The hospital lights hummed as I leaned against the cold wall, my body aching from a long shift, but my stomach coiled with a deeper anxiety.
My fiancé, Dr. Mark Jensen, the rising star surgeon, was an hour late for dinner, consumed by his revolutionary new device.
I decided to surprise him in his lab, a small romantic gesture to end a grueling day.
But the smile died on my lips as I found him too close to Emily Carter, his research assistant, her hand tracing patterns on his arm, their heads bent intimately over schematics.
"The prototype is almost perfect," she murmured, "Just us."
The air between them was thick with a betrayal that had nothing to do with medicine.
Mark' s head snapped up, his face shifting from unguarded affection to pure shock as he saw me.
He tried to dismiss it, to blame his monumental work, but Emily' s saccharine sweetness painted me as a jealous fiancée, and Mark latched onto her excuse.