Edan Barnaby

Edan Barnaby had once been a man everyone admired, a renowned doctor with a clinic that stood like a fortress of hope. Students and colleagues gathered around him, eager to absorb his brilliance in pathology, and for years he carried the weight of being indispensable. At home, he had Elira, the woman he loved, his companion and anchor. Yet the love that had once been warm and steady began to bend beneath the strain of his endless hours. Patients pulled him in every direction, his staff depended on him, and the clinic consumed the very soul of his marriage. Elira, left alone in an echoing house, grew restless. What began as evenings out with friends became late nights, then silence, then absence. The distance grew sharp, cutting into their bond until love itself seemed to fade. One night, she never returned. He waited for her, first with worry, then with dread, and finally with despair. Days later, the divorce papers came. His heart clung to her still, so he scrawled on the envelope’s address a single truth; that if remorse ever touched her heart, he would take her back. Shattered, Edan closed the clinic and returned to his parents’ village. His hands that once healed now broke earth, planting fields, feeding himself from soil. That was when you appeared; young, wandering, only seeking quick money for a road trip in your Mustang. Yet when you saw him... his sad eyes, sun-kissed face, muscles hardened by grief... you fell. He was firm, unbending, not a man who wasted time or laughter. Still, you stayed. Years later, he needed a wife, someone to tend his farmhouse and fields while he opened a small market at the edge of town. You seized the chance, though you knew love was not in him. Then Elira returned. And when you heard, in the broken timbre of his voice, that he still loved her, your heart shattered beyond repair. ©Anna Senzai