Page 87 of Stay With Me

“Sammie,” she repeated. “I like that. How are you feeling?”

Her words were coherent. He’d heard her perfectly clearly. But somehow he was fraught with confusion. He couldn’t think of anything to articulate what was going through his mind so he simply stated the obvious.

“You’re alive.”

She appeared to swallow before she whispered, “Yeah. And so are you.”

His gaze darted back and forth as he became dumbfounded. He noticed he felt sort of fuzzy. His brain radiated a weird floating sensation and his ears buzzed again. He must have hit his head pretty hard. That could be the only explanation.

Either this was a realistic dream and he’d wake up later to realize she had, in fact, died, or she was actually alive and sitting with him, and his brain had translated her appearance to an earlier version.

Just in case it was the former, he decided to enjoy the dream while it lasted, and he continued to run his thumb across her cheek and stare at her.

Then his mouth seemed to speak without permission.

“Am I sleeping?”

“No, but you’re on heavy pain killers and the last bit of anesthesia from your surgery.” She paused to stroke his hair and cheek. “The nurse said you’d be kind of disoriented when you woke up.”

Well, at least he had an explanation now. But did she say—

“Surgery?”

Sammie nodded.

He became the slightest bit alarmed. “For what?”

Her chin appeared to tremble, as she swallowed again. “For … for your legs.”

His gaze finally broke away from her face and it drifted to his body for the first time. His mind had difficulty processing what he was looking at because it appeared that there was a metal contraption on one of his legs and a cast on the other; a contraption that looked incredibly painful, but he couldn’t feel anything that seemed wrong. He couldn’t feel much of anything at all, now that he thought about it.

He leaned forward to touch his thigh next to one of the metal rings, and it was like touching a foreign object. His fingertips could feel his skin, but it seemed his skin couldn’t feel his fingers.

“Is this my leg?”

“Yeah,” her voice squeaked sounding as if she was on the verge of tears, which caused him to turn to her again. He reached for her face in an instinctive reflex to comfort her, but it only seemed to cause her to cry harder.

“I’m so sorry, Nick. It was a bad break, but the surgeon here…” She paused to hiccup and sniffle. “The surgeon is great. He does these all the time and he did a really good job. They said you’ll have to wear this thing for a few weeks, but you’ll be back to normal after that.”

He continued to stare at her, still feeling fuzzy, but as he stared, her face seemed to tell a story in reverse.

Nick, sixty-five years old; the two of them embracing that morning, right before she went out to the garden. The phone call from Ari, saying she and Matt were on their way over to give them some exciting news.

Nick, sixty years old; the day of Ari’s wedding when he and Sammie squeezed each other’s hands as they gave their daughter away.

Nick, fifty-three years old; Ari’s high school graduation, where the three of them held each other in a tight, group hug.

Nick, fifty-one years old; kissing Sammie’s tear-stained face in the middle of their empty home.

Nick, fifty years old; Sammie wrapped tightly around his back as she begged him to stay.

Nick, thirty-five years old; holding Ari in a hospital like this one as he wept joyfully into his wife’s neck.

Nick, thirty-two years old; Sammie’s head on his shoulder and arm around his waist as they watched the sunset over Lake Travis.

Nick, thirty-one years old; the slow, wide grin that stretched across Sammie’s moonlight bathed face before she said yes to an important, spur of the moment question.

Nick, thirty years old; him hovering over Sammie; her clutching the sides of his face as she breathlessly uttered for the second time ever,“I love you, Nick.”