Hello all! A Jessica one shot set after she found out about Sean and Zoe, but before her and Adam got back together. Just a little ficage about her feelings. Hope you enjoy!
Nina x
Confessions of a Cheating Wife
Jessica fic. One shot.
Some people think I'm heartless, others hypocritical. Some think I was merely stupid, naïve, tempted. Most simply think I am the innocent party in a torrid affair that threatened my family. Most don't realise that I'm the least innocent party there is. I know what I did was stupid, reckless, dangerous even, but I never intended to hurt anyone, especially not my family. I honestly, in my own mind, put what me and Adam were doing above such trivial words as 'affair', 'cheating' 'fling'. It was, at least to me and I hoped him, the Real Thing. I wasn't doing this as some perverse revenge against my husband. I wasn't seeking to escape my humdrum life, I simply fell in love with someone, I met my soulmate. It was just unfortunate that all this happened ten years after I married my husband.
The first night I met Adam I was the clichéd, angry, hurting housewife. I'd taken time off to raise the children, to be the perfect surgeons wife. I'd turned up at all the functions. Wearing my best dress, smiling, making conversation leading to whispers about Sean's 'perfect wife'. Raising the children and still attending hospital benefits. But then I decided I'd trained as a nurse for a reason. I love my children, but I didn't work so hard for so long to just be Lucas and Amelia's mum. I wanted to be a nurse. So I joined the agency, Sean was OK with that. A bit upset that I insisted on registering under my maiden name, but Dr Sean Anderson is a big name, and I needed to make my own. He only got really annoyed when my first post was at Holby City. So I yelled at him, argued that I couldn't control where I was placed, that we were in two separate departments and no one would ever know we were married if that bothered him. I didn't give him chance to respond, I went out with my friend Lou, and proceeded to get happily tipsy. And that night, fuelled more by anger than alcohol, I made the stupidest, most amazing mistake of my life.
I know I should never have let it go any further than that. Than a stupid angry, drunken, one night stand with a stranger. I never thought it would. I never thought I'd even see him again, how could I ever imagine that he'd be there, the next morning when I showed up for my first ED shift?
In hindsight I should have been stronger, should have fought harder. I tried, I really did. I pushed him away, yet always found myself drawn back to him no matter how hard I tried to move in the opposite direction. In the end I was exhausted. Fighting against a current I was drowning in. Adam was … he was everything I'd always wanted. He was kind, and smart and nice. He cooked me breakfast in his engine. He played with my children. He never demanded anything of me. Never tried to force my hand, he simply sat back and let me reach my own conclusions.
And for a while, for such a short time, it was perfect, it was … it was easy. The lies to Sean just seemed to slide right of my tongue and I really believed I wasn't hurting anyone. I was consumed by Adam, everything I did, everything I said, was just filling time, filling the seconds until I saw him. I suppose in twenty years I'll look back on this as some sort of midlife crisis. I'll smile as I remember him, the hesitancy in his voice before our first real kiss, the way he could always catch my eye no matter how many people stood between us, and we'd share a private smile, remember a private joke. I'll think back on the times when we'd just lie together, talking, laughing, joking. When the rest of the world stopped and nothing mattered but us. It was … it was too perfect. I should have known it could never last. You can't have a husband and a lover and expect everything to work out OK.
But I never expected things to go so wrong. I blamed myself for Lucas' accident. I still do. I'm his mum. I'm meant to protect my children, and instead I was in bed with my boyfriend while my child was being mowed down by some … some idiot. He almost died. I almost lost the most important thing in my life and it was all my fault. I should have known Adam and I could never last. But I honestly never expected such a severe punishment. I know I was stupid, I should never have let my heart rule my head, but to hurt my child? That was when I knew it had to end. No more stolen kisses in the on call room, no more covert glances across Resus, no more Adam. I promised I'd give him up, and I did. I ended it all, I forced myself even when it physically hurt to be stood so close to him and be unable to reach for his hand, to brush feather light kisses across his face. I gave him up, the man I loved, to save my children.
I suppose I got off lightly in the wake of the court case. Sean was branded a pig and forced to leave the hospital. Zoe was a home wrecker with a demotion. And me? I was simply the hurt wife, the innocent victim of her husbands tawdry affair. No one ever suspected that I was just as guilty as Sean, if not more so. He'd simply slept with his lover, me? I'd fallen in love with mine.
And so I tried to put it all behind me. Adam, Zoe, everything. I tried to make it work with Sean, I tried so hard. I was home on time every night, I cooked family meals, we went out to dinner, but it wasn't enough. It was naïve to think it ever could be. What we had, the love I felt for him on our wedding day (for I did love him. Once upon a time Sean was the man I believed I would love forever), it was gone. And no amount of home cooked meals could change that. And so I continue with my punishment. I spend all day working alongside the man I love, knowing I can never be with him, and then go home to the man I married, knowing I don't love him anymore. I exist now, accepting that this is my life. And more than anything. This is my fault.