STIGMA

After a grueling thirty-six-hour shift in the neurosurgery ward, a blizzard hit Manhattan. Ellie had called her husband, hoping he could pick her up, only to have him coldly reject her.

Braving the freezing snow, she pushed open the heavy oak doors of their Upper East Side townhouse and walked straight upstairs, only to look through the half-open master bedroom door and see her husband's new assistant lying on the marital bed she had once poured her heart into decorating, wearing her favorite silk robe.

Hearing the noise outside the door, Vanessa Hayes scrambled off the marital bed in a fluster. She deliberately tugged at the loose collar of the robe, revealing a fragile panic. "Mrs. Oliver, you're home early."

Ellie's eyes were like a pool of stagnant water. There was no anger, only the chilling, numb detachment of a surgeon looking at medical waste.

Three years of marriage with this man. She and Ephram had long gone from being the envied campus couple to a pathetic, shattered reality. Ephram's infidelity was an open secret, and she, once cherished in the palm of his hand, had been thoroughly reduced to a despised, discarded wife.

"You're quite special," Ellie said coldly. "Ephram has never brought another woman back here."

This townhouse was their marital home, bought three years ago when they got married.

A flash of triumph flickered in Vanessa's eyes as she softly explained, "Mr. Oliver had too much to drink. I drove him back."

Ellie hadn't seen Ephram in two months.

Two months ago, on her twenty-eighth birthday, she was eating dinner alone at a five-star hotel restaurant when she ran into him having a candlelight dinner with a young model.

She had marched up, slapped him across the face, and screamed at him with a twisted expression for being disgusting and shameless.

Ephram had only offered a chilling sneer, telling Ellie to look in the mirror and see what she had become. Then, he wrapped his arm around the model's waist and went straight to the penthouse suite to have sex.

That night, Ellie returned to this massive, empty house and smashed every fragile thing in sight. Looking at her unrecognizable face in the mirror, she suddenly broke down into loud, agonizing sobs.

How did she become this? How did she turn into such a hysterical, miserable woman?

After that night, Ellie moved out of this townhouse. Ephram never came looking for her.

She heard he broke up with the model shortly after, but she didn't expect him to find a new replacement so quickly.