Page 8 of Until August

I resented the people around me who went on with their lives just as if everything was right with the world.

With just a sharp turn of the wheel, I could plunge to my death and end it all. I’d go down in a blaze of fire.

Tempting.

But sadly for me, my survival instincts were strong, so I kept a firm grip on the wheel and didn’t deviate from the road.

Fifteen minutes later, I parked in front of the pink stucco building flanked by bougainvillea and palm trees. You could easily mistake Villa Mare for a five-star resort if you didn't know better.

I grabbed my canvas tote from the passenger seat, walked through the front door, and down the white hallway decorated with works by local artists. Glorious sunsets over the pier, wildflowers in the canyon, the sweep of the ocean along the cove.

All that beauty and we were living on a fault line.

On my way to Cruz’s room, I said hello to Cassie, my favorite nurse.

She spun to face me, her dark curls bouncing and gave me a warm smile. “Hey, sweetie. You just missed your mama. She gave him a nice haircut. He looks so handsome.”

A lump formed in my throat, but I forced a smile. “That’s why I fell for him. He was so hot.” I tried to pass it off as a joke but failed.

Cassie grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “I can only imagine.”

And that was all she could do—imagine it. I left her in the hallway and walked into my husband’s private room. The blinds were open, and outside his window, the garden bloomed with life. How ironic that I’d chosen a room with a view.

Setting my bag on the table, I reached for Cruz’s hand. His eyes were open, but I almost preferred it when they were closed. It killed me to look into his dark eyes, constantly searching for signs that he was still there, only to be met with nothingness.

“Hey, baby.” I ran my hand over his dark hair, cropped short to his head the way he’d always worn it, and over the scar where the hair had never grown back. “It’s me. I’m just going to give you some fresh flowers. And I brought some things from the kitchen.”

I tossed last week’s flowers, washed out the vase, and filled it with fresh water and flowers in all shades of purple, his favorite color.

Cruz used to bring me flowers all the time.

At the beginning of our relationship, I’d always ask him, “What’s the occasion?”

And he’d always answer the same way. “You. You are the occasion.”

Just as if every day we spent together was worthy of a celebration.

I set the vase on the table and scowled at the little shrine my mother had set up.Again. A few weeks ago, I’d tossed all the prayer cards and figurines into the trash. She hadn’t said a word about it. Instead, she’d replaced them with new ones.

My mother prayed to every saint, but her prayers went unanswered. There were no miracles. No biblical re-enactments of Lazarus rising from the dead or Jesus being resurrected. We had to rely on modern science and the medical staff—nurses, doctors, physical therapists—to keep my husband alive.

I pulled a chair next to Cruz’s bed and unpacked my bag. I crushed the mint leaves between my fingers and held them under his nose. “It’s mint. You love the scent of mint. Remember the time we went to Cabo and got drunk on mojitos? It was my twenty-second birthday, and the trip was a surprise. You got Scarlett to pack my bag, remember? We danced in the moonlight, and I was so high on life… so high on love that I couldn’t stop smiling. I remember thinking, how did I get so lucky? How did I find my one true love in this great big world with almost eight billion people?”

While I recounted stories of our life together, I held a wedge of a lemon, a bottle of Tabasco, a bunch of basil under his nose. My husband stared blankly at the wall behind me.

After stimulating his sense of smell, I covered his ears with headphones and played music from the playlist I’d made especially for him. While he listened to the music, I stroked his arms and held his hand. Brushed my fingertips over his jaw, his cheekbone, his forehead.

A few songs later, I caught the grimace on his face, so I removed the headphones and deleted the music that had upset him. The doctors told me Cruz’s facial expressions, and physical actions were involuntary reactions, but what if they weren’t? What if he hated Ed Sheeran and just the sound of his voice or that particular song caused him distress?

I hated subjecting him to more discomfort than he was already in, even though I knew none of this made a difference.

Not the music or the crushed mint, or the stories I told.

In the beginning, I’d gotten the best neurologists in the country to examine him. I’d scoured the internet for cures and latched onto stories of miraculous recoveries. I’d clung to those false hopes for so, so long.

Until finally, I’d had to accept that there was absolutely nothing anyone could do to fix the love of my life.

Cruz was irrevocably broken, and he was never coming back.