The Doctor Who Has No Chance (Soulless 11)

The closer she came, the harder my heart began to pound.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Then she took a seat—and the pounding stopped.

My heart slowed down dramatically, the drums in my head going quiet, the moment finally arriving.

She sat across from me, her eyes shifting back and forth slightly as she took in my expression, as she studied how much I had changed since the last time she saw me. Her hands came together on the surface of the table, her back straight and poised, her fingers interlocking like this was a deposition rather than a clandestine meeting of two people who once promised to love each other forever.

I didn’t say a word because I couldn’t believe this was real. There were so many days I woke up in bed alone and wondered if she’d done the same. There were times I didn’t wake up alone, and when I considered if she’d done the same, it made me feel like shit. Months and months had gone by, and I kept glancing at my phone even when it didn’t vibrate, when the screen remained black, so I had to tap it to brighten it and look for a text that I knew wasn’t there. I’d been living in the dark, wondering if she had any regrets, wondering if life as a single person had been easier for her than it’d been for me. Her silence made me reevaluate every single interaction we had, made me look for meaning in moments that meant nothing. Had she never loved me, but I loved her too much to notice?

She gave a slight clearing of her throat, just the way she used to, and her eyes dropped for a moment before she spoke, all of her mannerisms and movements exactly the same as they used to be.

I noticed she didn’t wear an engagement ring.

She finally said something. “Thank you…for meeting me.”

I was speechless. Had no idea what to say. I was angry, so angry that I wanted to storm out of there without looking back, but I lingered, waiting for an apology that I’d needed for a year, the closure I’d never gotten.

“I’m sorry…” She dropped her gaze. “I asked you to come down here, and now that we’re together…it’s hard. It’s hard to say everything that I’ve said to myself a hundred times, to say what’s been in my heart for so long.”

My hands were in my lap under the table, and I sat there with stillness, the only movement I made through my slight breathing. But every time I drew breath, it hurt a little bit. And a little more…and a little bit more.

She stared at the table for a while before she cleared her throat again.

“It’s getting late and I have shit to do tomorrow, so…” My voice was low, masked by the obnoxious coffee house music coming through the speakers, and I did my best not to yell in a public place.

She lifted her chin and looked at me. “Right…of course.” She gave a nod before she continued, her eyes glancing out the window beside us for a moment before she went on. “I want you to know how sorry I am…about everything. I’m not sure what happened, but I was so grief-stricken by my father’s death that I just couldn’t think logically anymore—”

“Is this an apology or an excuse?”

Her entire body tensed when I cut her off.

That’s right, Catherine. I’m not your loving, bend-over-backward, devoted husband anymore.

“I regret everything, Dex. I regret the way I treated you, the way I hurt you, the way I ran away from us…the way I blamed you.” Her eyes started to water when those words came out, and her bottom lip trembled slightly before she quickly composed herself once more.

She’d get no sympathy from me.

“It was wrong to blame you, and I’m so sorry for that.”

I felt like I hadn’t blinked once since she’d taken a seat, my eyes numb from the intensity of my stare.

“It wasn’t your fault. Not in the least.”

I did get some satisfaction out of that, did feel the weight of my guilt lift off my shoulders and disappear. I’d carried that fear every single day since she’d left me, carried the weight of Allen’s soul like I was the one who’d delivered it to heaven personally. It still gnawed at me, still disrupted my sleep sometimes, still gave me a momentary jolt of anxiety when I stepped into the OR and saw the patient on the table.

She looked down at her hands and squeezed them together tightly. “Fuck, I’m sorry…”

I could actually feel the pain in her voice that time.

“I lost my father, my best friend, and I just needed someone to blame for it. We were so close… I just couldn’t accept the loss. I assumed my brilliant superhero husband would give me what I wanted, and when that expectation wasn’t met, I put all the blame on you. I knew his heart was bad, I knew the risks, but at the end of the day…it was easier to blame you. That was wrong, so wrong.”