Never His Priority

In my boyfriend Arthur's world, everyone could be labeled with an ER triage tag: green for minor, yellow for observation, red for critical.

As the emotionally stable one, I was forever the green tag in his life.

But my best friend, who cried and threw tantrums, was the red tag he never left the side of.

Two years ago, with my mother on the verge of death from heart failure on one side, and my best friend threatening suicide while drunk over a bad breakup on the other—he chose the latter without hesitation.

Until tonight. Separated by a single door, I watched him pull my best friend into his arms, kissing her with a greedy, desperate loss of control.

......

I was waiting for Arthur in the inner breakroom and accidentally fell asleep on the folding cot.

Until muffled sobbing from the outer room startled me awake.

"Arthur, am I just being a burden again? I was... I was zoning out while slicing fruit. When I saw the blood on the blade, I just panicked..." It was Chloe, my best friend of ten years.

"Don't be afraid, Chloe. The bleeding stopped, it's just a shallow scratch." Arthur's voice held an almost indulgent tenderness I had never heard before. "Have you been taking your antidepressants on time? I shouldn't have let you stay in your apartment alone."

I picked up the homemade seafood linguine I had brought him. I was just about to push the door open, but my hand froze on the doorknob.

Through the crack, Arthur was sitting on the edge of a desk, and Chloe was standing obediently between his knees.

He was looking down, carefully wrapping the minor wound on her hand.

When he finished, Chloe naturally slumped against his chest.

Arthur didn't push her away.

Instead, he yanked her fiercely into his embrace, leaning down and kissing her with a greedy, desperate loss of control.

The room echoed with intermittent breathless gasps and the hungry sounds of their kiss.

"Elena is strong. She can handle everything..." Arthur panted into her hair between kisses, "But you can't, Chloe. You need me."

I clenched my fingers, using every ounce of my willpower to stop myself from trembling.

Seven years together. I had always convinced myself that Arthur's job as an ER doctor required him to save all his empathy for his more critical patients.

But right at this moment, I finally knew why he always put Chloe's matters ahead of mine.

That storm-drenched night two years ago finally had its most cruel explanation.

That day, my mother suffered a massive, acute heart attack. I knelt on the flooded street, desperately calling Arthur. When the call finally connected, the background noise was Chloe's hysterical screaming over a breakup.

"Elena, Chloe swallowed sleeping pills. It's critical, I have to pump her stomach right now! Call an ambulance for your mom, I'll be there as soon as I can!"

Then he hung up.

By the time he rushed to the hospital, all that was left in front of me was a gurney covered with a white sheet, and that glaring, flat line on the EKG monitor.

Afterward, Arthur hugged me tightly, his eyes red and his voice trembling: "I'm so sorry, Elena. But Chloe's life was hanging by a thread. Your mother's attack was too sudden. Even if I was there, I might not have been able to save her. You're strong. You can understand me, right?"

Chloe stood by his side, crying and apologizing to me, saying that if her depression hadn't flared up, Arthur could have gone to save my mom.

I used to think it was the helplessness of a doctor, a cruel twist of fate.

I forced myself to swallow the blood and tears to be understanding of him.

But now, looking at the inseparable pair outside the door, all the pieces finally came together to form a suffocating truth—

There was never any medical triage or degree of urgency. It was just because it was Chloe.

I finally understood why Arthur, who normally hated socializing, always offered to drive Chloe home after our dinners, refusing to start his engine until he saw her safely inside.

"Text me when you're through the door," he used to instruct her.

I even teased him about it back then. I was ridiculously stupid.

He packaged his favoritism as some righteous sense of duty, just to make me feel that everything he did was perfectly justified.

"Arthur, can you stay with me tonight? Whenever I close my eyes, I see terrible things." In the outer room, Chloe grabbed his lab coat.

Arthur checked his watch: "My shift ends in thirty minutes. Elena said she's bringing late-night food..."

"Please."

After a brief silence, Arthur sighed and pulled out his phone.

A few seconds later, my phone screen beside me lit up in the dark. A text popped up:

[Multi-car pileup. ER just got flooded with trauma patients. Gonna be slammed all night. Don't bring the pasta. Get to sleep early, love you.]

I stared at the "love you" on the screen, my nausea reaching its absolute peak.

The sound of a door opening came from the outer room. Arthur left, wrapping his arm protectively around Chloe.

I walked out of the inner room, watching his back disappear at the end of the hallway, and looked down to wake my phone screen.

The screen lit up, illuminating our wallpaper—a photo of the three of us. In it, I stood right in the middle, and they stood on either side of me.

I used to think I was the bond connecting them. Now I see I was just the perfect smoke screen they used to hide their illicit affair.

As the glow of the screen faded to black, my heart—which had compromised and endured so much for him—froze completely over in this very moment.