Page 140 of Dear Future Husband

“We got you, sweetheart,” one man said as he charted out on a clipboard. A woman rummaged around, pulling supplies from a side cubby.

I was helpless. Watching, waiting, praying.

Air evaded me as I stared. I lowered my head between my shoulders, desperately trying to pull breath into my chest. My eyes caught onto a purse sliding across the floor with the momentum of the ambulance. It shifted toward me and spilled out a small black book.

My journal…

I swallowed hard and grabbed at the book. My head rolled back against the wall behind me as I opened the heavily scribed on pages. I flipped past entries she talked about Liam. Entries, she cried. Entries she told stories and entries, she dreamed of a beautiful, love-filled existence.

I opened to the first page. The first page I read and the first page that changed my life. My eyes fell on the last words of that first passage.

My greatest wish is for you to love me as much as I love you.

“I-I do,” I stuttered under my breath as I looked up at her in the gurney. “I love you that much and more,” I admitted lowly.

A shrilling mechanical beep sounded through the space. The woman lunged toward Maybelle, checking lines and pulse points.

“Shit,” she hissed.

My heart free-fell into my stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. Neither paramedic acknowledged me.

The man checked his papers, glanced at a handheld screen. “Start compressions,” he ordered over the ruckus and wailing of the sirens.

Quick to answer, the woman climbed up over Maybelle, put her hands to her chest and began to pump.

I gripped the journal in both my hands. Kissing the cover of the book, I closed my eyes and held it to my lips as tears cascaded down my face.

“Stay,” I whispered. “Stay with me, Mayhem,” I prayed into the leather of the book.

I’d never prayed. Not to a god at least. But every word out of my mouth was filled with depths of my soul. It was fitting that the only prayer ever uttered from my lips be for her—to her.

“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded in my head, watching as the paramedics worked to keep her here.

“I can’t get a steady rhythm,” the man grounded out.

I dropped my forehead to the book. “I can’t do this without you. We had a deal.”

“Let’s shock her,” ordered the woman.

“I told you, ‘No more walking alone’. I promised you I would walk with you every day. Morning, night, rain or shine. I meant that forever.” I pulled back and swiped at the tears that fell to the leather of my book. “Don’t leave me to walk alone, please—please. I can’t walk without you, May. I need you.”

I dropped my head back against the wall, my tears streaming back into my hair while Maybelle’s body jolted with each pump.

“Stay, May. Please stay with me, baby. Please.” I continued to beg into the void of my subconscious.

I was being devoured from the inside out. My hope, my faith, my joy was being stripped from me, and I was powerless to stop it.

Life was no friend of mine. It was a cruel reality, and I wasn’t so sure I would survive it as I closed my eyes.

“Come back, May. Come back home to me.”

***

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I held to that constant noise like a lifeline. I settled back in my chair, eyes wandering over the sleeping girl in the bed.