He noticed the disgust I held for my withered self and quickly grabbed my hand. He pulled it to him and kissed it.
“Why would you say that? You want to leave me?” he asked, his eyes full of so much pain, and I hated that I was the one causing it.
“I don’t think we have a choice, my love. I don’t want to suffer anymore. This…this is no life, not one I want to live, and not one I want you to live either. You deserve a wife, Jared, one you don’t have to take care of, one that you can make love with.”
“Stop! A life without you is not a life I want! You can’t leave me,” he choked. “My heart recognized who you were the moment my eyes saw you…you were made for me, Delilah.”
“Jared, if you love me, you will let me go.” I choked on the words.
What did I do in my life to deserve this perfect man? What did I do to deserve to be loved like this? God, I was going to miss him—his dark hair, his sparkling eyes, his tender kiss, the rumble of his deep voice, his large hands. He was perfect in every way…all but one, he loved me too much to let me go.
His stern eyes met mine, and I knew, I wasn’t going to win.
I sighed. “I’ll try to get stronger for surgery, but you need to prepare yourself for a reality where I am no longer here.”
He kissed my hand again and looked at me square in the eye. “I will do no such thing—we had a deal.” he declared stubbornly. He was emotional and irrational.
His pocket vibrated and he pulled out his phone.
“Oh, perfect timing! I’ll be back; I have a surprise for you. I’ll let the nurses know you would like your pain meds upped,” he said. He stood and kissed my forehead and left the room.
On his way out he passed a nurse and made sure I would get more pain medication. She nodded and said she would let the doctor know. Jared left, and the woman around my age came in with a tub full of soapy water and a sponge.
“Hello Miss Delilah, I’m Nurse June, can I clean you up?” she asked kindly.
I nodded. I hated sponge baths, but I felt like a grease ball, soaked in sweat and God knows what else. She closed the door and walked toward me. She carefully sat me up and opened my robe, and thesponge squeaked against the plastic basin when she dipped it, and the soap smelled like something too cheerful—citrus and clean. It was far too cheerful for the mood I was in.
“Your husband hasn’t left your side; he really loves you. What’s your secret? I can’t get a man to stay longer than a few months!” she chuckled.
I smiled, and I really didn’t know what to say. Everything with him had just been so easy before I got sick.
“You just haven’t met the right one yet. When you do, you’ll know,” I explained.
“What did it feel like? Just so I know,” she asked with a chuckle.
I took a deep breath, and she lightly soaped my sore body down. Even the lightest touch was painful.
“Well, you will meet, and it will feel like…like you’ve met before, that you’ve known each other for a long time, if only in another life,” I said.
“All done! Thanks for the insight. I’ll let Dr. McNall know you are still experiencing some pain…oh, and I’ll bring some cream for that burn, one of the heart monitors must have irritated your skin,” she said, and exited the room and shut the door.
I looked at my chest, andthere it was.
Panic flooded my veins. My heart raced in erratic beats that made my chest hurt with a stabbing tightness, and I felt like I could not get enough air, like my throat was going to close, like there was a boulder on top of me—Titus’s mate mark. Still not healed, still looking like a blob, but it was there, just as I had remembered it in my dream.
But it wasn’t a dream.It was fucking real.
K. ROSÉ
My chest cinched, and the room narrowed. My heart pumped violently, and the pain made me scream. The alarms on the machines around me went off, beeping and blaring with urgency. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” I struggled to say.
A team of medical people rushed in.
“She’s going into cardiac arrest!” I heard someone shout.
My ears rang, my vision blackened, and my lungs refused to fill with air, and then everything went dark.
When I regained consciousness my throat felt like it was full of barbed wire. My mouth tasted like plastic and stale air, and when I tried to swallow, the pressure in my throat reminded me I couldn’t. I opened my eyes and I was in the same gray hospital room, but I could tell I was more heavily drugged because the room tilted and tipped. I felt a large warm hand holding mine. I turned my head to see who was sitting beside me, but the slightest movement of my neck made the razors that must have been in my throat scratch and irritate the sensitive tissue.
