Two months after I signed the papers to end our marriage, I found myself standing in a sterile hospital corridor

Emma.

My ex-wife.

The woman whose laugh had once filled our kitchen before grief turned every room quiet.

She looked like a shadow of the person I once knew. Her frame was fragile beneath the loose cardigan, her hair shorn close, and her eyes hollowed out by a secret I had not been there to share.

For a moment, I couldn’t move.

I had come to the hospital to visit a coworker after surgery.

I had not come prepared to find the woman I had loved sitting alone outside the oncology ward, tethered to an IV pole.

Then she looked up.