My wife was eight months pregnant when I discovered she'd been cheating on me. The baby wasn't mine.

I told her calmly that I wanted a divorce. She broke down and ran into traffic.

I threw myself after her to save her and was hit by a car.

Three days and three nights of emergency surgery later, I woke up and learned I would never function as a man again.

My wife and my brother knelt outside my hospital room, begging me to forgive them. I said only one thing:

"You want my forgiveness? Then go die."

Three days later, they drove off a cliff, leaving behind a single farewell note.

"Maxwell Swanson, forgive us."

Everyone called me a murderer. Because my marriage was a wreck, I'd driven two people to their deaths.

My parents cut me off. My in-laws destroyed my career. The internet tore me apart until I sank into depression.

For five full years, I lived drowning in regret and self-blame, hating myself for those vicious words I never should have said.

Until the day I was working as a hospital orderly and an elderly paralyzed patient dumped a bedpan all over me again.

I stood there, drenched and frozen in place, and looked up to see my wife walking toward me with a swollen belly, my brother hovering protectively at her side, my parents flanking them both.

We stared at each other. My parents broke the silence first, their faces stiff with awkwardness:

"These past few years were just meant to temper that stubborn streak of yours, teach you to stop pushing your brother and Gretchen Henson so hard."

"You should've learned your lesson by now. Come home. We'll make it up to you."

I shook my head slowly.

"No."

The emergency surgery five years ago had given me HIV. I had ten days left to live.

Ten days. All I wanted was to leave this world quietly.

——

The words drained the color from every face across from me.

My brother rushed to my feet and dropped to his knees.

"Maxwell, this is all my fault, every last bit of it! Back then, after you lost the ability to have children, the baby in Gretchen's belly was the family's only bloodline. Gretchen and Mom and Dad were afraid you'd force her to abort it, so they came up with the plan to fake our deaths."

He slammed his forehead against the floor over and over.

"I swear to you! The moment Gretchen's baby is born, I'll leave the country. I'll never show my face in front of you or Gretchen again for the rest of my life. All I'm asking is that you raise my two children as your own and treat them well!"

I took a few slow steps back and said evenly:

"No need."

Those two words twisted his expression. His eyes went red.

"You still won't forgive me?! Fine then, I'll go die right now! Consider it payback for what happened to you all those years ago!"

He rammed his head straight into the wall. Blood burst across the surface and spattered my face.

Gretchen, who had been staring at me without blinking, her eyes full of guilt and unease,

changed completely in an instant, rushing to my brother's side, screaming his name.

My parents scooped him up and ran for the emergency room, shouting back at me as they went:

"Maxwell, do you have to push your brother to death?! Look at him now! Are you satisfied?!"

"Look at yourself! A PhD from a top university, and you're wiping up filth for a living! Are you doing this on purpose? Trying to make people think we're the kind of family that plays favorites and bullies you?!"

Accusations with no ground to stand on.

Fifteen years ago, words like those would have cut me to the bone. I would have fought back with everything I had.

"You feel sorry for him! What about me? He's the one who wronged me. Why am I the one being blamed?!"

"Aren't you the ones who ruined me?! What right do you have to demand my forgiveness?!"

Five years ago, I actually said something like that.

When I first discovered my wife and my brother's affair.

That day, I drove home and found my parking spot half-blocked by Gretchen's car.

For no particular reason, I thought of a local forum post I'd scrolled past once out of boredom.

"Say you want to sleep with another man's wife, but you're afraid her husband might come home and catch you. What do you do?"

Someone answered:

"Easy. Have the woman park her car in her husband's spot. That way, when he comes home and needs the space moved, he'll call her first, and she'll have a heads-up..."

I used to torment myself with regret. Why didn't I just call Gretchen and ask her to come downstairs?

Why did I have to go up alone?

Why, when I heard the sounds coming from inside the apartment, did I have to push open that door?

If I hadn't done any of those things, could I have gone on living in blissful ignorance forever?

Would my brother and my wife still be alive, instead of killing themselves out of guilt?

Would my parents not hate me so much?

But there are no do-overs.

The moment I pushed the door open, I saw my wife's betrayal and my brother's treachery laid bare.

I broke down sobbing, lunging at Rex to slap him across the face.

Gretchen shoved me away.

She stood in front of Rex, shielding him, her eyes fixed on me with a wary, guarded look:

"If you want to blame someone, blame me. This has nothing to do with Rex. I fell in love with him while treating him. I'm the one without professional ethics. I'm the one who couldn't control my own heart."

Even my parents, who had rushed over after getting the call, sided with him. They said, voices stiff with disapproval:

"Enough. You've already made a scene. What more do you want? Are you going to force your brother to get on his knees and apologize?"

"Your brother has depression. He's finally found someone he cares about, someone who gives him a reason to live. Can't you just be generous for once and let him have this?"

I screamed and cried like a madman, pouring out every injustice I'd ever swallowed:

"Why do you keep doing this to me?! All these years, just because Rex has depression, because he can't handle the slightest upset, I've been forced to give in over and over and over again!"

"He was fragile! He was in a bad mood! So from the time I was a kid, you wouldn't let me go out and play! Wouldn't let me have friends! Wouldn't let me do anything fun! I had to stay by his side! But then you'd turn around and take HIM on vacations, and call it 'treatment'!"

"He was too sick to study for the SATs. So you wouldn't let ME go to college! But then you sent HIM to study abroad!"

"I finally married someone I loved and had a home of my own! And you forced him to move in with us! Because Gretchen was a psychologist, you said, and having her care for him around the clock might cure him!"

"You were so afraid he'd hurt himself that you made me agree to let Gretchen stay by his side twenty-four hours a day!"

"And now? Because he 'can't handle stress,' he gets to steal my wife, and I'm supposed to forgive him?!"

"On what grounds?! Tell me on what grounds!"

I was gasping between sobs when I turned to Gretchen.

She used to stand by me without hesitation.

Whenever Rex pulled his usual act, playing the pitiful depressive for sympathy,

she would cut through it without a shred of courtesy:

"Mr. Swanson, don't bother putting on a show for me. I'm a psychologist. I am absolutely certain you don't have depression. This is just the tool you use to bully my husband."

"Don't think you can keep using this to hurt him. I'm going to expose you for what you really are, and I'm going to make your parents see just how badly they've treated Maxwell because of you."

"Everything you owe my husband, I will get back for him."

But now, watching her gaze at Rex with tender, protective eyes,

my heart shattered into dust.

I grabbed at her sleeve, grief clawing through every word as I asked her again and again:

"You said it didn't matter who else he fooled, he'd never fool you. You said you'd protect me forever! That you'd never let anyone wrong me again! Gretchen, how could you forget what you promised me? How could you take his side too?!"

Gretchen's hand froze mid-reach where she'd been shielding Rex. She looked at me, her expression tangled with guilt.

Rex went white. He spun around and climbed onto the windowsill. While my parents screamed, he let out a bitter laugh through his tears:

"Max, I had no idea you'd been suffering so much because of me all these years."

"I've always known I was nothing but a burden, dragging all of you down. If it weren't for not wanting to break Mom and Dad's hearts, if it weren't for meeting Gretchen, I would've killed myself a long time ago."

"It's not too late. Let me die now. Consider it my way of making it up to you."

My mother shrieked, begging Rex not to move, then whipped around and hit me:

"You won't be satisfied until you've driven your brother to death, is that it?! Tell him now! Tell him you were wrong!"

Even Gretchen grabbed my hand, squeezing it so hard her knuckles went white, demanding I apologize to Rex immediately:

"Max! Just listen! Apologize to Rex first! You can't just stand there and watch him die!"

I let a mocking smile spread across my face.

"In your dreams."

"He's been pulling this suicide stunt for over a decade. If he actually wanted to die, he'd be dead already."

"He's just using your sympathy to put on a show and push me around."

A slap cracked across my face. My mother glared at me like I was her worst enemy and screamed:

"How did I raise such a vicious son?! If anything happens to my boy because of you, I will never let this go!"

In the end, Rex didn't jump.

Because Gretchen broke down sobbing, screaming that it was all her fault, that if anyone should die it should be her.

She ran downstairs with her swollen belly and threw herself into traffic.

I ran after her on instinct.

The moment the car was about to hit her, the part of me that still loved her made me reach out and shove her out of the way.

I was rushed into emergency surgery. They replaced nearly every drop of blood in my body before they managed to keep me alive.

But I was left permanently disabled, and I would never be a father.

Outside my room, Gretchen knelt on the floor, begging, her voice cracked and trembling as she asked what she could possibly do to earn my forgiveness.

I used every ounce of strength I had left to say one sentence.

"Gretchen, I will never forgive you. Not unless you're dead."

I lay in the ICU for three days.

On the third day, I was transferred to a regular ward. The first thing I did was have a lawyer draft a divorce agreement and a family severance document.

But before I could send either one out,

the news arrived first: Gretchen and Rex were dead. A lovers' suicide pact.

My parents burst into my room like they'd lost their minds and dragged me off the hospital bed,

calling me a murderer, a curse on the family.

My in-laws collapsed against the doorframe, fingers shaking as they pointed at me and screamed:

"You drove your brother and Gretchen to their deaths!"

"Why couldn't it have been you who died, you jinx?! You killed them! You'll rot for this!"

The scene drew a crowd of bystanders in the hospital. Someone filmed it and posted it online.

"Apparently this guy accused his own wife of cheating with his brother. She was heavily pregnant and he tried to force her into an abortion and a divorce. Then he got hit by a car. His wife was on her knees outside his room begging him not to leave her, and he told her to go die."

"His brother had depression and couldn't take the stress. So the brother and the wife drove off a cliff together. Said it was to atone..."

Fragments of the truth, twisted just enough to set the entire internet on fire.

Everyone called me delusional, psychotic, said I'd killed my own child, driven my wife and brother to their deaths.

My parents signed the family severance papers with bloodshot eyes, then looked at me and said coldly: