I’m No Longer His Girlfriend

1 After a car accident, Shane developed a rare memory distortion. He forgot me but believed Dana, his longtime admirer, was his tenyear girlfriend.

He doted on her while treating me like a desperate stalker. I exhausted myself trying to reach him, clinging to the fact that he was alive.

One afternoon, I overheard him speaking with Justin in the stairwell. When Justin worried I would leave if I found out, Shane laughed it off.

He admitted Dana was dying and confessed the crash and amnesia were staged to grant her final wish. He planned to blame a medical anomaly later and claim his memory returned.

I stood frozen at the top of the stairs, a bitter smile forming. All my sleepless nights researching specialists for his condition had been wasted. I had been trying to cure a lie.

I forced my trembling legs to carry me down the stairs.

Without a second thought, I tossed the thermal container of chicken broth, which I had simmered on low heat for five hours, straight into the trash can.

Ever since Shane's accident, I had been running myself ragged, trying to show up in his life at every turn, praying he would look at me and remember.

I had even swallowed my secular pride and knelt at a local temple, praying to a god I didn't believe in.

And all the while, I was nothing but a nuisance to him, a shameless woman who didn't know her place. I never imagined the truth could be so ugly.

No wonder he had flatly refused to step foot in my hospital's neurology department. He was simply terrified of being exposed.

I wanted to storm back into the stairwell and scream at him, but my pager buzzed. An emergency craniotomy was waiting for me.

Pushing my grief aside, I threw on my scrubs and rushed into the operating room.

By the time I finally emerged hours later, drained and exhausted, I opened my phone to find a new post on Shane's social media feed.

The caption read: Saying "I love you" at the very peak of the world.

In the photo, he and Dana were leaning their heads together, their hands joined to form a perfect heart against the backdrop of a glowing Ferris wheel. Both of them were beaming.

I tilted my head back, blinking rapidly to keep the hot tears from falling. Years ago, during our university days, our class had organized a trip to an amusement park.

I had begged Shane to ride the Ferris wheel with me, bringing up the old legend that couples who kiss at the very top would stay together forever.

He had scoffed, telling me it was a childish, stupid superstition. "We're graduating medical school, Nora.

Leave the fairy tales to the kids." It turned out he didn't hate the Ferris wheel. He just hated the idea of riding it with me.

I let out a quiet, selfdeprecating laugh, tapped the "like" button on the post, and shoved my phone back into my pocket. Seconds later, a text from Shane flashed across my screen.

Unfriend me. My girlfriend is uncomfortable with you being on my list. I stared at the screen, my chest tightening until I could barely breathe.

The tears finally spilled over, hot and relentless. What a fiercely protective, perfect boyfriend he was. Dana was two years younger than us.

She had fallen for Shane the moment she arrived on campus as a freshman. She was bold, loud, and entirely unapologetic about her feelings.

Every day, she showered him with snacks, coffee, and endless flirtatious messages. Back then, I had been deeply hurt by her persistence and asked Shane to block her.

I still remembered the arrogant, mocking look on his face. "Nora, can you please have a little faith in your boyfriend? I know where the boundary is.

Blocking someone over something so trivial is just childish." I wiped the tears from my screen and slowly typed a single word: Okay.

When I tried to send it, a glaring red exclamation mark appeared. He had already blocked me.

I changed out of my scrubs and walked straight to the chief of surgery's office. "Director Cole, is the spot for the fellowship in London still open?

I want to take it." Director Cole looked up, clearly taken aback. "I thought you wanted to stay here to oversee your boyfriend's rehabilitation?" I offered a tight, empty smile. "Plans change.

Like you always say, a young doctor should put her career first."