The Last Time

He used to come to me without warning—between surgeries, on his break, or long after midnight when the hospital lights still burned and sleep was nowhere in reach. Sometimes I’d wake to find him already inside, unbuttoning his shirt with trembling hands and eyes dark with exhaustion and hunger. Other times, his voice would buzz through my phone: “Come to me.” And I would.

Those visits blurred the line between care and craving. Whether it was my bedroom or a shadowed on-call room at the hospital, he touched me like I was his only anchor. There was no slow buildup. No need. Just hands and mouths and skin that remembered what it was like to fall apart and be made whole all over again.

He devoured me like he was starving—like our time together had to be stolen before the world came crashing back in. The way he grabbed me. The way he breathed my name like it was a prayer. The way he left, each time, like it cost him something.

But slowly, those visits grew further apart.

At first, I didn’t notice. I was feeling better. I was stronger, steadier. I didn’t need help sitting up or moving through the ache anymore. I stopped calling him when the pain was sharp, or when the loneliness pressed against my ribs. I started going days without reaching for my phone.

And then, without realizing it, I stopped hearing from him too.

There were no more knocks at my door. No more urgent texts asking me to come. No more tangled limbs on sheets damp with sweat and breathless gasps in dim hospital rooms. His absence didn’t come with a goodbye. It just happened—quietly, like a tide slipping away when you weren’t looking.

I told myself it made sense. That we had leaned on each other in a time of weakness, and now we were just… returning to ourselves. But some nights, lying alone in the silence he used to fill, I still felt the shape of his body in my bed. I still remembered how he’d grip my hips as he rode me like he was trying to burn himself into me.

And I don’t know what scared me more; that he stopped coming, that I was forgetting what it was like when he did, or that I was pregnant.

The pain started days later. Not the emotional kind, I’d been carrying that. This pain was physical. Cramping, deep and pulsing, followed by the warmth of something wet soaking through my clothes.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t cry.

I just moved.

My body knew what was happening before my mind did. I got into the car. I drove myself back to the hospital. I didn’t even look at the ER sign when I parked. I didn’t need to.

Inside, they handed me paperwork. I signed it with a shaking hand. The nurse called out my name. And then I saw her—his sister. The same doctor who first told me I was pregnant.

She didn’t ask anything. She just ushered me into the same sterile hallway and back into a room, like she’d done before. Only this time, the bed felt colder. The silence heavier.

She was kind. Gentle. She did everything right.

Until he appeared.

I didn’t hear him. I didn’t see him come in. One minute I was alone. The next, there he was—framed in the doorway, looking like a ghost who’d only just realized he still had skin.

Her voice cut the air.

“You need to leave.”

He didn’t move.

“Now.”

Security came. There was no shouting. Just a sharp moment—his eyes flicking from her to me. And mine, frozen and distant, offering nothing.

They took him out. And she stayed with me, saying nothing more.

When I was stable, I went home. Alone. Not because I wanted to be, but because it was necessary. The grief was mine to carry. And I already knew he couldn’t hold it with me.

That night, just before I closed my eyes, I blocked him. Everywhere. Every app, every number, every whisper of access.

And still, before the sun had even risen, I heard the knock.

It wasn’t frantic. It was quiet. Once.

I didn’t answer. I watched from my window upstairs.

He stood there for a moment, then bent to place something on the doorstep. A bouquet—white lilies. Cheap and rushed. Funeral flowers for something neither of us had words for.

He turned to leave.

That’s when I moved.

I opened my front door without hesitation, walked barefoot across the cold concrete, and picked up the flowers like they were weightless. I crossed the street. I lifted the lid of my neighbor’s trash can.

And I dropped them in.

When I turned around, he was still there—half in his car, half out. Watching. Hurt.

I didn’t stop to explain. I didn’t flinch.

I just went back inside, locked the door, and let it be the last time that I saw him. 

But it wasn’t.