Every Wrong Reason(95)

Silent tears streamed down my face with truths I wasn’t ready to admit to myself and fears that were too horrifying to even think. This was the man I loved with every fiber of my being-the only man I’d ever loved. The only man I’d ever love.

He’d made me fall in love with him before I was old enough to drink legally, then he’d convinced me to marry him before I even graduated from college. He knocked me up a year later, and didn’t stop until we had four wild rug rats that all had his red hair and his emerald green eyes. He’d encouraged me to finish my undergrad degree, and then to continue on to grad school while I was pregnant, nursing and then pregnant again. He went to bed every night with socks on and then took them off sometime in the middle of the night, leaving them obnoxiously tucked in between our sheets. He could never find his wallet, or his keys, and when there was hair to grow he always forgot to shave.

And he drove me crazy most of the time.

But he was mine.

He was my husband.

And now he was sick.

“I do love you, Lizzy,” he murmured against my hair. “I’ll always love you, even when I’m dead and gone.”

“Which won’t be for at least fifty more years,” I reminded him on a sob.

He ignored me, “You love me back, don’t you?”

“Yes, I love you back,” I whispered with so much emotion the words stuck in my throat. “But you already knew that.”

“Maybe,” he conceded gently. “But I will never, ever get tired of hearing it.”

I sniffled against him, staining his hospital gown with my mascara and eye liner. “That’s a good thing, because you’re going to be hearing it for a very long time.”

He didn’t respond, just kept swaying with me back and forth until the song ended. He asked me to play it again and I did, three more times. By the end of the fourth, he was too tired to stand. I laid him back in bed and helped him adjust the IV and monitor again so that it didn’t bother him, then pulled the sheet over his cold toes.

His eyes were closed and I thought he’d fallen asleep, so I bent down to kiss his forehead. He stirred at my touch and reached out to cup my face with his un-needled arm. I looked down into his depthless green eyes and fell in love with him all over again.

It was as simple as that.

It had always been that simple for him to get me to fall in love with him.

“You are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me, Lizzy.” His voice was broken and scratchy and a tear slid out from the corner of each of his eyes.

My chin trembled at his words because I knew what he was doing and I hated it, I hated every part of it. I shook my head, trying to get him to stop but he held my gaze and just kept going.

“You are. And you have made my life good, and worth living. You have made me love more than any man has ever known how to love. I didn’t know this kind of happiness existed in real life, Liz, and you’re the one that gave it to me. I couldn’t be more thankful for the life we’ve shared together. I couldn’t be more thankful for you.”

“Oh, Grady, please-”

“Lizzy,” he said in his sternest voice that he only used when I’d maxed out a credit card. “Whatever happens, whatever happens to me, I want you to keep giving this gift to other people.” I opened my mouth to vehemently object to everything he was saying but he silenced me with a cold finger on my lips. “I didn’t say go marry the first man you find. Hell, I’m not even talking about another man. But I don’t want this light to die with me. I don’t want you to forget how happy you make other people just because you might not feel happy. Even if I don’t, Lizzy, I want you to go on living. Promise me that.”

But I shook my head, “No.” I wasn’t going to promise him that. I couldn’t make myself. And it was unfair of him to ask me that.

“Please, Sweetheart, for me?” His deep, green eyes glossed over with emotion and I could physically feel how painful this was for him to ask me. He didn’t want this anymore than I did.

I found myself nodding, while I sniffled back a stream of tears. “Okay,” I whispered. “I promise.”

He broke out into a genuine smile then, his thumb rubbing back and forth along my jaw. “Now tell me you love me, one more time.”

“I love you, Grady,” I murmured, leaning into his touch and savoring this moment with him.

“And I will always, always love you, Lizzy.”

His eyes finally fluttered shut and his hand dropped from my face. His vitals remained the same, so I knew he was just sleeping. I crawled into bed with him, gently shifting him so that I could lie on my side, in the nook of his arm and lay my hand on his chest. I did this often; I liked to feel the beat of his heart underneath my hand. It had stopped too many times before, for me to trust its reliability. My husband was a very sick man, and had been for a while now.

Tonight was different though. Tonight, Grady was lucid and coherent, he’d found enough energy to stand up and dance with me, to tell me he loved me. Tonight could have been a turn for the better.

But it wasn’t-because only a few hours later, Grady’s heart stopped for the third time during his adult life, and this time it never restarted.





Stage One: Denial

Not every story has a happy ending. Some only hold a happy beginning.