Novel Mania

After the miscarriage, Sophia became the perfect wife her husband had always wanted. She stopped asking who he truly loved. She stopped waiting until three in the morning because he had been holed up in the operating room for seventy-two hours straight. She even contacted a divorce attorney on her own, ready to end this marriage that existed in name only. Dr. Wilson flipped through the post-operative rounds chart, her voice tight with barely suppressed confusion. "Sophia, a spontaneous miscarriage plus a D&C is not a minor thing. Are you sure you don't want us to notify Dr. Whitmore? Protocol requires a signature from immediate family." "No need. He's... always this busy." So busy that this child had slipped away because of his indifference. ... Back when she was supporting James through his surgical residency at the Mayo Clinic, Sophia had torn up her own acceptance letter to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with her own hands. She followed him to Chicago, to this penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. She ran the household like a sterile medical unit. She memorized his on-call schedule and his nutritional intake more clearly than her own MCAT study plan. And so, the man's resume grew more and more dazzling. He went from chief resident to Associate Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery. His papers appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. His surgical videos were archived by the American College of Surgeons as teaching demonstrations. At the same time, the distance between him and her grew as vast as the shadowless lights over an operating table. The day James was invited to the American Surgical Association's annual awards gala in Miami, Sophia stood at the hotel entrance in her best dress, watching him laugh and chat with a group of colleagues in custom-tailored suits. The Chief of Surgery offered to bring spouses to the annual charity gala. James declined on her behalf right in front of her. "She's been at home for years. She can't handle those social situations. If she says the wrong thing and offends a donor, it puts me in a very difficult position." In that moment, Sophia's face burned. She gripped the hem of her perfectly unwrinkled dress, standing like an outsider at the edge of her own husband's world. He thought she wasn't good enough to be seen in public, yet he clung to her meticulous care like a bottomless pit of need. Three days ago, James discovered Sophia had secretly written a check for her medical school application fee. Five thousand dollars. Three years of savings she had scraped together from their joint account. His fury wasn't about the money. It was about the fact that she still had this dream at all. "Jessica needs an MCAT VIP intensive prep course. The full package with the internal question bank costs twelve thousand. Her foundation isn't as solid as yours. Without serious money, she can't even break 510. I already transferred the money from the joint account to her." Sophia couldn't believe it. That was three years of her savings. Every penny she had painstakingly set aside. "You transferred it to her? What about my application fee?" James looked at her like she was a naive child. "You? You're almost thirty. Why compare yourself to Jessica? She's young. She has opportunities. Even if you get in, so what? I'm the Associate Director in Chicago. You'd go to school in Boston or Baltimore? A long-distance marriage? If you don't find that embarrassing, I do." Sophia trembled. A sudden, violent cramp seized her abdomen, making her double over. "My stomach... it hurts so much..." "Here we go again. Every time I try to have a serious conversation, you suddenly don't feel well. Sophia, you've used this trick too many times. It doesn't work anymore." James grabbed his car keys and slammed the door on his way out. He didn't know Sophia was eight weeks pregnant. With the last shred of consciousness, Sophia crawled to the living room. Her fingers, slick with her own blood, dialed 911. When the paramedics broke down the door, she lay on the bathroom floor, already in hemorrhagic shock. She woke up to learn the baby was gone. She also understood, with absolute clarity, that James had never loved her. Not truly. Not once. In that instant, Sophia's heart ached with a pain sharper than any physical wound. But it was also the most sobering moment of her life. Three days after being discharged, Sophia went to the Chicago Public Library and borrowed a stack of MCAT prep books. When she pushed the door open, James's sneakers lay crooked in the entryway. His custom suit was tossed over the sofa like a dirty rag. Before, she would have cleaned everything to spotless perfection because of James's pathological obsession with order and cleanliness. This time, Sophia stepped around the mess and walked straight to the study. Review. Practice questions. She couldn't wait any longer. Two hours later, the study door was thrust open. James walked in, his face clouded with displeasure. "What are you doing? Look at the time. Where's dinner? Can't you see this place is a disaster?" He stepped closer, his gaze falling on the stack of books beside her. As if remembering something absurd, his tone instantly shifted into a command. "I told you, the MCAT is over. You've been married for three years. Why are you still fixated on this?" "Three days, and you still haven't figured it out?" Slap. Sophia closed the book. She looked up, her eyes cold. "Who made it a rule that married women can't become doctors?" James frowned, reassessing the woman in front of him. Sophia had always been docile. Soft-spoken. Never had she looked at him with those eyes, never spoken to him in that tone. "Your responsibility is to manage this household, to free me from any worries at home. That's what you should be doing. Something with as high a barrier as medical school isn't suitable for you now." "Jessica is younger. More malleable. Even if you took the test, so what? I'm here. Can you just leave? A long-distance marriage? What would everyone at the hospital think of me?" "What does her age have to do with me? James, aren't you the Associate Director? Can't you use your connections to get her an internal recommendation? Taking your own wife's money, destroying your own wife's future to play the hero for another woman. If that gets out, people will laugh their heads off." James's face went ashen. He stormed out, slamming the door so hard the wedding photo on the wall tilted. In the photo, only Sophia was smiling. Sophia put away her review notes. She picked up her phone and called her former mentor from Johns Hopkins, Professor Mitchell. She told her she wanted to reapply to medical school. Her talent in biomedical engineering was exceptional. As an undergraduate, Professor Mitchell had made an exception to select her for the core lab research team. If she hadn't followed James to Chicago, she would at least be at the chief resident level by now. Professor Mitchell was silent for three seconds. Then, with deep satisfaction, she said, "You should have made this decision long ago. Marriage is a part of life, not your ceiling. Your sky shouldn't be confined to a kitchen. Study hard. I'll write your recommendation letter personally." "Thank you, Professor." Sophia hung up and returned to the study. She was about to pull an all-nighter to finish one last full-length practice test. She opened the drawer. It was empty. The core review notes she had spent months compiling, every page written by hand, had vanished.