The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 298

Chapter 262: Working Through

Caleb POV

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I walked through the double doors of the hospital, my boots clicking softly against the polished linoleum.

Walking through the door of the hospital room was one of the hardest things I had ever done.

Bella was sitting up in her bed when I came in, her bed now moved twenty feet away from the incubator where Victor lay.

She looked at me as I crossed the room and sat in the vinyl chair beside her. I did not reach for her hand. I just waited.

“You look like you haven’t slept at all,” Bella said, her amber eyes scanning my face.

“I haven’t,” I said honestly. “I just sat there. Waiting.”

“Good,” she said, her voice steady. “We cannot go backward, Caleb. We cannot pretend this didn’t happen.”

“I don’t want to pretend,” I replied, looking directly at her. “Tell me what you need.”

“Twice a week,” she said. “Therapy for both of us. Dr. Anand has couples availability on Tuesday and Thursday.”

“Yes,” I said instantly. “Whatever it takes.”

“Dr. Anand actually works right here in this hospital,” Bella explained, pointing slightly toward the door. “She is the chief consultant for the maternal psychiatric and family support ward. Because I am confined to this bed and Victor is in the NICU, the hospital allows her to conduct our sessions right down the hall in the private family consultation room. I already spoke to the charge nurse. They are setting it up.”

“That makes it easier,” I said, nodding. “We don’t have to leave Victor.”

“We are not leaving him,” Bella said, looking over at the incubator twenty feet away. “But we are fixing this.”

On Tuesday afternoon, I pushed Bella’s wheelchair into the small family consultation room down the corridor. Dr. Anand sat in a quiet armchair, holding a folder.

۴

She didn’t look like a typical corporate counselor; her eyes were calm but sharp, focusing entirely on us as we settled in.

“Welcome, both of you,” Dr. Anand said, setting her folder on her lap. “I have read the notes from Bella’s admission, and I am aware of the public distress surrounding your family over the last few days. But to understand the explosion in Paris, we have to look at the foundation first. A house doesn’t fall from a single gust of wind. It fell because the beams were already rotting. Caleb, let’s start with you. I want to talk about the drift.”

I shifted in my chair, uncomfortably aware of the clinical smell of the room. “The drift?”

“Yes,” Dr. Anand said, leaning forward. “Not about the Paris issue itself. Before Nadina ever stepped foot into that hotel, there was a space created for her to stand in. Tell me about the days before you left for France. What was happening between you and Bella?”

7/3

Chapter 262

Hooked at the small rug between our chairs, my chest tightening. “We were just… focused on surviving. Bella was hospitalized. Every day was about blood pressure, fetal monitors, and risk assessments.”

“And where were you in that survival mode?” Dr. Anand asked directly. “Why didn’t you say anything when you felt the distance growing?”.

“I didn’t want to make it worse,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “She was the one in the bed. She was the one managing the physical toll. I didn’t want to add my own complaints or anxieties to her stress. It felt selfish.”

“So you protected her from the information that you were struggling with the helplessness of the situation?” Dr. Anand asked.

“Yes,” I muttered.

“And by keeping it to yourself, did she know you were struggling?”r

“No,” I admitted. “I thought I was being strong for her.”

“So she was left completely alone with her own experience of that distance,” Dr. Anand pointed out, her voice gentle but unyielding. “You withdrew into a shell of ‘strength, and left your wife on an island. I look at the timeline, Caleb. You spent days building a wall of silence around yourself. By the time you boarded that flight to Paris, you were starved for a space where you felt competent, powerful, and seen. Nadina didn’t create that vulnerability. You did, by refusing to talk to your wife.”

I looked at the floor, the truth stinging my chest. “Yes.”

By our fourth week of therapy, the seasons outside the hospital windows had begun to shift into a deeper winter. The initial shock of Paris had subsided into a heavy, grinding routine of daily NICU visits and intense, exhausting hours in Dr. Anand’s office.

Dr. Anand had spent the last few sessions turning her focus to Bella, systematically digging into the sequence of decisions that had shaped our marriage during the hospitalization. In the middle of a particularly heavy silence on a Thursday afternoon, Bella suddenly went quiet, her fingers tracing the edge of her blanket.

“I need to say something hard,” Bella said, her voice barely above a whisper.

The Dr waited. I braced myself, expecting another detail of my failure to be brought to light.

“I withdrew first,” Bella said, forcing herself to look up from her lap and lock her amber eyes directly with mine. “I felt the distance growing in those days before you left, Caleb. And instead of reaching out or asking you what was wrong, I pulled back even further.”

The room felt entirely calm but I didn’t move.

“I went quiet and told myself I was just managing the medical crisis,” Bella continued, her voice trembling slightly before she forced it to stay steady. “But if I am being completely honest with myself, what I was actually doing was making space for the distance to grow. I chose the silence because at least then, it felt like a choice I had control over. It was safer to be angry and distant than to admit I was terrified you were pulling away from me again.”

She stopped, taking a sharp, ragged breath.

23

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