.

Dr. Mercer is sitting in the chair beside my bed. He's not looking at his tablet. He's looking at me.

"Genevieve," he says quietly. "You're awake."

I try to speak. My throat is dry. He hands me a cup of water with a straw. I sip. It hurts to swallow.

"What happened?" I whisper.

"You had a severe arrhythmia. Your heart went into an unstable rhythm. The fragment—" He stops. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "You can't keep doing this."

"I didn't do anything."

"I know." His voice is very gentle. "But your body can't take much more. Another episode like this—" He pauses. "It could kill you. Not someday. Soon."

I stare at the ceiling. The tiles are white with small gray flecks. I count them. One. Two. Three.

"Is there something at home," Mercer says carefully, "that's making it hard for you to take care of yourself?"

I keep counting. Four. Five. Six.

"Genevieve."

"I'll be more careful," I say.

He's quiet for a long time. Then he stands. He writes something in my chart. He doesn't let me see it.

"Your husband is in the waiting room," he says. "Do you want me to send him in?"

I close my eyes. "Okay."

Mercer leaves. The door hisses shut.

I wait.

Evander comes in eleven minutes later. I know because I watch the clock on the wall. He's still wearing his coat. He doesn't take it off. He stands at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets.

"They said you're stable," he says.

"Yes."

He nods. He pulls out his phone. He scrolls through something. Emails, maybe. Or messages.

I watch him. The light from his screen reflects on his face. Blue and cold.

"Evander," I say.

He doesn't look up. "What."

"You pushed me."

His thumb stops moving. He doesn't lift his eyes from the screen.

"You were upset," he says. "You came at Waverly. I had to protect her."

"I wasn't—"

"I have an early meeting." He pockets his phone. He turns toward the door. "I'll have someone pick you up when they discharge you."

"Evander."

He stops. His hand on the door handle.

"Don't do this again," he says. He still doesn't look at me. "Don't make scenes. Don't embarrass me."

Then he's gone.

I lie there. The beeping continues. Steady. Even. Alive.

I turn my head toward the window. The blinds are closed but I can see a sliver of light between the slats. Morning, maybe. Or just the city that never sleeps.

I think about the pavement. The cold. The way he walked away.

I think about the word he used. *Protect.*

I close my eyes.

I don't cry. I'm too tired to cry.

I just lie there and listen to my heart. The one I broke saving his.