I was assaulted.

My husband, Ethan Dunmore, was right there on the other side of the wall, deaf to every sound I made.

Because he'd removed his hearing aids again.

Three years of marriage. To the outside world, he was the perfect husband — handsome, successful, unshakably composed. Only I knew the truth: every time we argued, he'd take out his hearing aids. Not because he didn't have a temper. Because he found me tedious. He simply didn't want to waste his time fighting with me.

That night, Ethan never came to look for me.

By the time I dragged myself home, he was sitting with his head bowed over his desk, making revisions to a surgical case file for his first love, Serena Forsythe.

"I was assaulted," I said, walking to his side. "We need to go to the police."

"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry — won't happen again."

He didn't even look up. The apology came out smooth and practiced, like muscle memory.

I could see that his ears were still bare.

I almost laughed.

I couldn't keep living in this silent world he'd built around himself.

"Ethan," I said quietly. "Let's get a divorce."

His voice stayed as cool as ever. "Mm. We won't fight anymore."

I stared at him. Even my tears had dried up.

This was the man I'd loved for three years.

While I was being torn apart, he'd been rewriting someone else's paperwork. And when I threw the most devastating truth I had at his feet, all I got back was the same reflexive, off-the-shelf dismissal.

When I didn't keep talking the way I usually did, Ethan finally noticed. He reached up and put his hearing aids back in.

He lifted his head. His eyes dropped to my disheveled clothes. A frown.

"Why are you such a mess? Is that blood?"

The living room had only one small lamp on. He couldn't see clearly.

"I tripped on the way home," I said. My voice was calm. "Scraped myself."

His frown deepened. "After all these years, you still won't change. It was just a routine checkup. You could've gone on your own if I couldn't make it — why do you always have to make things dramatic?"

He paused. "Go change. I'll put something on it."

I didn't answer him. I went to the closet, pulled out clean clothes, and walked straight to the bathroom.

I turned on the shower. Cold water hit me from above.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My neck. My back. Bruises. Marks I couldn't bear to look at.

Then a sharp, dragging pain in my abdomen — like a fist closing around something inside me and pulling.

I looked down, slow and uncomprehending.

On the white tile of the shower floor, a bloom of red was spreading.

That small red stain pinned me in place as surely as a nail through my feet.

I pressed my hand to my stomach, like clutching the last thin thread of hope. Tears ran down my face with the water.

"My baby—"

But the blood kept coming. Slow and steady.

Ethan didn't know. That morning — just that morning — I'd taken a pregnancy test. Two lines.

I'd been afraid it was a false positive, so I'd told him only that I wanted to go for a checkup. I was going to confirm it properly first. Then surprise him.

We'd barely made it to the parking garage when Serena's call came through.

Ethan, I wrote something wrong in a patient chart — the attending is furious with me, can you pull it up on your computer and fix it? Just send it over?

He hung up and turned to leave without a word.

I stared at his back. The anger I'd been pressing down finally broke through.

"Ethan Dunmore. Who exactly is your wife — me or Serena Forsythe?"

His expression went cold instantly.

"I've told you. Serena and I are colleagues now. Stop being unreasonable."

"Unreasonable?" My voice cracked. "On our anniversary, she had a fever — you left me to bring her medicine. When my mother was hospitalized, she said she was scared to be on call alone — you went and stayed with her. Now I need to go to a checkup and you're walking out again. Which one of us is being unreasonable?"

The moment those words landed, the last trace of patience in his eyes vanished.

"Ivy, you're too worked up right now. We can't have this conversation."

My stomach dropped.

And then he reached up, exactly as I knew he would, and removed his hearing aids.

The motion was practiced. Fluid.

He always did this.

The moment I started talking about hurt, about disappointment, about everything that wasn't fair in this marriage — he shut himself away.

Ethan turned and walked toward the exit.

He didn't see what happened behind him. Two drunk men dragging me into a corner.

He hadn't gone far. I could see him waiting at the edge of the garage, just around the corner.

But he didn't look back. He didn't put his hearing aids back in.

His world had gone quiet.

And mine — my screaming — was sealed behind that wall with him.