Chapter 40 #2
“Hello Miss Delilah, I’m Nurse June, can I clean you up?” she asked kindly.
I nodded. I hated sponge baths, but I felt like a grease ball, soaked in sweat and God knows what else.
She closed the door and walked toward me.
She carefully sat me up and opened my robe, and the sponge squeaked against the plastic basin when she dipped it, and the soap smelled like something too cheerful—citrus and clean.
It was far too cheerful for the mood I was in.
“Your husband hasn’t left your side; he really loves you. What’s your secret? I can’t get a man to stay longer than a few months!” she chuckled.
I smiled, and I really didn’t know what to say. Everything with him had just been so easy before I got sick.
“You just haven’t met the right one yet. When you do, you’ll know,” I explained.
“What did it feel like? Just so I know,” she asked with a chuckle.
I took a deep breath, and she lightly soaped my sore body down. Even the lightest touch was painful.
“Well, you will meet, and it will feel like…like you’ve met before, that you’ve known each other for a long time, if only in another life,” I said.
“All done! Thanks for the insight. I’ll let Dr. McNall know you are still experiencing some pain…oh, and I’ll bring some cream for that burn, one of the heart monitors must have irritated your skin,” she said, and exited the room and shut the door.
I looked at my chest, and there it was.
Panic flooded my veins. My heart raced in erratic beats that made my chest hurt with a stabbing tightness, and I felt like I could not get enough air, like my throat was going to close, like there was a boulder on top of me—Titus’s mate mark.
Still not healed, still looking like a blob, but it was there, just as I had remembered it in my dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. It was fucking real.
K. ROSé
My chest cinched, and the room narrowed. My heart pumped violently, and the pain made me scream. The alarms on the machines around me went off, beeping and blaring with urgency. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” I struggled to say.
A team of medical people rushed in.
“She’s going into cardiac arrest!” I heard someone shout.
My ears rang, my vision blackened, and my lungs refused to fill with air, and then everything went dark.
When I regained consciousness my throat felt like it was full of barbed wire.
My mouth tasted like plastic and stale air, and when I tried to swallow, the pressure in my throat reminded me I couldn’t.
I opened my eyes and I was in the same gray hospital room, but I could tell I was more heavily drugged because the room tilted and tipped.
I felt a large warm hand holding mine. I turned my head to see who was sitting beside me, but the slightest movement of my neck made the razors that must have been in my throat scratch and irritate the sensitive tissue.
It was then that I noticed the tube running down from my mouth.
The hand holding mine belonged to Jared, who looked more scared than I had ever seen him.
He noticed my eyes widen at the sight of it. His voice cracked as he explained, “Baby, your heart had another episode, and now you are on a ventilator, I wasn’t sure if you would wake up.”
Tears ran down my face, and the sight of them made him cry too.
“Don’t cry, Delilah—I’m right here,” he said softly.
I tried to speak but it hurt like hell and the sound I made wasn’t understandable.
“Shhh, don’t speak—here, I grabbed this from the gift shop,” he said, and slid a small pad beneath my hand. The pen he pressed into my fingers was cold and slick. “You can write to me, okay?”
Just then I noticed a person sitting in the chair in the corner. I immediately wrote on the pad, “Hannah?”
He nodded yes, and my best friend wobbled to my bedside. She looked so beautiful. She was glowing, pregnancy suited her, and her shoes made the softest squeak on the waxed floor, and the sound did something to me, like it made the room real again.
Knowing she was supposed to be on bed rest, I was concerned and wrote, “baby?”
She read the pad and smiled. “Jared called us when you had the episode during your surgery and put us on the next flight to Chicago. My OBGYN has a colleague at this hospital in case I go early, but any day now our daughter will be here…would you like to know what name we decided?”
I managed a small nod.
She smiled and replied, “Delilah…after my sister, the bravest, strongest, kindest woman I’ve ever met.”
My hands shook with joy. What an honor. I placed my hand on her belly and felt the tiny heels of her feet kick. Hi little Delilah, I said in my mind.
“Sweetheart,” Jared said.
“The extent of the damage…the doctor said you will never breathe on your own again."
Emotion stopped his words from forming. Then he tried again.
“I know we had a deal, that if it ever came down to this, needing life support, that I’d…I’d let you go,” he said painfully. “Is that still what you want, my love?”
I shut my eyes because the tears forming began to sting.
This life would not allow me to have him, my husband.
And now I needed to let him go. I had no idea what the Guardians would do with my soul once I passed.
This choice was never about Jared versus Danny.
It was about me. About a woman who had spent too long surviving things done to her.
For once, I would not be the patient. Not the possession.
Not the vessel. I would be the decision.
For once in my life I would have a say over my own body.
For once, my body would belong to me—and me alone.
I wrote on the pad, “yes.”
They both looked at each other. Hannah’s lips quivered and Jared’s breath faltered. He took a deep breath and replied, “I’m going to step out and let you
and Hannah have some time, then I will be back, okay, my love?”
I responded with a slight nod.
I watched him leave and Hannah spoke.
“I don’t think I could have survived what we went through without you,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I know what you did for me, in that house. I would have never made it without you.”
The tears rolled, and I nodded. Her voice choked.
“I think God brought us together to make sure we survived, but I just don’t know why he’s taking you from me now.”
On the pad I wrote, “It’s okay, I hurt.”
“I know you’re in pain, and you have been for a long time.
I’m sorry we grew apart in recent years, having three kids has a way of eating up all of your time—but I love you, Lila.
I will forever be grateful that our paths crossed.
Watch over little Delilah for me…okay?” she said with a broken voice, tears streaming from her eyes into her mouth. She kissed my hand and wiped her tears.
“Now, there’s a good man out there who loves you more than anything, so I’m going to head back and give you two time alone,” she said.
“Take care of him?” I wrote. She nodded with a big smile.
“I’ll invite Jared to every Christmas and Thanksgiving, and I’ll check on him often…if you see Danny up there, punch him in the nuts for me,” she said sarcastically.
“lol, I will,” I wrote.
She kissed my cheek and whispered, “I love you, Lila—goodbye, my sister.”
“Until next time,” I wrote.
“Yeah,” she said with a smile, “until next time.” Then she stood up and wobbled to the door. She looked back at me before exiting and gave me one last twitchy, farewell smile.
I saw Jared’s large silhouette filling the doorway. His eyes were red and puffy, the skin under his nose was red, his facial hair had a couple of days of growth on it.
He hugged Hannah goodbye and sat at my bedside. I tapped the mattress beside me.
He looked at me with confusion. “I’m a big man, baby, there isn’t enough room for us both in there,” he said apologetically.
I tapped the mattress with more emphasis. “Alright, my love, you win,” he said lovingly.
He slowly sat me up and slid his leg behind me, then gently lifted me onto him, and reclined us back into the bed.
His arms wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and I had never felt so safe, so loved.
I was going to miss the way he smelled, like fresh rain and leather.
I was going to miss the way my hand fits in his, and how my head fits perfectly in the dip between his shoulder and pectoral muscle.
We lay this way for hours, talking about the highlights of our life together to the best of my ability. I mostly listened and occasionally wrote a comment or a question on the pad.
He pulled out his phone, and we went through the years of pictures stored in the cloud.
Pictures of when we first met, our first home, our first dog who passed away last year, and all the holidays, trips, and birthdays where we took life for granted, unaware of the illness that would forever change our lives and ultimately, end mine.
We nodded off together, the even rhythm of his breathing bringing me so much peace that combined with the warmth of his body I couldn’t help but fall asleep. When I woke up in his embrace I decided that it was time. I needed to hurry and let him go or I may never do so out of selfishness.
I wrote on the pad and tapped his hand to wake him.
“What is it, what’s wrong?” he said alarmed. I handed him the pad.
“I’m ready,” I wrote.
His bottom lip quivered and he squeezed his eyes shut for several moments. He took a staggering breath and nodded as he began to cry. He pushed the orange call button on my bed. Nurse June appeared within minutes.
“She says…it’s time,” he told her with shaken breath. She nodded and exited.
He stroked the back of my hand. “How am I supposed to say goodbye to you?” he whispered into the curve of my neck, his warm breath comforting me with every exhale.
I shook my head the best that I could and pointed to what I had written to Hannah. “Until next time.”
“Fuck,” he said exasperated, wiping his tears.
“I sure hope there is a next time. I’m going to miss you every day I wake up, and every night I go to bed without you.
I’m going to miss your cold feet under my legs at night, and your smell on my hoodies you steal.
I’m going to miss waking up to find you drooling on your pillow and kissing you goodbye.
My life is just going to be so damn empty without you, my love. ”
Then I wrote, “Love again—please—be happy.” He shook his head. His voiced cracked.
“I can’t—there’s no way—there’s only you,” he choked on the words with emotion.
A knock sounded at the door and Nurse June and Doctor McNall walked in with heavy, sympathetic faces.
“Are you ready, Delilah?” the doctor asked softly.
I nodded “yes.”
“I’m going to have Nurse June sedate you, and then we will turn off the ventilator. You will just slip away into a painless sleep.”
Jared’s arms held me close to his chest. His strong warm hands held mine. If there ever was a perfect way to die, this would be it, held by a man I truly didn’t deserve.
My husband sucked in a staccato breath and his entire body trembled with deep sorrow.
“Are you ready, Mrs. Raye?” the doctor asked. For a final time, I nodded yes.
The nurse injected the heavy sedative into my I.V. My body instantly relaxed, and for once I felt no pain in the mortal realm. My eyelids became heavy and my vision drifted into blackness, and the last words I heard were from the love of my life.
“Goodbye, my love—you will always be my dream girl.”
Then I woke, and found myself, in a familiar forest…