SANA – Watching the Change

The days started blending into one long, suffocating haze, but the nights carved themselves into my bones with surgical precision.

On the nights Rahim went to Nadia, the soundproofed wall did its job too well. No moans slipped through. No rhythmic creaking of the bed. No low growls or sharp gasps. Just pure, suffocating silence. And that silence was far crueler than any sound. It left my mind free to imagine everything in vivid, merciless detail.

I knew what was happening on the other side of that wall.

I knew because I had heard it all on the very first night — before Rahim rushed to soundproof everything after I told him I could hear them. Now the quiet only made the images sharper: Rahim's hands on her smaller, unmarked body. The way he must be losing control with her — raw, hungry, unrestrained — in ways he no longer dared with me. My scars itched worse on those nights. I rubbed layer after layer of jasmine oil into them until the smell choked the room, but it couldn't cover the hollow, rotting ache in my chest.

Mornings were the worst kind of torture.

Rahim would come out of her room with lighter steps. Shoulders less tense. A faint, satisfied glow in his eyes that he tried — and failed — to hide when he looked at me. He would kiss my forehead longer than usual, as if extra tenderness could erase what he had done the night before. But I could still catch the faint trace of her scent on his skin sometimes — that light coconut oil she used mixed with something unmistakably him.

With me, his touch remained gentle — almost reverent — like I was made of fragile glass he was terrified of breaking further.

With her, I knew it was fire.

I saw it in the subtle soreness in his muscles the next day. The way his voice dropped lower when he spoke to her. The way his hand would linger a second too long on her elbow while guiding her to the table.

During breakfast the morning after her first night, Nadia had turned toward me with a trembling voice and said:

"Apa... I know this is painful for you. I'm not here to take your place. I'm not here to compete with you. I just want a child. If my presence hurts you, I can stay in a separate room. I can be invisible. I don't want to make your pain worse."

I had stared at her.

Then I said nothing.

I simply turned back to the stove, my hands shaking as I continued making breakfast. My silence was louder than any scream. It pressed down on all of us like a heavy stone.

My family's words from that night still rang in my ears — my father's rage, my mother's tears, my brother's curses. They had begged me to come home. I had refused.

Now I was paying for that decision every single day.

Nadia herself was starting to glow in her own quiet way. Her steps were surer. Her voice carried a new softness when she thanked me for breakfast. She pressed her hand to her stomach more often now — a private little ritual that made my throat tighten with rage and grief every single time.

She was useful. She was hopeful. She was everything my body could no longer be.

The jealousy that started as a small thorn had grown into something monstrous — a vine wrapping tighter and tighter around my heart with every passing day. I tried to push it down. I reminded myself this was the arrangement we had all agreed to. A practical solution for a child.

But practicality didn't explain why Rahim's eyes lingered on her a second longer. It didn't explain why his touch with me now felt like atonement rather than desire. It didn't explain the way he moved the morning after being with her — lighter, more alive, like she had given him something I never could.

One morning after a particularly long night with Nadia, Rahim came to the kitchen with a slight limp in his step and a raw edge to his voice. He poured my tea exactly the way I liked it, but his eyes kept drifting toward her door. When Nadia finally emerged, her movements carried the careful stiffness of someone whose body had been thoroughly used and filled. She thanked me softly for breakfast, calling me "Apa" like always, but there was a subtle glow of satisfaction on her face that made my stomach twist violently.

I served the food with steady hands and the same hospital smile I had perfected, but inside the jealousy was no longer a thorn.

It was a blade slowly twisting deeper.

Rahim's mother had already started visiting more often, bringing sweets and herbal medicines "for the new bride." She would pat Nadia's hand and whisper, "Keep trying, beta. The family is praying for good news." Then she would look at me with that pitying smile and say nothing. The silence said everything.

I never confronted him directly. Not yet.

Instead I lay awake on my lonely nights, pressing a pillow against my empty belly, remembering the tiny kicks I once felt and the blood that had taken them away. I wondered how long I could keep pretending this arrangement was only about a child.

Because the truth was becoming clearer with every morning:

Rahim was changing.

He was becoming two different men — the gentle, guilt-ridden husband who held me carefully at night, and the passionate, unrestrained lover who lost himself completely with the blind girl who could give him what I never could.

And every time I saw that difference in his eyes, the jealousy grew stronger, whispering that maybe I was no longer enough.

Even as the first wife.

Author's Note

If this chapter made your chest feel tight... you're not alone 😭❤️

Sana is slowly breaking while watching her husband become someone else with another woman. The silence is becoming louder than any sound.

Special shoutout & thank you ❤️

To my new followers:  Ankurchhabra ,MITHILAHOME and PriyaRagunath — thank you so much for joining the journey! It means the world to a new writer like me.And a massive thank you to FleurSauvage37 and makek66 — you two have been voting on almost every single chapter since the beginning. Your consistent support genuinely keeps me motivated to keep writing this painful story.

Now tell me in the comments:

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Vote if this chapter hit you emotionally.

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Thank you for staying with this painful journey 🖤