Only a small beam of light was falling through the window onto the silky white bed sheets. His arms still wrapped gently around her waist. She had never felt so safe as when she was in his arms. Gentle in her touch, she rested her fingertips against his cheeks and leaned in close to him to kiss him. A passionate kiss was placed gently on his cold, lifeless lips. Her breath was racing… his stood still. She prayed their hearts were beating as one, but only a single heart was beating in their bed that morning. A single broken heart lost somewhere between what has and what could have been.
The ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead blew a gentle breeze over her tear stained cheeks. Clenching the bed sheets in her hands she patted them against her eyes, soaking up all her tears. Everything had happened so fast she had trouble believing it was really happening. The nightmare she would never wake from.
She picked up the phone and pressed 9-1-1, this was the first time she had ever dialed those three numbers. She gasped for breath, so choked up she could only speak in quieted whispers as the operator asked her for every important detail. All she could manage to say before she dropped the phone to the bedroom floor was, “He’s not breathing.”
The dial tone from the phone had finally died out and everything in the room was perfectly silent. Not the peaceful, serene kind of silence. More like the silence at the end of a play, when the audience is deciding if the show is over or if there’s one last surprise for them before they break out into applause. There were no more surprises at the end of this show, no applause either.
She placed his hand in hers and held it with sincere love. Gently brushing her fingertips against the back of his hand. She kissed his hand gently, then placed both their hands into her lap. She hoped so badly that if she held his hand long enough he would come back to life. Sitting silently on the bed, lost in her thoughts, she knew such things were impossible.
She wasn’t thinking about her life with him or what her life would be like without him. Her head was fixated with what was happening now. This would be the last time she would ever wake up next to him, the last time she would ever hold his hand. If she had three wishes she’d spend all three on stopping time and never letting her last moments with him end.
The sun had finally made its way into the sky and shone brightly into the room, leaving a soft glow around her pale white skin. Her nightgown matched the silky white sheets. She looked like a wingless angel, gazing down at his lifeless body.
The sounds of sirens grew louder and louder until they were accompanied by a flashing red light that filled the bedroom walls. Her breathing had finally calmed.
She didn’t say a word as they took away his lifeless body, as his hand slid out of hers. Her eyes were fixated on the now empty doorway. One of the paramedics wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sat on the bed next to her, trying to comfort her.
“He was a great man.”
“No.” She told the paramedic. A delicate smile appeared on her face as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “He was the greatest.”

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Publication Date: 07-21-2011

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