Page 86 of Stay With Me

In good times and bad, in sickness and health.

‘Til death do us part.

He shifted forward in his seat to lean close to her face and kissed her forehead.

“I love you, my sweet Sammie. Thank you for giving me more happiness than I ever could have hoped for.”

He figured the paramedics had seen plenty of old men weep over their dying wives so he lifted her hand to his cheek and let himself cry openly.

He cried for a while, which caused his ears to begin buzzing, and he noticed they’d arrived at the hospital. He kissed her hand once more before the paramedics shoved the doors open, causing a tidal wave of blinding light to sear his pupils. They rolled the gurney out the back of the ambulance and he stood to follow them.

It was possible that he stood a little too quickly—or maybe it was the adrenaline of the whole situation—because he felt the small space spin as he eventually became weightless.

* * *

Beep … beep … beep.

The steady stream of chirps started becoming a bit obnoxious and it prompted Nick’s eyes to flinch and crack open.

There were rows of fluorescent lights along the ceiling tiles. He couldn’t see them clearly, but he could tell what they were.

He reached behind his head to rub the sore spot where he’d undoubtedly smacked it on something after he fainted. There was a bandage so he deduced that he’d hit the floor pretty hard.

He wondered what time it was.

His throat constricted and his eye rims prickled, as his mind processed the knowledge that she was probably gone by now.

He lifted his hands to rub the gathering tears and exhaled the distinctive strangled breath that precedes a flood of sobs. But before the wave crested, he heard her.

“Hey,” she said with a smile in her voice and a quivering tear drop at the back of her throat. “Welcome back.”

He instinctively whipped his head around, surprised at the stiff soreness of his neck, and saw her sitting next to the bed.

He blinked.

Then he blinked again.

He decided he was either hallucinating or that he’d died and followed her to Heaven because the version of his wife he was currently looking at was not the version he’d last seen in the ambulance.

This was the version of his wife that she was before she was his wife.

This was the version of her that she was when he’d first met her, thirty-five years ago.

No gray hair; no wrinkles.

Her face was pink with sunburn and there was a bandage on her cheek.

He decided he was hallucinating because if this were Heaven, why would she have a sunburn and a bandage on her cheek?

And since he was hallucinating, he opted to test the depths of this bizarrely lucid vision by reaching over to touch her, figuring his fingertips would drift right through the vivid chestnut of her hair.

But they didn’t.

His palm arrived softly at her cheek, causing his eyes to widen and his eyebrows to lift.

“Sammie?”

She grinned at him and placed her hand over his.