“Thank you,” I whispered.
Then Guilia was gone, and I was left sitting by Murphy’s bedside, listening to his labored breathing, and wondering if each breath would be his last.
I was supposed to call the home health nurse.
She was supposed to be here when I thought he was close, just to offer extra support for me if I needed it.
But…I didn’t want her here.
I wanted to spend the last bit of time with him.
I wanted…
I got up, tears rolling down my cheeks that I hadn’t realized I’d been crying and scooted into the bed beside Murphy.
He didn’t move or react in any way to my closeness. Not like he once would have.
Hell, even when he was most ‘mad’ at me in the very beginning, had I gotten close to him, he would’ve pulled me in closer. He would’ve hugged me tight. He would’ve yelled at me while his arms were firmly around my smaller body.
“When I met you,” I spoke, not sure if he could hear or not because he appeared to be sleeping, but he’d been a good fake sleeper for a while now, trying to hold back the alarm that it would cause his mother and me. “You were the prettiest thing I’d ever met. You had all that golden skin and black hair. I wanted your hair so bad.” I smiled softly, and the salt of my tears dipped into my mouth. I licked my lips clean and kept speaking. “Then you came and spoke to me, and I felt like my whole entire world just opened up, allowing you inside. You might not know this but…I had a really shitty childhood. I hated my grandmother with the fire of a thousand suns. And the day that she kicked y’all out, I never spoke to her again in a cordial tone.”
I spoke with him for what felt like hours.
I was so lost in thought, my voice raw from speaking, that at first I didn’t hear the ringing of my phone.
I stood up from my curl against Murphy’s body—he was still breathing—and went to the phone.
I frowned when I saw the unfamiliar phone number.
Placing it to my ear, I said, “Hello?”
“This is Dr. Battle. Get Murphy here now. We have a heart.”
I cried out in surprise and said, “I’m getting him there!”
“You have an hour. We’ve been trying to call you for a while,” he grumbled, sounding pissed.
I hung up, not replying.
Then I looked at the man that was on the bed, dead weight, with nobody around to help me get him in the car.
I already knew that it was going to be bad, but I’d be damned if I didn’t get him there.
• • •
I made it with a half an hour to spare.
I was sweating, my head hurt from the strain of getting the man in my van, and I was fairly sure I’d torn something in my shoulder.
But I got him there.
I rolled up to the entrance doors of the ER and found the transplant team already there waiting.
They looked pissed.
Little did they know that there was no one there but little old me, and they were lucky that I did CrossFit. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get him there at all.
Functional fitness at its finest.
They had him out of the car ridiculously easily, and then he was being wheeled into the hospital with nary a word to me.
Which I was okay with.
The moment that he was gone, I sat down in the middle of the breezeway in front of the ER doors and stared.
I stared, and stared, and stared until a security officer came out and asked me to move my van.
I got up on noodle-like legs, opened my car door with my good hand, and sat inside almost on auto pilot.
I closed my door, put the van that’d been running for who knew how long into drive and drove right out of the parking lot.
I turned around only when I realized what I was doing and went to find a spot in the back of the lot.
There I sat in silence, and the dark, while my husband had a heart transplant, and waited for the call.
And the entire time I was sitting there, I wasn’t once aware that I was twirling the wedding ring Murphy had given me around my finger.
Not even when my finger was bleeding and raw.
• • •
MURPHY
I felt like I was looking out of a looking glass.
When my eyes opened, I wasn’t confused for once.
I was completely comprehending of everything that was being said around me.
“Clear!”
I felt my entire body jolt.
The shock went from my fingers all the way to my toes.
“No pulse,” I heard.
That’s when something changed.
I went from being on the inside, to the outside.
At least, that was what it felt like.
I stared at the frantically working hospital workers as they poured around my body.