A small figure came shrieking across the room and slapped me hard across the face.
I fell back against the bed. The oxygen mask slipped off. I gasped for air, helpless and exposed.
I looked up.
A young woman stood there, tears brimming in her eyes, shielding Dennis behind her as she screamed at me:
"How dare you hit him! Do you have any idea he's been standing outside the ICU for three straight days waiting for you? If I hadn't brought him meals every single day, he would have collapsed!"
"This is the man I love more than anything, and you think you can just use him as a punching bag for your emotions?"
I didn't miss the flash of tenderness that passed through Dennis's eyes. Tenderness and heartache, all for her.
I'd seen that look before.
It was the same look he'd given me the night I drank myself into alcohol poisoning taking shots meant for him, and lost our first child because of it.
It was the look in his eyes when the debt collectors were about to chop off his hand, and I knelt on the ground crying, kowtowing until blood ran down my face, pawning the only keepsake my mother ever left me to buy him a way out.