“Diep Tran… used to be my patient.”

Tieu To stared at me.

“What do you mean?”

I looked through the glass door.

Luc Tram was still standing outside.

Five years had passed, but I knew him well enough to see that he was listening.

So I continued.

“Three months before the kidnapping, Diep Tran came to my hospital under another name.”

She had suffered several minor injuries and claimed they came from field training.

Nothing unusual for someone in her profession.

Except I noticed something strange.

The injuries did not match her explanation.

When I asked questions, she became defensive.

Then one afternoon, I accidentally saw a message appear on her phone.

Only one sentence.

“Once he chooses you over his wife, you’ll finally know who matters.”

At the time, I thought it was a relationship problem.

I was wrong.

Two weeks later, I discovered she had secretly requested information about Luc Tram’s negotiation schedule.

I confronted her.

She cried.

She told me she admired him.

That he had saved her life during an operation years earlier.

That she only wanted to understand him better.

I warned her to stay away from our private life.

Then the kidnapping happened.

Tieu To’s face slowly turned white.

“You mean…”

“I mean I never believed it was random.”

Outside the door, Luc Tram finally moved.

He entered.

His voice was hoarse.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I laughed softly.

“Which part?”

“That you suspected her.”

“I tried.”

His face stiffened.

Of course he remembered.

The night before the kidnapping, I had called him six times.

He answered on the seventh.

I told him I needed to speak to him about Diep Tran.

His response had been cold.

“Lin Khe, stop targeting her because you’re jealous.”

Then he hung up.

The next day, we were taken.

Luc Tram lowered his eyes.

“I thought…”

“Yes.”

I interrupted him.

“You always thought.”

You thought I was jealous.

You thought Diep Tran was innocent.

You thought saving her was the correct choice.

You thought I would understand because you were “doing your duty.”

But he had never once asked what I knew.

Tieu To quietly left the room.

Only Luc Tram and I remained.

He looked at my prosthetic arm.

His face tightened.

“I spent five years investigating that kidnapping.”

“I know.”

His eyes lifted sharply.

“How?”

“Because people talk.”

That was only half the truth.

The other half was sitting in a locked drawer in my apartment.

Five years of documents.

Photographs.

Call logs.

Hospital records.

And one name that appeared too many times.

Diep Tran.

Luc Tram took a step toward me.

“I found the organizer last month.”

My heart stopped.

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

Luc Tram’s voice became colder.

“But he admitted someone inside our unit gave him information.”

I looked at him.

“And you still haven’t connected it?”

His expression changed.

I opened my phone.

Then I sent him a file.

“Check your messages.”

He opened it.

The first page was an old hospital admission record.

Patient name: Nguyen Ha.

Photograph: Diep Tran.

The second was a payment record.

Three days before the kidnapping, a large transfer had been made to an account belonging to the organizer’s younger brother.

The sender was a shell company.

The company’s registered emergency contact—

Diep Tran’s cousin.

Luc Tram’s hand began to shake.

“No.”

It was almost a whisper.

I had once imagined this moment hundreds of times.

The moment he finally realized.

I thought I would feel victorious.

Instead, I only felt tired.

“There’s more.”

He kept scrolling.

A recovered voice message.

Diep Tran’s voice.

“If something happens, make sure he has to choose.”

Luc Tram stopped breathing.

“I never knew whether she expected them to hurt me that badly,” I said.

“Maybe she thought it would only frighten me.”

I looked directly at him.

“But she wanted one thing.”

“To make you choose her in front of me.”

The phone slipped slightly in his hand.

For five years, Luc Tram had punished himself because he believed he had made the wrong decision under impossible circumstances.

Now he discovered the impossible circumstances had been created specifically for him.

And he had done exactly what Diep Tran wanted.

He chose her.

The investigation reopened that week.

This time, Luc Tram did not protect his former disciple.

He personally submitted everything.

Internal communication records.

Old mission schedules.

The organizer’s confession.

My medical records.

Even the report documenting his own decision during the hostage situation.

Diep Tran was questioned three days later.

At first, she denied everything.

Then investigators showed her the bank trail.

She cried.

Then she blamed the kidnappers.

Then she finally screamed:

“I never told them to seriously hurt Lin Khe!”

Luc Tram stood behind the observation glass.

His face had no expression.

Diep Tran continued desperately.

“I only wanted her scared!”

“She kept occupying your life!”

“You were supposed to realize that I was the one who understood you!”

Luc Tram closed his eyes.

That was the last time he ever looked at her.

Months later, the case ended.

The people responsible faced criminal consequences.

Diep Tran lost everything she had built through deception.

But none of that restored my hand.

And none of it restored our marriage.

Luc Tram came to see me after the final hearing.

I was leaving the hospital after a night shift.

He stood beneath the entrance lights.

No uniform.

No rank insignia.

Just a tired man.

“Lin Khe.”

I stopped.

“I’m sorry.”

I nodded.

“I know.”

He looked at my prosthetic arm.

“I’ve wanted to say that for five years.”

“You already did.”

“Not properly.”

I said nothing.

His voice broke.

“I chose her.”

“Yes.”

“I thought saving the hostage I believed was most vulnerable was the right tactical choice.”

“I know.”

“But afterward…”

That was what mattered.

Not the seconds during the hostage crisis.

Not even the impossible choice.

Afterward.

I had been taken into emergency surgery.

Luc Tram stayed with Diep Tran.

When I woke, he was not there.

When doctors told him my arm could not be saved, he still didn’t come immediately because Diep Tran was “emotionally unstable.”

When I asked for a divorce, he signed without asking me to stay.

He had not only chosen once.

He had chosen repeatedly.

I looked at him.

“Luc Tram, I stopped blaming you for what happened in that room a long time ago.”

His eyes reddened.

Hope appeared.

Then I finished:

“But I never forgave what happened after.”

The hope disappeared.

“You could have come to me.”

I spoke quietly.

“You could have listened.”

“You could have asked what I knew.”

“You could have sat beside my hospital bed.”

“But you didn’t.”

He lowered his head.

“I thought you hated me.”

“I did.”

I smiled faintly.

“Then eventually, I stopped.”

That hurt him more.

Because hatred still meant attachment.

Indifference meant the story was over.

Two years later, I became head of trauma surgery at the hospital.

Learning to operate differently after losing my dominant hand had been brutal.

I had rebuilt every movement from the beginning.

Eventually, I became known not despite the prosthesis, but because patients trusted a doctor who understood what it meant to wake up and discover life would never return to its previous shape.

Luc Tram stayed with the anti-drug division.

We occasionally crossed paths.

Always politely.

Always briefly.

One day, a young resident asked me:

“Doctor Lam, do you ever wish you could go back five years?”

I thought about it.

Then shook my head.

“No.”

She looked surprised.

“If I went back, I might save my hand.”

I adjusted my glove.

“But I would also become the woman who still believed being chosen by Luc Tram determined her worth.”

I smiled.

“I don’t miss her.”

Five years earlier, Luc Tram chose Diep Tran.

For a long time, I believed that choice destroyed my life.

I was wrong.

It only destroyed the life I had built around him.

The life I built afterward belonged entirely to me.