When I opened the door to the hospital room, Roberto looked up from the book he was pretending to read. He’d been in treatment for three weeks now — every two days, the same white walls, the same smell of antiseptic and fear. I knew he’d never made it past page forty-seven.

“I brought someone,” I said quietly, and stepped aside.

The color drained from his face. His eyes darted from me to the woman standing behind me — a short-haired brunette holding a small bouquet of sunflowers.

“Laura…” he whispered.

“Hello, Roberto,” she said softly, her voice trembling like someone who’d been crying for days.

I could almost hear his heartbeat echo in the silence that followed. He looked at me as if trying to understand what cruel joke this was.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice fragile but angry.

“Sit down,” I told him. My tone surprised even me — calm, steady, the way you speak when you’ve already rehearsed all the pain. “We need to talk. All three of us.”

Laura stood by the door, clutching the flowers as if they could protect her. I took a deep breath.

“Roberto,” I began, “two months ago, I followed you. I already know. I know about her. About the last three years. And before you say anything — I didn’t come here to make a scene.”

His shoulders sank. His lips trembled. A tear slid down his cheek.

“Andrea, I—”

“Let me finish,” I interrupted gently. “Six years ago, we stopped being a marriage. We lived under the same roof, but we were strangers. I buried myself in work, and you buried yourself in… something else. When you were diagnosed, I thought maybe we’d get a second chance. But I saw it then — you were already somewhere else.”

Roberto covered his face with his hands and sobbed silently. Laura took a step forward, then stopped, unsure if she had the right.

“I don’t want a divorce,” I said after a long pause. The words felt foreign in my mouth. “I want us to tell the truth. Finally. For once.”

“Why?” Roberto asked, his voice cracking. “Why did you bring her here?”

I stood up, walked to Laura, and took the sunflowers from her trembling hands. Then I turned and placed them gently on Roberto’s lap.

“Because she’s the one who’s been taking care of you,” I said. “Really taking care of you.”

Laura gasped, covering her mouth. Roberto stared at me as if seeing me for the first time in years.

“I called her three days ago,” I continued. “Told her who I was. We met for coffee. She told me everything — how you’d go to the park after chemo because you didn’t want me to see you weak. How she brought you soup when you said you were working late. How she held your hand when you thought you wouldn’t make it through the night.”

“Andrea, please…” Roberto’s voice broke. “Please don’t—”

“I should have been that person,” I said, my voice cracking for the first time. “I should have been the one holding you when you were scared. But we built walls so high that even death couldn’t climb them. And she… she loved you when I’d forgotten how.”

Laura collapsed into the chair beside the bed, shaking. “I never wanted to hurt you,” she whispered.

“I know,” I said. “You told me. You tried to walk away when he got sick. You thought it would make things easier. But love doesn’t care about right or wrong, does it?”

“This is insane,” Roberto muttered, though his hand had already reached for Laura’s without realizing it. “What do you want from us?”

I sat down again, feeling the weight of all our unspoken years pressing on my chest. “I want the lies to end. You’re dying, Roberto. And I don’t want your last months spent drowning in guilt. I don’t want you trapped between pretending to love me and hiding that you love her.”

Laura’s eyes filled with tears. “And what about you?” she asked. “What do you want?”

I looked at her. Her eyes were kind — that was the first thing I noticed when we met. Kindness, even when it hurt. “I want you to take care of him,” I said. “I want you to be here when I can’t. I want you to give him what I couldn’t — not duty, not pity, but real presence. And I want him to go knowing he was loved, not condemned.”

Roberto wept openly now. Laura stood and, without thinking, hugged me. We held onto each other — two women linked by the same love, the same man, and the same unbearable pain.

“Thank you,” she whispered into my ear. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“It’s not forgiveness,” I said, pulling back. “It’s honesty.”

Roberto reached out his trembling hands. We both moved toward him, one on each side of the bed. He looked between us — confusion, love, sorrow all tangled in his fading eyes.

“I don’t understand any of this,” he murmured. “But Andrea… I love you. I’ve always loved you. Just—”

“We got lost,” I finished for him. “We both did. And there’s no time to find our way back, is there?”

He shook his head, gripping our hands weakly.

“Then let’s make whatever time is left real,” I said. “No masks. No guilt. Just truth.”

Laura looked at me. “Is this really okay?”

“No,” I said honestly. “It’s not. It hurts like hell. But what we had before hurt worse — because it was empty. At least now, it’s real.”

We sat there in silence, hands intertwined, three souls bound by love, loss, and a truth too heavy for most hearts to carry.

Roberto looked at the flowers on his lap. “Sunflowers,” he said softly. “They were always my favorite. How did you know?”

Laura smiled through tears. “You told me on our first coffee date. Three years ago.”

I felt a painful smile tug at my lips. “You never told me that.”

“You never asked,” he whispered.

And that — that one sentence — was our entire marriage.

I stood up and brushed away my tears. “Well then,” I said, forcing a small smile, “let’s start over. Roberto, what’s your favorite flower?”

He laughed — a sound I hadn’t heard in years. Weak, but real.

“Sunflowers, Andrea. Always the sunflowers.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Next time, I’ll bring a bigger bouquet.”

Laura looked at me, half grateful, half broken. “Next time?”

“Of course,” I said. “Someone has to make sure you don’t spoil him too much.”

And for the first time in six years, all three of us laughed — together — in that tiny hospital room that smelled like disinfectant and long-buried truths.

It wasn’t a happy ending. But maybe it didn’t need to be.
It was an honest one.

Because sometimes, love isn’t about choosing who you can live with — it’s about letting go of who you’ve stopped living for.
And in the end, truth, no matter how painful, is still a kind of love.

So tell me — what would you have done in my place?