We don’t know if it’s going to happen again, if she’ll have another heart attack, if she’s got a month in front of her or twenty more years. It’s not important. I have decided to live in the present. I have decided to take every occasion and not waste time. We still have a little bit of time and I can only be thankful for every heartbeat that we are given.
It is a gift.
“What? How?” Jesus, I can’t string two words together.
“I wanted to surprise you. I got out this morning. My dad brought me over,” she says, pointing over her shoulder.
I nod at Joe, who unlike Alex, seems to have lost ten years of his life, but he’s smiling at me too, visibly relieved.
“I couldn’t wait,” she says, coming close to my ear. “I wanted to see you.”
I smile at her like a jackass in love. Well, I am, aren’t I?
And how could I blame her? I almost lost her. The operation, the intensive care therapy, the days of confusion and unawareness. The constant convulsions, the fucking endless needles, the oxygen, the beep, beep, beep ringing in my ears.
The operation was fine, but the recovery was difficult. Alex came out of it weak and terribly debilitated. It took her two days to open her eyes. Two motherfucking days I sat in that plastic chair next to her, holding her hand, whispering her name, begging her not to leave me, to come back to me.
I fucking implored her, and I’m not embarrassed about that.
Come back to me. However you can, come back.
Desperate? Yes. But I don’t know what I would have done if she had decided not to open her eyes and look at me and smile at me despite everything.
“Everything okay?” I ask her shyly. “Are you well?”
“You’re going to ask me that every day, aren’t you?”
Uh, yes. Yes I am.
“No,” I lie. “I just want to know if you’re ready to come home, that’s all.”
“I am ready. I couldn’t stand it there anymore. I missed my house, my friends, this place and you. I missed you.”
Low blow. Now there’s nothing more I can add.
“Alex?” I ask her.
“Yes?”
“I can’t take it anymore. I need it…”
She looks at me, confused.
“I’m about to kiss you now, okay?’
She breaks out laughing and it warms my heart.
“Don’t faint, I’m telling you.”
“It’s just a kiss Jason, you overestimate yourself,” she teases.
Holy God, do I love her.
“It’s the first real kiss after a very long time, Alex. You have no idea what it might contain…there could be—”
“Jay,” she interrupts me.
“Jason,” I correct her, touching her face.
