Five years is a lifetime when you live it in hour-long increments. It’s one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-five days of erasing yourself until you are nothing more than a pair of hands, a strong back, and a silent shadow.
I spent my entire twenties not in clubs, not climbing the corporate ladder, and not traveling the world. Instead, I spent them in a dimly lit bedroom in Seattle, smelling of antiseptic and despair. I learned to cook chicken broth at 3:00 AM because he demanded it. I learned the precise rhythm to turn a 200-pound inert human body so bedsores wouldn’t eat away at his skin. I learned to crush pills, change catheters, and swallow my own pride.
I believed—with the stupid, blinding naivety of a woman in love—that this was my duty. I thought sacrifice was the currency you used to buy eternal love. “In sickness and in health,” I whispered to myself every time my lower back seized up in pain, or when the smell of sickness soaked so deep into my pores that no amount of expensive perfume could mask it.
David had his accident on I-5, just outside of Tacoma. A drunk driver, a hydroplaning truck, and a life cleaved in two. He survived, but his legs didn’t. He was paralyzed from the waist down. And I, Jasmine, the devoted young wife, stayed. I turned our modern downtown condo into a hospital ward. I learned to navigate the wheelchair ramps, the insurance bureaucracy, and his terrible, dark moods.
But that Tuesday morning… that gray, rainy Tuesday morning changed the script forever.
I was holding a white paper bag from “Petit Pierre,” his favorite bakery. Inside were two warm almond croissants—the kind he loved, flaky and filled with sweet paste. I had woken up at 5:00 AM to drive across the city to get them before his physical therapy session at the VA hospital. I wanted to give him a moment of joy.
I walked down the sterile hallway of the rehabilitation wing, my sneakers squeaking softly on the linoleum. My heart was full of that foolish hope I always carried—the hope that today he might smile at me. Today he might say “thank you.”
I heard his voice coming from the solarium, the glass-walled room where patients took their breaks.
I stopped behind a pillar. I wasn’t trying to spy. I just wanted to fix my hair. I wanted to look pretty for him, even though I looked exhausted.
“She’s basically free labor, man,” David said.
His voice didn’t sound weak. It didn’t sound depressed. It sounded arrogant. It sounded like the old David—the shark I thought had died in the crash.
“Think about it,” David continued, his voice carrying clearly. “If I hired a 24-hour nurse, it would cost me ten grand a month. Jasmine? She doesn’t cost a dime. She doesn’t complain. She feeds me, cleans the house, fights the insurance, bathes me. It’s the full package for zero dollars.”
I heard another man laugh. A low, dirty, complicit laugh.
“You’ve got it made, Dave,” the stranger said.
“I’m not stupid,” David scoffed. “I made sure early on. She feels guilty, so she stays. And the best part? When I kick the bucket, everything goes to Thomas. My son. My blood. Jasmine… well, she’s just there. A useful idiot.”
CHAPTER TWO: THE DEATH OF JASMINE
My legs turned to cement. I stood pressed against the cold drywall, the bag of almond croissants clutched to my chest like a life preserver in a hurricane.
Useful. Free. Idiot.
Those were the words my husband used to describe me. Not “beloved.” Not “partner.” Not “savior.”
A tool. A maid with a wedding ring.
I felt tears prick my eyes, hot and stinging, but I didn’t let them fall. A cold, unfamiliar fury began to crystallize in my stomach. It replaced the butterflies of anxiety I had lived with for five years.
I thought of Thomas, his twenty-two-year-old son from his first marriage. Thomas, who dropped out of college and treated our home like a hotel. Thomas, who would walk past me while I was scrubbing the floor and ask what was for dinner without making eye contact.
“It really affected him, seeing his dad like this,” David would say to excuse his son’s laziness. And I, like a fool, would nod and wash Thomas’s dishes.
David laughed again in the solarium. That laugh… it severed the last thread of my devotion.
I took a step back. I didn’t enter the room. I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw the croissants in his face, though the urge was violent. If I went in there now, I would cry. I would look weak. And I was done being weak.
I walked back to the elevator. I went down to the parking garage. I sat in my Honda Civic, my hands trembling on the steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall.
“The useful idiot is dead,” I whispered.
I ate the croissants myself. They tasted like ash and sugar. Then, I drove home.
CHAPTER THREE: THE INVESTIGATION
When the medical transport brought David home that evening, I was sitting on the couch. I wasn’t running to the door.
“Jasmine!” he shouted from the hallway. “The door isn’t going to open itself!”
I stood up slowly. I walked to the door and opened it. The transport drivers wheeled him in.
“Where were you?” David snapped as soon as we were alone. “I waited for you. You said you were bringing pastries.”
I looked at him. Really looked at him. I didn’t see a tragedy anymore. I saw a narcissist in a chair.
“I got busy,” I said calmly.
“Busy? Doing what?” He sneered. “It’s not like you have a job.”
Strike one.
“I forgot,” I said. “Do you want dinner?”
“Obviously. And fix my pillows. My back is killing me.”
I went through the motions. I cooked. I adjusted him. But while he watched TV, zoning out into a football game, I went into his home office.
For five years, David had handled the “big picture” finances, while I handled the day-to-day grocery budget. He always told me not to worry about the investments, that he had it covered.
I knew his passwords. He was too lazy to type them in, so he had me do it whenever he needed to check a balance.
I logged into his main accounts. I dug deeper than I ever had before.
I found the trust.
The “Thomas R. Miller Revocable Trust.”
It had been established two years ago. He had been siphoning money—our money, money from the settlement, money from his disability payouts, money that should have been used for his care—into an account solely for his son.
I checked the beneficiary designation on the life insurance. Thomas Miller: 100%.
I checked the house deed.
That was where he slipped up.
We bought the condo three years before the accident. We bought it when I was working as a marketing executive, making more money than him. The deed was “Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship.”
But then I found a drafted email to his lawyer.
Subject: Removing Jasmine from the Title. Body: “Frank, I need to figure out how to get her off the deed without her noticing, or force a sale where the proceeds go to the trust. She’s clueless, but I need the paperwork ready.”
He was planning to leave me homeless. After I had wiped him for five years.
I closed the laptop. I didn’t feel sad anymore. I felt surgical.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE POWER OF ATTORNEY
The next morning, I called a lawyer. Not David’s lawyer. A shark named Eleanor Vance who specialized in “high-conflict divorces.”
I met her at a coffee shop three blocks away while David was napping.
“He calls you a useful idiot?” Eleanor asked, raising an eyebrow. She took a sip of her espresso. “Let’s see how useful you can be.”
I laid out the situation. The trust. The house. The caretaking.
“Do you have Power of Attorney?” Eleanor asked.
“Yes,” I nodded. “He signed a Durable Power of Attorney to me right after the accident. He hates dealing with the insurance companies and the hospital billing. He wanted me to handle everything.”
Eleanor smiled. It was a terrifying, beautiful smile.
“Is it still valid?”
“Yes. He never revoked it because he’s too lazy to do the paperwork himself.”
“Jasmine,” Eleanor said, leaning forward. “You have the keys to the kingdom. A Power of Attorney allows you to make financial decisions on his behalf for his benefit. If you move assets to pay for his debts, or his care… that’s legal.”
“What about the trust for Thomas?”
“We can’t touch what’s already in there easily,” Eleanor said. “But we can make sure no more money goes in. And we can settle the ‘marital debts.’ You said you used your own savings to pay for his initial surgeries?”
“Yes. About fifty thousand dollars.”
“That’s a loan to the marital estate,” Eleanor said. “You pay yourself back. Today.”
CHAPTER FIVE: THE SLOW WITHDRAWAL
The revenge didn’t happen all at once. It was a slow burn.
First, I fired the cleaning lady who came once a week to do the heavy scrubbing.
“Why is the bathroom dirty?” David asked three days later.
“I fired Maria,” I said, flipping through a magazine. “We need to save money.”
“Then you do it,” he demanded.
“My back hurts,” I said, not looking up. “Maybe Thomas can do it when he comes over.”
David turned purple. “Thomas? He’s a boy! He doesn’t scrub toilets!”
“He’s twenty-two, David. He has hands.”
The next week, I stopped the gourmet meals. No more slow-cooked risottos or hand-seared steaks.
I started serving frozen dinners.
“What is this slop?” David poked at a rubbery piece of Salisbury steak.
“Budget cuts,” I said. “And I didn’t have time to cook. I was looking for a job.”
“A job?” He laughed. “Who’s going to hire you? You have a five-year gap on your resume. Besides, you have a job. Taking care of me.”
“I resigned,” I said quietly.
He didn’t hear me. He was too busy complaining about the peas.
CHAPTER SIX: THE CONFRONTATION
Two weeks later, Thomas came over. He walked in, wearing mud-caked boots, and raided the fridge.
“Hey, where are the beers?” Thomas yelled from the kitchen.
I walked in. “There aren’t any.”
“Dad said you’d buy more.”
“I didn’t.”
Thomas rolled his eyes and walked into the living room where David was watching TV.
“Dad, she’s being a bitch,” Thomas said, loud enough for me to hear.
That was the moment.
I walked into the living room. I was holding a manila envelope.
“We need to talk,” I said.
David sighed, not looking away from the screen. “Not now, Jasmine. The game is on.”
I walked over to the TV and pulled the plug from the wall. The screen went black.
“Hey!” Thomas shouted. “What’s your problem?”
“Sit down, Thomas,” I said. My voice was ice.
I tossed the envelope onto David’s lap.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Those are divorce papers,” I said. “And an eviction notice.”
David laughed. A nervous, incredulous laugh. “Eviction? This is my house. You can’t evict me.”
“Actually,” I said, “it’s not your house anymore. Remember that ‘Joint Tenancy’? Well, since I hold your Power of Attorney and I control the joint finances, I realized we were in severe debt due to your medical bills. So, I liquidated your half of the equity to pay back the ‘caregiver loans’ I made to the estate.”
David’s face went pale. “What?”
“I paid myself back, David. With interest. For five years of nursing. At the market rate you quoted in the hospital. Ten thousand a month. That’s six hundred thousand dollars.”
“You… you stole my money!”
“I paid a debt,” I corrected. “And since the house couldn’t cover it all, I put a lien on the rest. The condo is being sold next week. I’ve already accepted an offer.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” David screamed. He tried to move his wheelchair, but he was trapped by the coffee table.
I looked at Thomas.
“He goes with you, Thomas,” I said.
Thomas jumped up. “No way! I live in a studio apartment! I can’t take care of a cripple!”
The silence that followed was delicious.
David looked at his son. The son he had saved everything for. The son he worshiped.
“Thomas?” David whispered. “Don’t call me that.”
“It’s the truth, Dad!” Thomas shouted, panicking. “I can’t lift you! I have a life! She has to do it! That’s her job!”
“She resigned,” I reminded them.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE EXIT
The day of the move was chaotic.
I had hired movers for my things. I took the furniture I liked. I took the art. I took the kitchenware.
David sat in the middle of the emptying living room. He looked small. He looked terrified.
“Jasmine, please,” he said. His voice broke. “We can fix this. I was joking at the hospital. Just guy talk. I didn’t mean it.”
I stopped packing a box of books. I walked over to him.
“I know you meant it, David. Because you never looked at me with love. You looked at me with convenience.”
“I love you,” he lied. “I need you.”
“You need a nurse,” I said. “And since you have that trust fund for Thomas… I suggest you ask him to unlock it to hire one. Oh, wait. I checked the terms. Thomas can’t access the principal until you die. And you can’t revoke it without his signature.”
I smiled.
“You played yourself, David. You hid the money so well even you can’t get to it.”
Thomas arrived an hour later with a rented U-Haul. He was furious. He was cursing.
“This is illegal!” Thomas yelled at me.
“Call the police,” I shrugged. “My lawyer is waiting.”
I watched as Thomas struggled to push the wheelchair over the threshold. He banged David’s leg against the doorframe.
“Ouch! Watch it, you idiot!” David yelled.
“Shut up, old man!” Thomas yelled back. “You’re heavy!”
I stood on the balcony of the empty condo. I watched them down in the parking lot. It was raining again. Thomas was trying to lift David into the passenger seat of his beat-up truck. It was clumsy. It was rough. They were both screaming at each other.
David looked up. He saw me standing there, dry and warm.
Our eyes met.
He mouthed the word Please.
I didn’t wave. I didn’t smile. I just turned around and walked back inside.
I picked up my purse. I checked my bank account on my phone. The transfer had cleared. Six hundred thousand dollars. Plus my half of the house sale coming next week.
I was thirty years old. I was tired. But I was free.
I locked the door behind me and never looked back.
THE END
