Discharged and Discarded I Left Them All

The day I was discharged, my husband and son came to pick me up.

Before I could even reach the car, Joy Swanson stepped out behind them.

She was my husband's first love. The one he'd wanted and never had.

He explained it to me. After you went into the hospital, I was busy with work, and there was no one to watch Marvin. I asked Joy to help out for a while.

My son had his hand in hers, and he said, sweet as anything, "Mommy Joy, let's go to the amusement park."

My son. Calling Joy Swanson "Mommy."

For a second I couldn't breathe.

Joy glanced at me, and there was triumph in it. Mockery.

She crouched down and stroked his head, smiling gently. "Be good. We came to get your mom. We have to take her home first, and then we can go to the park."

Marvin pouted, sulking. "Why do we even have to pick her up? She could just stay at the hospital. Then it'd be you and me and Daddy, together all the time."

Joy said nothing. She only kept smoothing his hair, while my husband stood there watching with a smile on his face.

It hit me then, that there was no place left for me at home.

"Get in."

Justin loaded my dirty laundry and the rest of my things into the trunk, then turned to me.

I nodded, silent. But before I could take a step, my eight-year-old burst into tears. "I don't want her in the car. She stinks. Make her walk home by herself."

A tremor went through me. I stared at him, not believing it.

The son I'd carried for ten months, the son I'd watched over for eight years with my heart in my throat, had just driven a knife straight into it.

Yes. A month in the hospital had left a smell on me. But I was his mother. He was eight, not some baby who didn't understand anything.

"Marvin, how can you talk about your mom like that?" Justin scolded, his face hard.

"I won't, I won't!" Marvin shrieked at the top of his lungs. "She's a stinky mommy and I hate her. I don't want her. I only want Mommy Joy. She smells nice."

Joy smiled at me. "He's little. Don't take it to heart."

I looked at her, then turned to Justin, hope still in my eyes.

He just gave me a pained, awkward look. "Why don't you wait here? I'll take Joy and Marvin home first, then come back for you?"

Marvin jumped up, delighted. "Yes! Then the stinky mommy smell can't get on me."

He grabbed Joy's hand and ran behind Justin, pushing at his father's legs. "Hurry up, Daddy. Mommy Joy and me are going to the park."

It came out before I could stop it. "He can't go."

"Why not?" Marvin spun around and glared at me, and there was real resentment in his eyes.

Something twisted in me. I turned to Justin. "Marvin has severe allergies. He can't be anywhere crowded."

He frowned and said nothing.

Joy smiled. "One time won't hurt. He's older now. His body's stronger than it was when he was little."

Anger rose in me. "He's not your son, so of course it doesn't matter to you. If something happens to him, can you take responsibility for that?"

Joy's eyes went red on the spot. "I... I'm sorry."

"Enough," Justin cut in, impatient. "If he's not going, he's not going. Why are you snapping at Joy? She's taken care of Marvin this past month every bit as well as you would have."

As well as I would have?

My chest twisted again, harder this time.

Eight years I'd cared for Marvin, and in his mind it counted the same as one month of Joy.

What a sick joke.

I forced the tears back and moved to put my arms around Marvin. "Mommy won't let you go because it's for your own good. Whatever you want to play, Mommy will play it with you at home."

Marvin shoved me away with all his strength, jabbing his finger at me and screaming, "I hate you, you stinky mom!"

Then he turned, sobbing, and ran toward the hospital exit.

"Marvin!" Joy hurried after him, but not without throwing a complaint back at me. "He just wanted to go to the amusement park. Would it have killed you to give in for once? No, you had to go and upset him."

Justin's face went cold too as he laid it on me. "Happy now? It was supposed to be a good day, coming home, and you turned it into this."

"Forget it. There's no point talking to you. You'll never change anyway. Just wait here. I'll go get Marvin, drop him and Joy at home, then come back for you."

I stood there and watched him pull Joy into the car and drive off, and the world went dark in waves. I nearly dropped where I stood.

I'd known about Joy before I ever married Justin. But he'd promised me he would never contact her again.

One hospital stay. That was all it took for him to get back in touch with her, and then to move her into our house without a shred of shame, calling it looking after Marvin.

Right.

Of course the one a man can never let go of is his first love. Especially when that first love is the one he's always put on a pedestal.

And Marvin. Just thinking of him drove a needle straight through my heart.

He was born with a sensitive constitution, so I had to quit my job and stay home to care for him.

I remember the year he turned three. He spiked a high fever in the middle of the night, and I didn't close my eyes for two full days and nights at the hospital, praying to every god in heaven to take my life in exchange for his.

His first day of preschool, I couldn't bring myself to leave, so I stood outside the gate.

His meals, I built from nothing, learning bit by bit, my hands cut and burned more times than I could count.

Eight years. Eight whole years, and I don't even know how I got through them.

Because of how I cared for him, his sensitive body never once flared up in those eight years. But I wore myself down until I ended up in the hospital.

I thought the discharge would finally be the sweet after all the bitter. Instead, there was no place left for me at home.

Maybe the moment I decided to quit and give myself fully to caring for Marvin, this ending was already written.

For eight years, Justin had less and less patience for me. I knew it perfectly well. But I told myself that as long as he still loved Marvin, as long as this home still mattered to him, a little hurt on my part didn't matter.

Only now do I understand. It wasn't that he resented me staying home. He resented me, the person. The one he'd loved all along was Joy.

I cared for our son and kept the house running smoothly, never troubling him with a single thing, and it never bought me his love.

Marvin too. I didn't ask him to love me much as a mother. I only asked that he understand me, that he not break my heart. In the end, even that was asking too much.

In a single month, Joy had completely replaced me as wife and as his real mother.

I stumbled out of the hospital with no idea where to go.

Home? There was no place for me there anymore.

"Care to take a look? We're recruiting brand licensing partners."

Someone pressed a flyer into my hand in the haze. Before I could react, Justin pulled up in front of me and stopped the car.

The first thing he did when he got out was scold me. "Who told you to wander off alone? Don't you know your body's still not back to normal, fresh out of the hospital? Could you give me a little peace for once?"

I looked at him, at that face I'd once loved so much, now a stranger's.

I couldn't hold on anymore. The world went black, and I fainted.

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in our bed at home, voices drifting in from the living room.

The first was my son's, sulking. "Daddy, why did you bring the stinky mom back? You could have just left her at the hospital. Then I'd get to stay with you and Mommy Joy forever."

The tears slid down my face.

The son I'd carried for ten months and watched over with my heart in my throat for eight years was telling them he didn't want me.

Justin's voice cut through the room, scolding. "Don't ever say things like that again. No matter what, she's still your mother."

"But I don't like her. She's always bossing me around. She won't let me go to the amusement park, won't let me eat the good stuff. Mommy Joy lets me eat anything I want, and she promised to take me to the amusement park."

Justin sighed. "Your mother does go a little too far."

My hands curled into fists at that.

He knew perfectly well I kept our son in line for his own good. Instead of defending me, he echoed our boy and called me harsh.

Then came Joy's voice. "Marvin wants to be with me that badly?"

"Mm. I love Mommy Joy the most. I want to be with Mommy Joy forever."

"I want to be with you forever too, sweetheart. But I'm not your daddy's wife. Your mommy is. Now that she's back, I'll have to leave soon."

"No. I don't want Mommy Joy to leave. I want Mommy Joy to marry Daddy and be my mommy. I'll go make stinky Mommy and Daddy get divorced."

The next moment Marvin came charging into the room, his small hands beating against me.

"Get up. I don't want you for a mommy. I want you to divorce Daddy."

I looked at him, and the pain in my eyes drained away little by little, hardening into something cold.

This was the son I had raised with my own hands for eight years.

An ungrateful little wretch.

"Out!"

The word came out of me like a roar.

It startled him, and he burst into wailing sobs.

Justin and Joy rushed in a heartbeat later.

"Marvin!" Joy gasped at the sight of him crying his heart out and quickly pulled him into her arms.

Justin glared at me, his face livid. "He's just a child. Whatever you're angry about, you shouldn't be taking it out on him."

I threw it right back, cold. "So you'd rather I take it out on you?"

"You"

Marvin only cried harder.

"I don't like stinky Mommy. She yelled at me, she told me to get out. Daddy, make her leave, I don't want to see her anymore."

Justin looked at Marvin, then at me. "Looks like you really do need some time alone to cool off."

I pushed back the blanket and forced my weak body upright. "You don't have to make me leave. I'll go on my own."

That was when Joy stepped in, playing the good one. "What are the two of you doing? You'd really blow up a marriage over something a kid blurted out?"

Justin said nothing. He pressed his lips together hard.

My face stayed calm. I wasn't the one breaking up this marriage. There was simply no place left for me in this home. The two of them, father and son, didn't want me.

I looked at the flyer on the nightstand. Maybe it was time I lived a different kind of life.

"All right." Joy handed Marvin over to Justin. "Go make him something to eat. I'll talk to her."

Justin nodded, and the moment he carried Marvin out, Joy's whole expression changed.

"How pitiful. Your husband doesn't love you, your own son doesn't want you. If I were you, I'd go kill myself right now."

"So I'd be clearing the way for you?" I gave a cold laugh.

Joy smiled. "I don't need you to clear anything. Your place is already mine. Soon Justin will be my husband, and your son will be calling me his mother."

My hands clenched into the sheets, my voice ice. "Are you done? If you're done, get out."

Joy leaned in close. "You're not still dreaming you'll be the lady of this house, are you? Wake up. There's been no place for you here for a long time. Look at the state of youyou make me sick."

With that she grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me off the bed.

The pain shot through me. "Let go."

Joy yanked harder, dragging me bodily over to the mirror.

"Take a good look at what you've become. What man would ever want you?"

She twisted my hair in her fist and forced my face toward the glass.

The woman in the mirror had just come out of the hospital after a serious illness. Her face was bloodless, her hair loose and tangled where no one had bothered to fix it, dark shadows under her eyes, lips with no color left in them.

So that was what I looked like now.

A bitter ache rose in me, the unfairness of it.

Eight years as a full-time wife. It hadn't bought me my husband's love or my son's. It had only aged me ten years.

"See it now?" Joy let go of my hair and looked down at me, her eyes full of contempt. "Look like that, and what do you think you have to fight me with?"

I looked at her. The flawless makeup. The tall, elegant figure.

She was right. I couldn't compete.

In that moment something in me went cold and quiet.

"Leave. I'll divorce him. You can have the boy."

Joy let out a sneer. "You think I'd believe that?"

Then she grabbed my head and slammed it toward the mirror. I fought back, twisting away, and she shrieked and pitched into the glass herself.

Crash!

The mirror shattered across the floor.

"What happened in here?"

Justin and Marvin came running in.

I was down on the floor, a bruise spreading across my forehead.

Joy clamped a hand over her own hand, the one the glass had cut open, blood running steadily between her fingers, and smiled at Justin. "It's nothing. Just a little accident."

"Did you do this?" Justin pointed at me.

Joy pressed her lips together and said nothing.

That was all it took. Justin didn't ask another questionhe decided it was me, crossed the room, and hauled me up off the floor by force. "What is wrong with you?" he roared. "Joy was only trying to talk some sense into you, and instead of being grateful you act like a lunatic and get her hurt!"

Then a sharp pain shot through my shin.

It was Marvin. He was kicking me.

"You hurt Aunt JoyI'll kick you to death!"

Kick after kick. He wasn't landing them on my leg. He was landing them on my heart.

But the strange thing was, after the first wave the pain stopped. Because my heart was already dead.

"You stay home and think about what you've done," Justin said, his voice cold as he helped Joy to her feet. "When Joy and Marvin and I get back from the hospital, I want to hear you apologize to her."

Joy leaned her head on his shoulder and gave me a taunting little smile.

I watched the three of them leave, no expression on my face.

Yes. In that moment, the three of them were the family.

Slam!

The second I heard the door shut, I picked up the flyer on the nightstand and dialed the number on it.

"HelloI'd like to ask about taking on a licensing and distribution line Yes, that's right. See you shortly."

I hung up, forced my weak body upright, showered, did my makeup, and put on a women's suit I hadn't worn in a long time.

Looking at the woman in the mirror, at least five years younger than the one from before, I said it to myself.

From today, I live only for me.

Then I left, taking nothing with me. I pulled out my phone and posted in the family group chat.

*I am formally divorcing Justin Sutton. This is my announcement.*

Then I left the chat and blocked every one of them, all in one clean motion.