After my husband’s crash, he pleaded with me to hire a nurse to look after him. Weeks later, the kind young caregiver hesitated at my door, shaking. “I can’t keep this to myself anymore… It’s about Bryce.” I steadied myself, not knowing her next words would shatter my marriage.
The hospital called at 11:47 p.m. Bryce’s car had skidded off the road and slammed into a pole.
The staff were prepping him for urgent surgery.
Memories flooded my mind: Bryce’s grin the night we met, making me feel like the only person in the world, how fast we became a team.
Bryce was my other half. How could I go on if he didn’t pull through?
I drove to the hospital in a fog, tears blurring my vision as I recalled the day he proposed. We’d only been together two years, but when it feels right, you don’t second-guess the timing.
Just last night, we’d been dreaming about our future kids.
“Two kids,” Bryce had said. “A boy and a girl, with your eyes and my hardheaded streak.”
“Good luck to us if they inherit your stubbornness,” I’d teased, and he tickled me until I was gasping with laughter.
Now, everything had flipped upside down.
Bryce was already in surgery when I got to the hospital. His right leg was badly broken, they said.
I waited for hours.
It felt like an eternity before a doctor in scrubs came to speak with me.
“Your husband’s doing okay,” the surgeon said. “We fixed the bone, but there’s some nerve damage. He might walk again, but it’ll take months of rehab. Physical therapy, pain management, the whole deal.”
My legs nearly buckled with relief. He was alive. But the words “nerve damage” and “might walk again” rang in my ears.
“Can I see him?”
A nurse led me to Bryce’s room. He was hooked to monitors, groggy from the anesthesia, but when I took his hand, he squeezed it softly and murmured my name.
“We’ll get through this,” I whispered. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
But reality hit harder than love ever could.
Bryce was in a full leg cast and needed help with everything. He couldn’t shower, dress, or even grab a drink. My days became a blur of rushed lunch breaks and sleepless nights checking on him.
Have you ever been so exhausted your body hurts? That was me every day for weeks.
Between helping Bryce to the bathroom, propping his leg on pillows, and doing the clumsy “bed-to-chair shuffle” the therapist taught me, I felt like I was running a race with no finish line.
“I can’t just lie here useless while you wear yourself out,” he muttered one night, eyes shiny with what I thought was frustration.
The next morning, he begged me. “Please, hire someone. I can’t be alone all day like this.” Then, with a cautious look, he added, “Or maybe Mom could stay? I need family, not strangers.”
The idea of Myrna moving in made my stomach churn, but Bryce kept pushing, so I called her.
When she quoted her “caregiving rate” over the phone, I nearly dropped it.
“Two hundred a day?” I said. “Myrna, that’s more than I earn. That’s more than trained nurses charge.”
“You get what you pay for,” she huffed. “Bryce deserves top-notch care.”
That was one thing Myrna and I agreed on, so I hired Nora instead. She had real qualifications and cost half what Myrna demanded.
Nora showed up at 8 a.m. sharp every day, managed Bryce’s meds, therapy exercises, and even got him to watch daytime shows without grumbling.
“She’s amazing,” I told my friend Veda over coffee. “Professional but warm. Bryce seems to like her.”
For weeks, things felt steady.
I’d come home to Bryce in bed, moaning softly about his “tough day,” while Nora gave her calm, thorough updates and left for the evening.
“Therapy was hard today,” Nora would say. “But he’s moving forward. Slow and steady.”
Bryce would nod faintly from the bed. “Nora’s been great, but man, this hurts.”
But steadiness can be a mirage. Sometimes the ground shifts before you see the cracks.
One Thursday in late October, Nora hung back at the door, fidgeting with her hands like a kid about to admit to breaking something.
“Can we talk?” she whispered, glancing toward the bedroom. “I can’t stay silent anymore. It’s about Bryce.”
My heart started pounding.
“Tell me,” I pressed, stepping onto the porch and shutting the door.
Nora swallowed hard. “I’d just left for lunch but came back because I forgot my charger.” She paused, hugging herself. “Bryce was… walking. Not the slow, careful steps from therapy, not leaning on crutches. He was moving freely, like nothing was wrong.”
“But that’s good, right?”
Nora shook her head. “The moment he saw me, he dropped onto the bed, groaning, like he couldn’t stand. He switched right back to ‘helpless mode.’”
Her words hit like cold water, but Nora wasn’t done.
“I pretended I didn’t notice,” she went on. “I helped him back into bed, grabbed my charger, and then… I froze in the hall. It was so strange, seeing him walk like that. He must’ve thought I’d left. I overheard him talking to his mom on the phone.”
“What did they say?”
Nora sighed. “First, he bragged about fooling me after I nearly caught him, but then I heard him tell her he feels fine, that this is all going perfectly. He said he can live off you for as long as he wants without doing a thing.”
My mind struggled to grasp the betrayal.
Bryce, my loving, charming husband, faking his injury? The man I’d been exhausting myself to care for?
“Are you sure?” I whispered.
Nora nodded, her eyes wet. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”
I asked Nora to keep it quiet and show up as usual the next morning. What else could I do? I needed time to think, to plan.
I buried the truth in my heart like a hidden bomb and kissed Bryce’s forehead that night like nothing was wrong.
He winced and groaned about fake pain, oblivious that I was already planning his exposure.
That night, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to Bryce’s calm breathing beside me. How long had he been deceiving me?
The next morning, I left for work but came back when Nora texted that she’d stepped out for lunch. I parked two blocks away and crept toward our house.
Through the kitchen window, I saw him standing tall, phone in one hand, coffee mug in the other, no crutches in sight.
I edged closer. His voice came clearly through the open window.
“It’s like a free ride, Mom,” Bryce was saying, and I heard Myrna’s gleeful laughter over the speaker. “She’s covering everything, even the nurse. I’m not lifting a finger till at least Christmas! Maybe longer if I play it smart.”
“You’ve always been my sharp one,” Myrna cooed.
My phone camera recorded every moment of his scam.
On the walk back to my car, I called a lawyer and a locksmith. It’s funny how fast you can unravel a marriage when you set your mind to it.
“This counts as marital fraud,” the lawyer said. “With that video, we can ensure he doesn’t get anything extra.”
That evening, I came home to the usual sight of Bryce in bed, his face twisted in his well-rehearsed look of pain.
He looked up with the same warm gaze that had won me over at that party years ago.
“How was your day, honey?” he asked. “Mine was rough. The pain was awful.”
I stood at the foot of our bed, staring at this stranger I’d married.
“I know everything.” I held out the divorce papers. “You can walk yourself out.”
His face went pale, like someone had drained it. He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again.
“You got it all wrong,” he stuttered. “I was just—”
“Faking it and bragging to your mom about tricking me. Like I said, Bryce. I know everything.” I shook out the trash bag I’d grabbed from the kitchen and started tossing his clothes into it. “Now, I suggest you call Mommy to pick you up, before I call the police to drag you out.”
He moved into Myrna’s spare room. For weeks, he called and texted, begging for another chance.
I ignored them all.
Nora stayed on as my tenant instead of a nurse. Her rent helped pay the legal fees, a small bright spot in the chaos Bryce left behind.
She turned out to be a great roommate, far better company than my lying husband ever was.
