David

The glare from the operating lamps spared no one, but you looked the worst. David noticed how, at the end of an eight-hour shift, your hand on the clamp trembled slightly.

“Are you okay?” he asked in the locker room, pulling down his mask.

"Just exhaustion. The schedule is crazy," you forced a smile, hiding your hand behind your back, clenched into a fist from the sharp pain in your side.

• You need to get checked out. You're melting before our eyes.
  "I'm a surgeon, not a crystal vase. I'll get some sleep, and everything will be fine."

But it didn't go away. At night, he'd feel you twitching in your sleep, and in the morning, he'd find empty blister packs of the strongest painkillers in the bathroom. You blamed it on gastritis and stress.

When you left for the night shift, David, driven by a bad feeling, went to the clinic. He logged into the archive system using his password. His attention was drawn to a new file in the "Cito!" folder, marked with your initials.

David opened the scans. His heart skipped a beat. The MRI images clearly showed a massive tumor with metastases into adjacent tissue. Stage 3. He looked at the date: the diagnosis had been three weeks ago. For three weeks, you'd been lying to him, coming into the operating room feeling "overtired."

The office door opened. You walked in, pale as a sheet, and froze when you saw your photos on the screen.

"Why?" David stood up, his voice dangerously quiet. "Why am I finding out about my wife's stage three cancer from a database, and not from her?"

"I thought it was just fatigue. We're all worn out here. And when I realized... I didn't want you to look at me like a patient."

"I'm your husband!" He slammed his palm on the table. "We save strangers every day, and you decided to die quietly behind my back? Why didn't you say anything when the pain started?"

"Because I'm a surgeon, David! I'm used to stopping pain, not complaining about it," you finally looked at him, tears welling in your eyes. "If I told you, you'd stop seeing me as a colleague. You'd start mourning me."

"You're a surgeon!" he shouted. "You knew time was running out! That's it, no more work, chemo tomorrow."