Page 85 of Stay With Me

It was as if she was standing right next to him, but she wasn’t.

His gaze darted around the room.

“Am I losing my mind?”

He spun a finger around the inside of his ear canal and cleared his throat before going back to the news.

He was caught up in the news for a few moments when his heart jumped into his throat at the sound of Sammie screaming from the yard.

“Snake!”

He leaped from the chair and bolted through the door faster than he believed his aging legs could carry him, but he realized with a punch in the gut that they weren’t fast enough when he saw Sammie lying motionless next to the garden.

He dropped to knees next to her and skittered his fingers over the length of her limbs, searching for the bite, as he attempted to draw her back to consciousness.

“Sammie? Sammie, where’s the bite?”

But she didn’t move. Her strangled breath wheezed tightly as she struggled to inhale and exhale, growing more and more shallow with every second that stretched along in slow motion.

“Sammie, hang on. Please hang on. Listen to me. Focus on the sound of my voice.”

He jerked his phone out of his pocket and dialed an ambulance, answering questions that he didn’t fully understand, not hearing the responses.

All he could do was stroke her head and cheeks as he lifted her shoulders and pulled her into his lap, attempting to mentally will her lungs to return to their normal function, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to happen.

As you age, you become more and more aware that the end is out there. Nick had considered it over the years, setting up life insurance policies, drafting wills, so on and so forth, always expecting he’d be the first to go. On some subconscious level, he’d always been prepared to go first.

But he’d been prepared to go in maybe another twenty years. Not right now. He considered this the prime of their life. The golden years. He had teased her about it, but he knew Sammie was right; they were about to become grandparents for God’s sake.

And beyond all that, she wasn’t supposed to go first!

But he knew too much about the great outdoors, too much about Texas wildlife, and too much about the effects of snake bites. They could be deadly in someone young and in perfect health. In a person who was advanced in their age…

He just knew too much about snake bites.

“Sammie, wait. Just wait. They’re on their way. Just wait. Hang on, sweetheart. You’re going to be okay.”

Out of nowhere, a group of paramedics surrounded him and began speaking to him as if he was capable of answering anything right then.

“Are you sure it was a snake?”

“This looks like a scorpion sting.”

“She’s having trouble breathing.”

He exhaled a ragged breath.

He knew too much about scorpion stings as well. A single phrase stabbed into his brain like a contaminated dart as he watched her breathing become ever more shallow, lightly fogging up the small oxygen mask.

Anaphylactic shock.

Eventually, Nick found himself in the back of an ambulance. He wasn’t entirely aware of his surroundings.

He was only aware of his hand clutching Sammie’s. He decided to block out everything else, focus on this one thing because he knew it was the last time he’d ever do it.

This was the moment he knew would eventually come, albeit with their roles reversed.

The moment that was referred to thirty-three years prior when they both spoke the words to each other.