[RF] It Hadn't Always Been Like This
A man sits in an ER waiting room after a night he can barely remember. When a nurse asks if he recalls what happened, memories of a confrontation with the woman he loves begin to surface. In anger he said something he can never take back. Four years later, the moment still clings to him like something that won’t wash away.
---
I said something to the woman I loved that I could never take back.
Four years later, the blood still hasn't come off my hands.
---
It hadn’t always been like this.
The clock ticked above the nurse’s station.
The room was hot - sun-bleached and bright against my tired, hungover eyes. The fluorescent lights burned as I let out an exasperated sigh. It felt like an eternity sitting in the plastic ER chair.
I checked the time on my watch.
Four hours.
I had been waiting four hours.
Finally, a nurse emerged.
“Hi. Are you family?”
My cheeks flushed.
“No. I mean… I guess. I’m her… friend.”
“I see.”
She glanced over her shoulder, then sat down beside me.
I shuffled in the seat and lowered my eyes, my sweaty hands rolling an imaginary ball between them.
“She asked for you,” the nurse said.
My head lifted.
“For me?”
She nodded.
“She’s awake. A little confused, but awake.”
I exhaled without realizing I’d been holding my breath.
“What happened?” I asked.
The nurse studied my face like she was deciding how much I already knew.
“You really don’t remember?”
The clock ticked.
I swallowed, a lump stuck in my throat.
---
I remembered the way she laughed when she first got back from the trip.
Like nothing in the world had ever been wrong.
But something had welled inside me.
Something bitter.
I confronted her.
The smell of wine hung in the air as my head grew heavier and hotter in that room.
She was… scared.
Trying to defend herself.
Saying it was just emotional. That it didn’t mean anything.
When she said she loved him like family, it was a tie she couldn’t let go of.
She said she was trying to make enough money for us to get out - move somewhere else, start a family.
The room felt small.
Too small.
But something inside me had already snapped.
“I don’t see the point,” I said.
The words came out flat.
“I don’t want to have kids with someone like you.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Is that what you think of me?” she said softly.
For a moment, only a moment, I didn’t have an answer.
Then something in her face changed.
It happened so quickly I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Only the knife.
“Hey,” I said, standing up too fast. “He-”
Everything blurred after that - the sound of my voice, the soft thud, my hands shaking.
---
“No.”
They were still shaking.
The blood hadn’t come off.
The clock ticked.
Four years, and it was still there.