The Choice

“You’ve got to stop doing this! I need my sleep. Unbroken, regular sleep, like everyone else in the world! I’m exhausted, can’t you understand that? I refuse to live the rest of my life knowing that you’re going to nudge me awake every hour!”

That had been the extent of her comments; it couldn’t even be classified as an argument, since he didn’t have time to respond before she’d rolled over with her back to him, muttering to herself—but it struck Travis as so . . . Gabby-like that he breathed a sigh of relief. If she no longer worried about slipping into a coma again—and she swore she didn’t—then he knew he shouldn’t, either. Or, at the very least, he could let her sleep. If he was honest with himself, he wondered whether the fear would ever disappear completely. Now, in the middle of the night, he simply listened to the way she breathed, and when he noticed differences in the pattern, differences that hadn’t occurred when she’d been in a coma, he was finally able to roll over and go back to sleep.

They were all adjusting, and he knew that would take time. Lots of it. They had yet to talk about the fact that he’d disregarded the living will, and he wondered whether they ever would. He had yet to tell Gabby the extent of the imaginary conversations she’d had with him while she was in the hospital, and she had little to say about the coma itself. She didn’t remember anything: no aromas, no sounds from the television, nothing about his touch. “It’s like time just . . . vanished.”

But that was fine. It was all as it should be. Behind him, he heard the screen door creak open and he turned. In the distance, he could see Molly lying in the tall grass off to the side of the house; Moby, old guy that he was, was sleeping in the corner. Travis smiled as Gabby spied her daughters, noting her content expression. As Christine pushed Lisa on the tire swing, both of them giggling madly, Gabby took a seat in the rocker beside Travis.

“Lunch is ready,” she said. “But I think I’ll let them play for a few more minutes. They’re having such a good time.”

“They are. They wore me out earlier.”

“Do you think that maybe later, when Stephanie gets here, we can all head over to the aquarium? And maybe have some pizza afterward? I’ve been dying for pizza.”

He smiled, thinking he could stay in this moment forever. “That sounds good. Oh yeah, that reminds me. I forgot to tell you that your mom called when you were in the shower.”

“I’ll call her back in a little while. And I’ve got to call about the heat pump, too. The girls’ room just wouldn’t cool off last night.”

“I can probably fix it.”

“I don’t think so. The last time you tried to fix it, we had to buy a whole new unit. Remember?”

“I remember you didn’t give me enough time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she teased. She winked at him. “Do you want to eat out here or inside?”

He pretended to debate the question, knowing it wasn’t really important. Here or there, they would all be together. He was with the woman and daughters he loved, and who could ever need or want anything more than that? The sun shone bright, flowers were blooming, and the day would pass with a careless ease that had been impossible to imagine the winter before. It was just a normal day, a day like any other. But most of all, it was a day in which everything was exactly the way it should be.